help please ! black dots on tang

[shezapistol]

Ok I thought I remembered reading a thread on these boards somewhere about this problem, but cant seem to find it again. My yellow tang has these tiny little black dots on his body, and looking it up in my books, im almost sure it is "black Ich" or tubelarian worms. We recently lost our cleaner shrimp "for no apparent reason", now I think we know what from.

We dont have the funds to set up a quarentine tank, so none of our fish had been quarentined, but we *thought* we were very very careful about selecting healthy clean fish from stores that quarentined thier own shipments. Lesson learned.

ok, so how do I go about fixing this nasty problem? We have a 30gal tank with a Fluval 304 canister filter, Prizm protien skimmer, 2 powerheads submerged for current, about 35lbs of live rock, like sand bed ( 2 inches deep).

Critters : 4 snails, 2 hermit crabs(blueleg) 1 sand sifting star, 1 serpent star, 1 yellow watchman gobby, 1 yellow tang, 2 damsel fish.

Any help at all would be appreciated.

[crlkeep]

A fresh water dip should do the trick. These worms are a common parasite most frequently bothering Yellow Tangs. The fresh water dip causes a condition called ozmotic shock, which actually causes the parasite to absorb to much water and pop for all intent and purposes. Try it for 1 minute, and watch the fish closely. Some people may recommend a longer period, but I don't unless the fish is noticably falling fast, and a drastic measure is required.

HTH

Chuck

[MJC]

It sounds like you have black ich. The disease is caused by a small worm known as a tubellarian. After parasitizing a fish, the worms develop on the fish's skin and gills and acquire dark pigmentation. They are mobile and will tend to move all over the fish. After about a weeks time, they drop to the bottom of the tank where they will mature, with the development of the young worms within their body (sorta like an egg sac). Once the development of the young is complete, the adult worms burst, releasing the free swimming young that infest new host fish.

In addition to the use of medications, any excessive buildup or debris should be siphoned from the aquarium several times during treatment. Since the young worms develop on the aquarium bottom, the removal of debris will aid in controlling the disease by reducing their numbers.

The worms can be controlled with various commercially available medications. Formalin based products or those containing trichlorfon appear to be the best medications. Research indicates freshwater dips are perhaps the most effective. When you do the freshwater dip, make sure the pH and water temperature are the same to ensure the fish is not stressed too badly. As with introducing all new fish, a freshwater dip is the simplest safeguard against parasites in your tank. It doesn't require a QT, you could get by using a bucket, just remember to follow the pH and temperature rule.

Insteadof a cleaner shrimp, you may consider a cleaner wrasse. Do the necessary esearch on cleaner wrasse, tho. For a variety of reasons, some folks like it, some don't.

[shezapistol]

ok fresh water dip done, but what about if these worm things are already in my sand bed ? do they effect other types of fish? or the sand star? we also did a 15% water change last night, as our nitrates were up one level. Hopefully that will help out.

the tang is eating very well, and shows no signs of distress at all, not even any "scratching" on the rocks or anything.

once these parasites are in our tank do they ever really disappear? or is my tank now "tainted" and it would be unwise to ever add anything else?

[crlkeep]

As far as knowing if they are still in your system, I can only suspect that as MJC stated
After about a weeks time, they drop to the bottom of the tank where they will mature, with the development of the young worms within their body (sorta like an egg sac). Once the development of the young is complete, the adult worms burst, releasing the free swimming young that infest new host fish.
Since a formalin treatment is not in your inverts best interest, I would say to just keep a close eye on all the fish and inhabitants of your tank. Yellow Tangs seem to be the most susceptible to these parasites. I am against the use of cleaner wrasse, as reasearch suggests that the poor survivability rate in captivity is due to the high need for food, ie parasites and such that they need to survive. But that is JMHO, and someone else may now a better way to keep them alive without a large well stocked tank.

Otherwise I would keep an eye on the tank, and suggest not adding any more livestock to the tank for at least 3 months.

HTH

Chuck

[crlkeep]

I am glad to hear that he/she is doing better, keep us posted as to his/her condition.

Chuck

[MJC]

As with any parasites, they need a host to attach onto. Without any livestock, they just die off and whither away ....

For now, I do as Chuck suggest, dont add any new livestock until you're certain the worms dont return. It can take upwards of a few weeks to ensure they dont hatch and reattach. Assuming they do attach, perform a freshwater dip to rid the fish of any worms.

