Big Bellied Powder Brown Tang

I've seen this before. Tangs with huge bellies. I wonder if its a parasite. Does it have any strange behaviours that might relate to parasitic symptoms? Because it might just be constipated or something, maybe stopped up from eating to much. Maybe as the others said, it might have ate to much meat. I know for other veggie eaters in both fresh and saltwater, they cant really tolerate massive amounts of proteins, because they might get bloated bellies and stuff, for example mbuna african cichlids. Not sure if its like that with tangs though. Hope he will recover, Marshall! Good luck!

 

Yeah +1! Treat it in quarantine if you're worried. Anyway, please update us on what this tang is having trouble with, i'm really curious to see what is going on inside of it. I've always wondered about the popped bellies on tangs.

 

OP stated it goes every night so constipation is out

 

Ah, okay! Might be a parasite then, looks like some sort of internal parasite to me, but again i'm not an expert on diseases. I'm curious to see what it is though!

 

Correct, thanks Dennis. Hopefully in a few days after being medicated I will know the answer...

I'll update as we go.

 

It took me a couple days to longer than I though tocatch it because of my work schedule. It took my 15 minutes to catch it using my Reef Gently Acclimate box on Sunday. Started first dose of API General Cure (which is a mix of Prazi & Metronidazole) on Monday. Second dose on Wednesday. By Wednesday, it was already a night and day difference!

Here is the before shot from the first post:



Here are a couple crappy cell pics from yesterday:





It's belly is back to normal size I am now confident that it did in fact have an internal stomach parasite (tape worm?). Note that I did two doses of Prazi in the 46 QT, which were not effective on this obviously. A typical Prazi dose will give you a concentration of 2.5 mg/L, whereas General Cure will give you 7.5 mg/L of Praziquantel. I am not sure if it was the higher dosage of Prazi or the Metronidazole that did the trick (both are used against parasites). Either way, thank you again RedGambit!!

In case anyone is wondering, I did not notice a loss in appetite while dosing. Obviously it is still very skinny, so the goal is to get it fattened up soon. I need to treat for Ich first before going into the DT though, so I am contemplating which method to use (Hypo, Cupramine, or tank transfer)...

 

Good news and excellent documentation.

Nice work Marshal.

 

yes, glad you were able to treat the problem and your fish is doing better! They are such beautiful fish

 

Thanks Cheryl & OFK

 

One final update to this thread. The Tang is doing awesome now in my 125. This pic is about 3-4 weeks old, but as you can see, it has fattened up nicely: