Splinter looking things

wontonflip

I failed Kobayashi Maru
My new yellow tang looks like he has these dark splinter looking things on his skin. It's definitely not white. I can't get a pic..he hides from the camera. Is there some disease with this description or could it just be pieces of debris?

They're really tiny slivers, they're a little raised, and you can only see them up close. He's swimming around and eating and aside from being shy to too much movement outside of the tank, he seems overall healthy. No white spots.
 
&!#@....looks like black ich :( Lesson everyone -- qt is good. Meh. Gonna set up a qt tank now and see if i can get it under control. Thanks, tisims.
 
dang im sorry, that totally sucks

yep get him out quick and syphon your sand if you have it. those little worms fall off and can survive for a long time on old food and such in the sand until they decide to come out and host him or another fish again.
 
I'm so bummed...leave it to the tangs. Here I was worried about white ich..I know about those; have dealt w/ those in freshwater. From what I read, black ich has a different treatment -- formalin based meds? White ich is fungal, and this one is parasitic...hence the different treatment.

I guess I should worry more about my diamond goby, since it's a sandsifter. I'm just very sad right now. But I'll try to fish out the tang.

Got any recommended meds?
 
Gosh Wonton, sorry to hear of your Tang's Black Ich. Good luck on treating it. My new Lipstick Tang finally took a bit of food, but still isn't actively eating.
 
well you might wait for someone more experienced then me to come along and chime in. i dont know the product you listed and you still have to be careful with the inverts. sometimes the old ways are the only ones that work.

first i would get a bottle wine and drink 2 glasses, cause thats just me and i would need the stress relief.

next i would take out everything that could be hurt like inverts and maybe some corals and put them in a seperate tank. then treat this tank with hyposalinty treatment. and apparently it is not that hard to do cause i did it by accident once when my hydrometer was broken and i did not realize it. the only thing i did lose when this happened to me was a skunk shrimp cause i raised the salinty up to fast.

other than that i think formalin is the best treatment but be careful cause it can cause cancer so don't breath it, open the windows in the house and use gloves if you do go that way.

oh i would fresh water dip the tang to kill what he has on him now.

i will do some research and see what i can find out.
 
Glad yours is eating. You know these tangs are tempermental bastards when it comes to eating and getting sick!

So I emailed kent to find out if that product is good for black ich. Waiting for a response.

But I found this one:
Seachem ParaGuard Details

Might be a better alternative. Just spoke to the people there. Verified I can treat the whole tank (since at this point the parasite has probably laid eggs already), and it's not copper or formalin based. It's safe for inverts, w/ caution --I can start off with half the recommended dosage and try to acclimate them that way; I might just fish them out and qt THEM with the shrooms. 3 week treatment.

Honestly guys, I was crying earlier about this. Definitely one of those "I told you so" moments in choosing not to qt...but I knew the consequences, so I'm dealing.
 
oh that sucks wonton. for me i do not like to put any meds in the DT at all you just dont know what is going to happen. i would qt all the fish in the meds and leave any coral and inverts in the DT for the 3-4weeks that you treat the fish and you shout be fine
 
I have no corals....it's fowlr, otherwise I wouldn't risk it either. It's not copper or formalin based, so it shouldn't get absorbed by the rocks. It goes away every 24 hours apparently, unlike other meds. I'm going to take the rock w/ the mushrooms, and as many of the cuc I can find (I don't have many....maybe 4 crabs, 6 or 7 snails) and move them to a 10g that I just set up.

Problem is that it will take 3-4 days to get here :( So hopefully it won't get too bad until then. No one local has it. Petsmart might, but they only have one seachem product, and it's the wrong kind. My lfs would take a week to get here. Good reviews though. I've only seen one bad review on amazon. The other sites rave about it.
 
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i think i would go ahead and fresh water dip the tang, im afraid 3 or 4 days is to long and he might end up with a secondary infection, i would put him in the qt tank for now until the meds arrive and then put him back in the dt tank removing all the cuc and inverts over to the qt tank with new fresh water not the water the tang was in. then treat your dt and after a month run some carbon to remove the medicine and see what happens from there.
 
I sent an email to the wet web media crew (gotta love those guys). As I wrote the email, I'm beginning to think it might NOT be black ich, but the start of white ich...

I'm still not 100% sure it's black ich, because the things I see are not really spots. I've only seen 2 good pictures online on black ich, and the tang's spots aren't really spots -- but splinters...and now, i'm realize they might be scratches from rubbing on the rocks. What usually happens first -- the itching or the white spots? I don't see any white spots. I did see a long thing hairline gash along his side..probably from scratching himself on the glass? Ungh.

Stupid question...how do u do a freshwater dip? Is it LITERALLY just tank-temp rodi??
 
its not actually the parasit your seeing, it is the hyperpigmentation (sp) the skin changes color like a bruise does on us that is how most people find out they even have a problem is a light colored fish will get the pigmentation thing. dark fish can go forever for you realize you have a problem and by then you got a big problem.

wet web media (yes i love that place) has a place on there about the fresh water dip procedure so yhea i would look it up there cause i have not done one just read about it, i would print it out and go over and over it just to make sure i do it right.
 
Yeahh, see the things on his skin doesn't look like bruises (good description, actually)...they're more like splinters...like, if you get a small cut on your hand, and the dried blood cut starts peeling, it looks like that.
 
I'm so bummed...leave it to the tangs. Here I was worried about white ich..I know about those; have dealt w/ those in freshwater. From what I read, black ich has a different treatment -- formalin based meds? White ich is fungal, and this one is parasitic...hence the different treatment.

Got any recommended meds?
No, that's not true. Both are parasitic. "White" ich is the parasite Cryptocaryon, and "black" ich is a parasitic flatworm Turbellarian.

Feature Article: Identifying Parasitic Diseases in Marine Aquarium Fish - A Hobbyist?s Guide to Identifying Some Common Marine Aquarium Parasites | Advanced Aquarist's Online Magazine
 
Yeah, I had realized that when I was reading further....thanks for the link, though, cc.

Just fed the fish...tang was voraciously eating, so hopefully that will toughen him up for the upcoming treatment.
 
I wasn't trying to be a jerk in your other thread when I said something didn't look right with your tang.The bug eye look of your tang at the time reminded me of early HLLE.

Do you think that could be it?
 
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