Most stressful fish I've ever owned - achilles tang
 

I acquired this fella on Nov 16th and placed into my tank on Nov 17th.

This is a picture of it on Nov 18th. I was pretty depressed going to sleep that night :twised:
http://i123.photobucket.com/albums/o.../Hawaii537.jpg

Nov 19th
I was a little more optimistic this day. I contemplated catching it and putting it through a hyposalinity QT treatment. I was on the fence for the longest time but Tom R convinced me otherwise and convinced me to monitor it for a few more days before intervening.
http://i123.photobucket.com/albums/o...ee/Fish004.jpg

Nov 20th
All I can say is wow and it doesn't even look like the same fish.
Its not eating nori or mysis yet but it has been scraping algae off rocks and bare bottom since Nov 18.
http://i123.photobucket.com/albums/o...esNov20030.jpg

Treatments:
Ozone through beckett skimmer with controller set at 430mv ORP
80W UV sterilizer
With all the talk about garlic, hey why not - I squeezed minced garlic's juice directly into the tank

Although the above treatments probably did help somewhat, the fish was very healthy and plump from the very beginning which I believe is the major contributor to its recovery....... so far.

I'll update more photos tomorrow hopefully it looks even better than today.

Totally amazing recovery. Hope this continues. And again, thanks for my beautiful fish from Hawaii.

Anthony

Beautiful Fish.

Good luck with the treatment..
:)

Good job! I also feel that intervening is not always the best approach. Unless you're ready to catch all of the fish in your tank and treat them all then it's waste of time and you risk further stressing out the fish.

Hypo works but you have to leave the tank fishless for up to 6 weeks to get rid of the parasites in the tank (I'm sure you know this already) otherwise the treated fish will simply become re infected.


I hope it stays healthy! I've always liked those fish.
Garrick.

Nothing like a healthy enviroment, to help with illness.

And Garlic ;)

My Achillies has never truly kicked it completely. Like yours, it went through a bad patch shortly after entering the tank. Now, it has settled into an ongoing minor thing.

Have you seen him flash his colours when he gets upset about something? It is really difficult to get a picture of...but his top/bottom fins will go red/orange and his belly will go white. Nice fish.

ouch.

Nov 21 pics
 

99% recovery and eating gracillaria. Amazing what this fish went through in five days.....
http://i123.photobucket.com/albums/o...esNov21013.jpg

http://i123.photobucket.com/albums/o...esNov21010.jpg

http://i123.photobucket.com/albums/o...esNov21009.jpg

Thought I would throw in a picture of my mystery wrasse..... this guy is really cool.......
http://i123.photobucket.com/albums/o...ryNov21001.jpg

What a story. Fabulous looking fish.

J