Hippo Tang behavior

drewster

drewster

Member
I've had this hippo tang for about 3 weeks now and lately he's been acting weird. The left side of his body is all scratched up because he's an idiot and i'm pretty sure he scrapes himself up when he sleeps at night. I have a piece of white hard coral in my tank that he is able to hide in sometimes. The coral is sharp to the touch and he sleeps in there at night. Will his scratches heal? The odd behavior i'm really questioning about is the fact that he seems to be trying to itch one side of his body. He'll turn on his side and then run his side against a rock or something really fast and then go do it again. Does he have a disease that i'm not aware of?
 
greg

greg

New Member

Originally posted by Drewster:
I've had this hippo tang for about 3 weeks now and lately he's been acting weird. The left side of his body is all scratched up because he's an idiot and i'm pretty sure he scrapes himself up when he sleeps at night. I have a piece of white hard coral in my tank that he is able to hide in sometimes. The coral is sharp to the touch and he sleeps in there at night. Will his scratches heal? The odd behavior i'm really questioning about is the fact that he seems to be trying to itch one side of his body. He'll turn on his side and then run his side against a rock or something really fast and then go do it again. Does he have a disease that i'm not aware of?
there are plenty of people more educated than me on this site when it comes to diseases but i can tell you this the new product melafix worked unbelievable on my niger trigger who had a weird fin abnormalty.this stuff is great you dnt have to take out carbon or worry about live rock this is all friendly stuff you just have to water change after 1 week.my nigers fin healed in 5 days i could not believe it good luck
 
eelman

eelman

Member
I read that a common symptom for a disease is that the fish will scrach his body on decorations to get the parasite off. I also read that Hippos are very suseptable to diseases, espesily the first couple of months.
Good luck
[This message has been edited by eelman (edited 06-08-2000).]
 
harris

harris

Member
I am going with eelman on this one. Usually fish will scrape themselves against your substrate or coral in an attempt to get something "off" of them. If it is so bad that this fish is scraping himself to pieces, then something is definetly wrong. A good natural way to possibly help this fish, is to pick up a cleaner shrimp or possibly a cleaner wrasse(is it a wrasse? It has been a while, becasue my shrimp reigns in my reef). I have heard of good results with a cleaner shrimp in this type of situation. But be advised, as if you introduce any new foreign organism into your water by a single drop of H2O from your LFS then your tang will most likely come down with a worse disease. Be very careful as open wounds are susceptiple to disease much more easily. And Tangs by nature do not do to well against disesase as it is.
So to sum up. Go buy a cleaner shrimp or wrasse(?) to let it do it's thing. If you do not see any improvement (1 -2 weeks) or the fish defiently get's worse, then, throw some chemicals in, but I always use this as a last resort.
Good luck, and let us know of your outcome.
 
mr . salty

mr . salty

Active Member
I had this problem with a fish a couple weeks ago. My lfs owner came over and couldn't see any sign of illness or parasites. He thought it was an irritant in the water. Changed my skimmer, ran it for a couple of days and now he is fine. Lfs owner advises not to use medicin unless diagnosis of the problem is possitive. alot of people pour the crap in at the first sign of trouble and later suffer worse conciquences. I would also loose the sharp rock. STEVE
 
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