An interesting couple of weeks for this tank.. I wasn't going to post anything about this little incident, but when I told the story to my wife she convinced me that it would make a good post, so here goes..
A couple of weeks ago I picked up an Atlantic Blue Tang from a LFS. I thought it was a great find because I had wanted one for a long time. I felt he would be a great addition to the lagoon for algae control. So anyway, I brought him home and proceeded with my usual acclimation routine. The first step I take is to temperature acclimate which means bag sits in the sump for about 20 minutes or so. Went upstairs, did a little Canreefing and then came back down to check in on him. I was shocked and horrified to find that somehow his bag was completely empty of water! I'm wondering if maybe he poked a hole in it.. but the details here aren't that important. I pulled him out of the empty bag and found him lifeless. Yes, dead. I wiggled him in the sump water for a bit, nothing. This had never happened to me before so I was kind of beside myself. While sitting there under my tank staring at a lifeless body of my newly acquired Tang I somehow got it in my head that I shouldn't give up on him. It couldn't have been *that* long since he stopped breathing.. So, I decided to take action and perform CPR. I pulled his lifeless body out of the sump and placed him in the display tank in front of a tunze 6105. I tried to hold his mouth open as it blasted water into his mouth and through his gills, all the while I performed chest compressions by pressing either side of his body with my thumb and index finger. Yes, I felt as ridiculous doing it as it sounds. I don't know, I think I saw it on TV one time or something! I did this for probably 5 give or take minutes. I was about to give up on him and pronounced him dead but guess what???? Yup, he wiggled his tail. I was shocked!! I kept up with the CPR and sure enough, he started to gasp for air, started breathing and a little tail wiggle turned into full on swimming. To be honest I don't know if my actions really did anything or not. All I know is one moment he was pretty dead. No breathing, no movement, nothing, the next minute he darts off into a cave.
So ya, that was a pretty exciting evening, but it doesn't end there for him. Yesterday I noticed that he was doing a weird head shake and was really scratching himself good on some rocks. I remember reading in Tony's Fluke thread recently about head shaking so I looked it up. Yup, sure enough, he has skin flukes! You can clearly see the little flukes on his skin. At this point I had not yet seen him eat (although he did eat at the LFS), so it was not looking good for him. I didn't have any medication on hand but he was already in pretty rough shape so I felt I really had to do something to at least help him out if I could. I decided to give him a fresh water dip. I've only ever done this once eons ago and even then it was a very very brief dip. I wasn't sure how this one was going to go. I filled a pot with RO water and got its temp up to the same as the tank's temp. I then spent 45 minutes trying to fish him out of the tank (ended up having to remove all my live rock). Placed him in a colander and lowered him into the bath. Let's just say he wasn't very happy about it. I set a timer for 5 minutes and kept a very close eye on him. He calmed down after the first minute. I could literally see all the flukes dropping off his body. After 5 minutes I placed him back into the display tank where he proceeded to bolt into a cave.
The next day I picked up some PraziPro to treat the tank.
Although the flukes on his skin were taken care of the larvae and any flukes in the display tank still need to be dealt with. When I went to treat the tank I noticed that he was out and about grazing on the live rock. I had never seen him do this since putting him in the tank. Furthermore, when I plunked myself down in front of the tank to watch him he swam up to the glass and hung out there, staring at me. Hard to describe that moment. It was quite surreal. Almost like he was saying, "Thanks dude. I needed that".
Anyway, he still has some healing to do but is well on his way. I've seen him eat flakes and nori sheets.
Has anyone else ever tried CPR on their fish?!