Yellow Tang With Black Spots

[Mr. Fish]

I have had my yellow tang for about a month. I noticed he had a couple black spots on one of his fins when I first got. They seemed to go away, but now he has a few black spots on both his sides. I moved my bed right next to the tank and the day after I noticed the black spots on his sides. I don't know if I caused it by stressing him out, or if I just noticed it because I was so close. I moved my bed away because he really didn't like it. I want to know how bad these black spots are. He is eating like a horse and is fat and happy. He scratches himself on the sand every once and a while, but other than that he seems fine. I don't have a quarantine tank, but even if I did there would be no way I could catch him to put him in it.

 

[Percula9]

If it is black ich, it would look like grains of pepper on the skin. Formalin and malachite green is the treatment. Try soaking his food in garlic extract, it helps to boost the immune system. I looked at your parameters, the calcium is a little high and phosphate is really high. You might try running some GFO in a reactor.

 

[Mr. Fish]

I cannot use any meds because he is in a reef tank. They do look like tiny grains of pepper. I am setting up a gfo reactor this week. Does high phosphate effect fish? I am feeding new life spectrum thera-a pellets one of the main ingredients is garlic.

 

[SGH360]

Black ich is different than regular ich. the life cycle is also different. As the black ich is ready to reproduce they need to be eaten by bird so it can reproduce. Since our fishes cannot be eating by birds it going to dissapeared later. Just feed him food soak in garlic so he will able to fight it off until it dies completly

 

[Mr. Fish]

Black ich is different than regular ich. the life cycle is also different. As the black ich is ready to reproduce they need to be eaten by bird so it can reproduce. Since our fishes cannot be eating by birds it going to dissapeared later. Just feed him food soak in garlic so he will able to fight it off until it dies completly

So there is nothing to worry about? How long does it take to die of?

 

[JHemdal]

Mr. Fish,

Your yellow tang probably has the tang turbellarian (a species of flatworm known as Paravortex) a disease that is sometimes called "black ich". I take it the tang is in the 55? The drug of choice would be praziquantel (Prazipro) but it is not truly reef safe (but much safer than formalin/malachite green). If you can't treat the fish, then you really don't have any choice but to see if it will go away on its own (it often does). There is *some* evidence that siphoning cleaning the bottom of the tank well will help remove the juvenile worms before they have a chance to attach to the tang.

I have to comment on a couple of previous posts - garlic extract has NO proven effect on external metazoan parasites like this - it is just a "feel good" sort of thing to do.
Paravortex does NOT have to be eaten by a bird to carry out its life cycle - but it is sometimes self-limiting in aquariums, but nobody knows why. The calcium and phosphate levels have nothing to do with this parasite at the range they are at in your tank.

Jay

 

[Percula9]

Black ich is tubellarian worms. After parasatizing the fish for 5-6 days they drop off the fish and fall to the bottom where they mature and release new worms to infect your fish again. The fish needs to be removed and treated. Vacuuming the bottom will help by removing the adults before they release new young worms.

 

[zachfishman]

An old yellow of mine had this, a FW dip cleared it up right away and it never resurfaced.