Hurt fish?

[jackie dh]

My local pet shop has a reef tank set up, it's around 75 gallons and is 25% full of live rock. I noticed about a month ago that almost all the fish in the tank looked like they had been put through a blender. Fins torn off all the way to their bodies, a 2" yellow tang looks like a yellow quarter, he has no fins left and 3" blue tank had most of his scales riped out! There is also a Royal Gramma that looks like it has a sudden case of hole in the head. There is a cleaner wrasse and a six line who are untouched and there was a coral banded shrimp in the tank.
The guy in charge of the reef tank claims that the coral banded shrimp did all the damage and he removed the shrimp. That was over two weeks ago, I looked today and the Blue Tang looks just as bad as ever, I'm really surprised that he is still alive with all that damage but he is still zooming around and eating normally.
Do you think that it was the shrimp or maybe one of the wrasses that caused the damage? My first thought was that the cleaner wrasse was a false cleaned but it isn't. I wish that I had thought to take a picture of the Blue Tang, poor little guy look rough.

 

[hunt]

first of all, a yellow tang and a hippo tang should not be in that tank, second there is no way (IMO) a CBS could do that to larger healthy fish. IMO, its prabably the 6 line wrasse, they can be notorious for becoming agressive and killing fish

 

[meowzer]

Sounds like a combination....bad conditions, overcrowding, terrible compatibility....etc...etc

 

[t316]

Sixline would not do that either (unless someone fed him crack). Agree with meow, combination of things here. Most important, don't ever buy a thing from a place like that.

 

[ajroc31]

Test the water anyways, but if the behavior of the fish is fine, besides that they look like crap, I would cross that out, and if it was the water, the cleaner would be the first to go, yet he is fine. Maybe you have a nasty hitchhiker that attacks your fish at night. If the sixline is large enough, he will chase fish around, especially if he is one of the older fish in the tank, they are fearless. When you put a sixline in a tank, you have become a caretaker, and he is now the boss. But if it was the sixline, he would go after the cleaner first, cleaning or not, they hate other wrasses in the tank. Yellow and Regal get along for most part, unless one is a real jerk. CBS are just ugly,and I dont trust them, so it might have been it.

 

[jackie dh]

It's not my tank, it's at the fish store. The tangs are both small and the yellow has been moved to another tank already. Maybe a hitch hiker? I can't imagine what would do that kind of damage, a mantis would have killed them outright wouldn't it?