Kole Tang--possibly sick

mel0508

Member
We recently added a Kole Tang to our reef tank. He came at the same time as a flame hawk. Well, the flame lasted less than 24 hours, but the Kole seemed to be fine. Now, he seems to be turning brown and we have found him lying on the bottom of the tank behind the rocks. When I moved some of the rock around him, he came out and swam around for a while, but is now back behind the rock, just lying there.
I feel he is headed for fishy heaven, but my daughter wants him to live. Any ideas?
Thanks.
 

jpc763

Active Member
You will be asked to post the following...
Tank Size?
How Old is the Tank?
Specific Gravity?
Temp?
Ammonia?
Nitrate?
Nitrite?
pH?
If you have that information, post it and it will help a lot.
 

renogaw

Active Member
please dont take as a wise arse response, but you do know kole tangs are brown?
jpc is absolutely correct, without that information there's no way to help you.
 

mel0508

Member
sorry about that
Tank Size: 55 gallon
Tank is 2 months old
Temp is 78-79
ammonia is 0
nitrate is 20ppm
nitrite is 0
pH is 8.3
Took a water sample in to our local store when the hawkfish died to make sure that my water tests were accurate. They said the alkalinity was a little high but not bad (I believe he said it was 14.2), everything looked OK and my test results coincided with theirs.
 

renogaw

Active Member
how did you cycle the tank? how much live rock do you have? what are you feeding? how did you acclimate? how long is "recently added"? did you add anything else besides the hawk?
i have a kole, and it is very active. so there is definitely something wrong.
 

mel0508

Member
we cycled the water as the fish store recommended, they checked our water before we addaed any fish (we have 3 chromis, 1 gold striped maroon clown, and a dwarf fuzzy lion). we have about 40ish pounds of live rock. We feed them Sally's Krill, mysis shrimp, and stips of dried seaweed. we added the flame hawk and the Kole tang last Saturday. The hawk died on Sunday and the Kole is not looking good. the other fish of the community seem to be fine.
The fish store told us to acclimate all the fish by floating them for 10 minutes, emptying some of their water, adding 1 cup of our water float for 10 minutes, and then to repeat this for 3 times. It ends up being about 30 minutes. Elsewhere I have read that some fish need as much as 3 hours to acclimate, so I'm not sure we are doing this the right way.
It appears that the Kole is dead now, but I still would like some input on what might have happened, or if the thought might be that he was doomed from the start. He was really pretty and my daughter is going to be sad when she comes home from school, but she knew it might happen, so it won't be totally unexpected.
Thanks for any help.
 

renogaw

Active Member
well, the brown part is sorta confusing, since there's not much that would turn a fish brown.
possible problems:
you acclimated the way i do, but not enough time. i generally do it every 15 mins for 1.5 hrs for a hearty fish (clowns, etc) and up to 2.5 hrs for a not hardy fish (tang) but also in a much larger bowl for the larger fish.
basically you're trying to make sure the water in the bowl is as close to the water in the tank as possible.
i'm not sure on the hawk, but if it died so quick i'd assume acclimation problems.
quick deaths like this are generally bad acclimation technique, ammonia issues, or even collection issues. did you watch either fish in the store for a while or just get them? were the fish eating at the store?
also, your maroon clown probably knocked the crap out of the fish without you knowing it.
i'd also suspect ammonia issues. you have a nice big bioload already in there with the maroon and the lion, and subpar amount of live rock. the existing fish may be ok with it, but adding a big pooper like a kole tang in there, plus having a fish die in there, i'd bet you had an ammonia spike you couldn't test for in time.
no tang should be in a 55 gallon tank, even a kole.
all these variables could have been avoided if you quarantined your new additions. no aggression, controllable ammonia addition, able to watch and observe any odd behaviors, etc. plus who knows if you added ich or some other disease into your existing tank--you put your lion, clown, and chromis at risk especially since tangs are notorious for them.
 

mel0508

Member
thank you for you help. We have also talked to the guy we like at the store. He agreed that the clown was probably beating up on the kole, rubbing him on the rocks or something. We went ahead and took the kole out and humanely put him down. We wished him well and sent him to fishy heaven. We appreciate all of you advice and I am sure we will continue to seek advice from here.
Thanks
 
Top