You mention losing a cleaner shrimp - do you suspect this is related? I was under the impression shrimp would go for this type of worms.

Just a thought, have you gone back to the LFS where you purchased the tang to see if any of their livestock have this?

- Marty

[shezapistol]

We believe the loss of the cleaner shrimp to be due to eating the parasite worms.

When we first bought the tang, about 4 weeks ago, the minitue we put him into the tank, the shrimp jumped right on him. about 2 weeks later, we noticed the shrimp was suddenly "shy" hiding beneath rocks, not venturing out hardly at all, ect. then he up and disappeared, and after digging around in the tank found the dead shrimp.

In the previous thread I thought I had remembered someone mentioning that thier store recommended that to get rid of the dots on the tang to get a cleaner shrimp, and then there was a reply thread that said NOT to do so because the shrimp would consequentially die from eating the very parasite it cleaned off the tang. Thats why we think the shrimp died from the worms.

well, at this point we are saving up to get a 10 gal tank to turn into a hospital/ quarentine tank, which means another filtration system, and all that jazz, oh joy. Is there an economical way of doing this? can we use the all enclosed Eclipse system aquariums as a hospital tank? I know they make wonderful fresh water tanks with the bio-wheel all included in the hood, but can it be used for salt water as well?

Our local retailer suggested Greenex as a medicine to put in our tank. I am leary of this, what will it do to my live rick and sand? what about our snails and crabs, and the star fish? And, our filtration system? Should I change out the carbon and sponges after medicating? We really were hoping to add anenome and maybe some soft corals in about another month, but once that stuff is in the water, can we do that ?

[crlkeep]

As far a quarantine tank goes, no elaborate filtration system is necessary IMO. A bare bottom tank with some large diameter PVC pipe or other suitable hiding place, and a bubble filter will do fine. Make sure that the pH of this tanks water closely matches that of the display that the fish will eventually go in. Do frequent water changes, 10 - 15% and give the new patient a few weeks to adjust and all should be well.

I have no advice on medications, as I quarantine my fish at work, and we keep a low level of copper in the quarantine tanks (not by my doing) to help control any possible parasites.

MJC or someone else may have a little more insite into that for you.

Chuck

[MJC]

Shez,

I noted you live in Manteca -- check out craigslist and search on stuff for sale, you'll be surprised at what you can find. Check out the general items and pets section, perform separate search using keywords "aquarium" or fish tank". You may find a seller close to you or around the SF bay area.

In terms of setting up a QT, it's not a bad idea to use a sponge filter, but I'd suggest you have one "seeded" it in your main tank and transfer it to the QT when you need it. This retains some of the biological properties of your main tank in the QT. I setup a small 10 G QT like that. Added 15 pounds of LR (actually four pieces), a PH and a hang on filter. What I did was take LS from my main tank and placed it into the filter portion of the HO filter - sorta liek a remote sand bed if you will and used it on my QT.

You could use the eclipse system as a QT. As a matter of fact, what you could do is set it up with water, filtration, LR, etc.; essentially run it as a separate tank with the lights off (so as not to build up algae), and without livestock. You could seed it with water and some LR from your tank and let it run (that's assuming your main tank is NOT infected). Check the water quality and let it cycle. Once it's cycled and as long as it's empty, you could use some of the water from the QT to perform water changes in your main tank and replenish it afterwards. Once its used as a QT, then all bets are off for using it to change water.

In terms of medications when QT. As the livestock is being acclimated, I add a few drops of malichite and formalin into the container with the livestock. After adding 1 qt of tank water to 1 qt of bag water, reduce to 1 qt, add 1 more qt of tank water, I dip the livestock in freshwater as I described earlier. The livestock is then introduced into my QT where it stays for another week or two where its fed live food (brine), feeders (goldfish or ghost shrimp), frozen (mysis, plankton, squid, brine, angel food (for angels), and dried. If it's a predator, eg. lion, grouper, trigger, eel, etc. I try and acclimate them to frozen (I was able to get a few triggers and groupers to eat dried). After two weeks, it goes to my client. While the livestock is in my QT, no medications are used. My QT consists of a diatom XL, LR fashioned into easily removable caves and a skimmer. I usually do 10% water changes every few days, esp. if they're consuming live foods.


If you need a QT, I have a 55 gallon partitioned into three sections (each 16" x 13" x 12") with separate filter outlets my wife would want to sell out from me ... :eek: