Help, Yellow Tang has tiny black dots on its body

cooper · #1 07-24-2008, 06:32 AM

My yellow tang has black dots all over his body. I wonder what this is and how to treat the fish. Any help will be much appreciated as I am not sure what these black dots are.

Do I have to buy some type of medication? Do I have to quarantine the fish and for how long.....Please help!

Delphinus · #2 07-24-2008, 06:41 AM

Sounds like black ich or black spot disease, pretty common on yellow tangs at first.

It's a flatworm, and very effectively treatable with a freshwater dip. Match the temperature and pH of your tank water, catch the fish and put him in FW for, I think, about 4 minutes. The flatworms will fall off. In extreme cases you may need a second FW dip in a week or so but when I had to treat a yellow tang I only needed to do it once.

http://saltaquarium.about.com/cs/com...a/aa041701.htm

People talk about using formalin in the FW dip. I found I didn't need to but your mileage may vary.

Good luck.

cooper · #3 07-24-2008, 06:53 AM

Thanks for your quick response.

The other fish in the tank seem to be free of black spots. Should I give them a FW dip too or should I leave them alone for now? Do you think I have to get all the fish out of the tank to quarantine them for a few weeks? Do I do this FW dip and put the fish back in the main tank?

I read somewhere on the internet that all fish must be taken out and put into a quarantine tank for a few weeks. That will allow for the rest of the parasites that are still in the main tank to die because there are no hosts for them.

Thanks in advance

Drock169 · #4 07-24-2008, 03:29 PM

Protomarin Coral by aquarium munster, reef safe product for treating ich, just make sur eyou follow the instructions.This product will only work if the ich is just in the early phase

Delphinus · #5 07-24-2008, 04:30 PM

I'm not sure if that's about ich though, or for black ich. "Black ich", which is most assuredly (I think anyhow) what he has on his YT, is a flatworm and not a fluke. (It's a bad name, I guess people just call any kind of spots on a fish as "ich".) Black spot disease which looks like ground black pepper is totally external and large enough that the cells lyse under osmotic pressure of FW. Real ich (aka Cryptocaryon) will not be knocked back at all by a FW dip. The dots that you see in "real ich" are little holes, the dots that you see in "black ich" are the bodies of the flatworms themselves. They will literally fall off after a FW dip.

As to QT'ing the rest of the tank .. if it was me, I'd leave them if they show no signs of spots. Catching and dipping a fish is stressful, I'd only do it if needed. If they are established and healthy they likely won't get spots.

At any rate, FWIW, my YT only needed one dip and the spots never came back and never showed up on any other fish. As always maybe YMMV but that was at least my experience.

Good luck!