What Marine Aquarists Need to Know About Tangs

While tangs (surgeon fishes, family Acanthuridae) are beautiful, and popular in tropical marine fish keeping, they are among the hardest coral reef fishes to introduce to an aquarium, because of their propensity to be disease carriers, often passing their infections on to other fishes.

Tangs are very susceptible to infections, and are notorious as disease carriers that infect most aquariums that they are put in.  From the reports that we receive, tangs are the most susceptible of all coral reef fishes to diseases, and are the most likely to bring in Ich (white spot disease) from the wild. 

Be sure that when you put new fish in your aquarium that you have quarantined them beforehand in a separate aquarium for one month to observe that they do not carry diseases, and treat the quarantine aquarium daily with Kordon herbal Prevent Ich or Ich Attack during the quarantine period.  These treatments are recommended because the herbals are less stressful to the fishes (and safe
to use with aquatic invertebrates such as coral reef life), while being effective against protozoan, dinoflagellate, and fungal infections. 

Once tangs are over the quarantine period, they are usually hardy and good community tank fishes.  But keep in mind that if an infected fish is introduced to the aquarium, the infection can readily be passed on to the tangs in the aquarium, and the spread of the infection to other fishes increased. 

For further information about Ich (white spot disease), one of the most common infections in aquarium keeping, see Kordon Article "The Life Cycle of Ich"