tang on hunger strike

[vickilee]

HI
My naso tang is not eating. Today it is going on five days.
Last Friday the fish guys came to clean the tank and I had a amonia spike. It was up to 0.50. I have it down to .25 and I'm going to do another small water change in a bit to try to get it down further.
I have an 80 gal fish only tank. It's been up for eight months and I've had the tang for six months. He is usually a good eater. He is a little high strung, but he never gone on a hunger strike before
He seems fine in every other respect. He isn't listless, gasping, laying on the bottom or anything like that. He is perfectly fine, except he is not eating.
Everyone else in the tank is fine.
Is this a tang thing or what?

 

[beth]

Do more than a "little" water change. You need to get ammonia down to zero.
Seeing the stress or not, any level of ammonia is toxic and stressful to fish.
Why did it spike like that to begin with?

 

[vickilee]

Fish tank guys said they probably initiated it when they did the cleaning. They really cleaned the crushed coral, because of a messy puffer fish and said this could cause it. Sound reasonable?

 

[beth]

Yes, you can't totally disrupt the sandbed, otherwise you disrupt the sandbed biofilter.
Thank goodness, now that I have a DSB I know longer have to do anything to my substrate.