Yellow Tang

My yellow tang was great this morning, swimming up at the top of the tank. He ate his breakfast well enough (Emerald Entre and some seaweed). I changed one of the bulbs in my MH setup, so now it's a little brighter in the tank. But now my little Tang is lying on his side in the corner of the tank. He seems to be breathing normally, and his color is alright, but he seems to be struggling a little to stay upright. Do you think he is stressed out? Should I turn all the lights off for the rest of the day?

Your right to think something is wrong. Fish displaying that type of behavior usually are in trouble.
What are you water parameters? How old is your tank? More info is needed.
Is it breathing rapidly, too?

OMG, that was just HORRIBLE to watch! I now have a dead fish. I watched him carefully in the tank, and he just appeared to be getting worse, but not breathing rapidly (that I could tell). At one point, I also noticed he was bleeding a little from his underside. I couldn't see any particularly large wounds, but he was trickling blood from just in front of his belly fin. At this point, I moved him into my QT. He continued to deteriorate, his breathing slowed, then he stopped moving. I thought he was dead. All of a sudden, he started quivering all over, like he was having violent spasms, but he was still upside down. The spasms made him sorta swim across the QT, before he suddenly stopped, and sunk to the bottom. He is dead now.

I have no idea what happened. My other fish seem fine. All my parameters read well. I added some mushrooms, 2 pepermints, and 2 frags last night and turned the MHs on for the first time in the middle of my light cycle. Otherwise, nothing has changed. My tank is now 8 months old. The 2 skunk shrimp have been very attentive to my Tang since we got him about 1 week ago. I really hope this doesn't happen to any of my other fish. I DO NOT want to watch that again!

Gosh I'm sorry about your Tang. At least it went pretty quick and didn't linger for days. The only thing I can think of is may be it had some internal parasites that did him in.

Did you add any water that was in the bag of the new stuff you got last night? Any of the things added stinging corals or nems?

No, didn't let any of the bag water into my tank. I added 2 frags of pipe organ (1"-2") coral and 6 nickle-size mushrooms. Could the skunk shrimp have injured him? That was a quick demise.

Skunk cleaner wouldn't have done anything. Only tried to help. The only other thing besides the parasites is it could have had an organ problem. Maybe it had a heart attack.

Im sorry for your loss. It really sucks to watch a fish die. My coral beauty died almost 3 months ago and I havent added anything since. The only things I can think of as far as why he died. He was a week old no telling if he was net caught or by some other means (cyanide) The other thing I have read that mushrooms will let out a toxin when they are bagged did any of that water get into your tank. I dont really know for sure about the mushroom thing I havent kept any corals yet just what I have read. With your fish only being a week old theres really no telling maybe a parasite. One question, if you have a qt tank why wasnt he in the qt still?

I got him from my LFS, one I've trusted (so far), and everything I've purchased from him not only survived, but thrived in my tank. He QTs for 3 weeks and uses UV sterilizers on all livestock he has. This particular tang had been at his store for 2 months, excluding its initial QT time.

The reason he's not been in the QT since I purchased him is because I read that tangs get even more stressed in smaller tanks. I didn't want to kill him straight off the bat from stress overload, which I read can happen with tangs.

He was pretty shy at first, hanging out at the back of the tank. I has only been within the last 2 days that he's come to the front of the tank and had eaten from the veggie clip. His death really suprised me.

Sometimes that happens and we are left wondering WTF happened.

Sorry about your loss...Like mentioned before, fish just die sometimes without no clue why.