Mysterious Naso Death

T

TiberianSun

Premium Member
Wanted to run this by some other folks for some opinion, comments, thoughts.

Today we lost our Naso Tang. Easily 5" long, ate very well, wasn't being picked on. Tonight at feeding my wife noticed it wasn't coming around an then we found it; dead at the bottom and mostly eaten. Prior to death we saw no signs of irratic swimming, no signs of abuse from other tank mates, fairly active swimmer, and it was eating as much as the other (basically it was fat & healthy).

Other tank mates include a Saddle Wrasse, Checkerd Board Wrasse, Melanarous Wrasse, 2 small yellow tangs (had 4 of the same size but mysteriously 2 have gone missing), 6-7"Unicorn Tang, 7-8" Vlamingii Tang, and some smaller dotty's. The Naso was close to the 3rd largest fish in the tank.

We bought it around late March from a LFS. Could this have been death by cyanide poisoning? I'm curious because this is the 2nd Naso of similar size from the same LFS that mysteriously died after a similar amount of time.
 
I've experienced the same thing, got a small one, it was growing and doing well, then after about 3 months quit eating and 2 days later dead without a mark on him. This wasn't the 1st time I've experienced this either. Love the Nasos, but am leary of getting another one.
 
@digital_gods wrote:
What inverts do you have? said:
Inverts are some shrimp, snails, and hermit crabs. We've got several good sized Wrasse so the inverts don't typically last long. Also we have (2) Serpent Sea Stars that are of good size.
Click to expand...
 
I know large serpent stars are meat eaters. When I worked for LFS, we kept ours well fed with frozen squid. I know some large crabs can be dangerous to your livestock but this isn't the case. If you don't feed them, you might want to start. That is only red flag I can see.
 
I know I didn't have my Naso's near as long as you did, but mine experienced the same thing. I've tried with 3 different Naso's on 2 different tanks, The first one was small (1.5-2") lasted 3 weeks, swimming around eating showing no signs of anything wrong. Came home one day he was dead. Bought a larger blond naso male (5"-6"). He last about 10 days, but again swimming around, eating and showed no signs of anything wrong. He too died. Those 2 were in the same tank, checked all parameters and they were all dead on. Just bought a 3rd one 4-5" male. He lasted 9 days in a much larger tank. Same scenario as the others. I give up on Naso's. I've got several other tangs and hadn't had a problem with any of them.
 
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