White spots on my Tomini Tang??
 

I have had a Tomini Tang for about a year now (about 3") and has recently developed white spots on much of his body and fins. Have 15 other fish with nothing and all look and feed fine. I am thinking it must ne ich or some such parasite, but why it occer now? Have a 150 reef/fish tank that is otherwise healthy. Is there anything I can do? pics were not possible as he darts around very quickly and is camera shy.

If it looks like salt on it then must b ich, sometimes it shows when the fish is stressed

If it is ich you should go out and by some Garlic Extreme from a LFS or garlic extract from a health food store.
Soak dry food like nori or flake in the garlic and feed it to the fish. Dry because it absorbs more garlic and the idea is to get as much in as possible.
Feed only garlic soaked food and feed very often.
Good Luck

+1

and avoid ich medication. In my experience it is all snakeoil. I have tried a few in the past with no results.

Garlic and selcom totally the way to go. I had an ich problem with a tang also. Was 100% gone in 3 weeks. I try and always feed with garlic.

Try to get a picture if you can. Occasionally in my tank it looks like my fish have it but it's sugar sand blowing around and sticking to their bodies and fins.

The white dots are the parasite in it's visible stage. They will go away, the ich is still there however, just not visible to our eye.

If you did not introduce new fish in the last month, this is likely due to stresses, such as wide swings in water temperature, or others.

Avoid medications and other additives IME, they don't solve any problems with the lifecycle of ich, of your fishes ability to fight it off. Keep the fish eating, and work at keeping your tank a stable consistent temperature.

I have a black tang that gets white spots as I am starting a new system and introducing new fish. I have NO plans to treat the fish or the system after 15 years of dealing with ich. It rarely kills healthy fish in the home aquarium.

Garlic extreme worked very well for me on my tang with ich. Just soak his food for a few moments prior to feeding. It will help to boost his immune system so that he will be better able to fight off the parasite.

Tangs, unfortunately, are notorious for developing ich.

That's just another proof that ick don't really go away. It just stay at a low level of infection on the gills and waits for the proper moment to multiply and infect more.

I have recently read of someone not having ick for 3 years and after a tank move lost a lot of fish to the ick, although there was nothing new added, just the stress of moving.

This does not happen when ick is properly treated from the begining and really gone from the tank.

How's your Tomini Tang doing? Bristletooth are supposed to be relatively strong against ich. We accidently introduced it by adding an infected skunk clown (he was hiding in the anemome we bought with him and didn't see the ich) and our tomini ended up with a few spots. With keeping the water as pristine as possible and soaking food in garlic we haven't seen ich in months. I believe if you have a mild infection it's possible to treat it this way with having to remove all your fish. Wasn't possible for us because we only had a 15g quarantine. Of course better to quarantine in the first place :wink: