Dead Juvenile yellow tang - stuck to powehead

[Ky_acc]

So my wife let me know that my juvenile yellow tang was dead and stuck to the powerhead in my tank (tunze 6095).

I am unfortunately traveling for work so I can’t do anything for now, but luckily she was able to get him out with a net. I just don’t know what happened though.

she said he was swimming normally last night, and none of the other inhabitants of the tank seem affected (2x clownfish and 1x royal gramma)

he has been in the tank for almost a month. He was Also very small (1.5-2inch).

I’m just not sure what could have happened he was eating frozen Mysis on Monday before I left out of town for work.

 

[Miller535]

I'm assuming this is a new tank. How long has it been running? And what were you feeding him?

 

[Ky_acc]

I'm assuming this is a new tank. How long has it been running? And what were you feeding him?

Tank has been running since Dec. 15 2019. And the tang has been in there since mid Jan. I’ve been Feeding frozen mysis and spirulina sheets 3-4x per week.

 

[AcroNem]

I've seen weak or unsuspecting fish get pulled into bigger power heads, not saying yours was sick or weak but that's when I've seen it. I have tangs that like to eat algae off of power heads but they aren't small, it could have just gotten too close. I'm sorry for your loss.

 

[dbjonesjr]

I’ve had perfectly healthy tangs young get stuck on gyres. I don’t buy any of the smaller tangs anymore because of this reason. I think it’s due to their larger and flatter body. I have small clownfish that sit next to the gyre all day without issue.

 

[azbigjohn]

I agree with AcroNem above. My first thought was that it was ill prior to being pulled up against the powerhead, but then looking at the picture it is a pretty big powerhead compared to the tang, so it is possible it was trying to get something from the powerhead and got sucked onto it.

I am sorry for your loss.

 

[Ky_acc]

Thanks everyone, that is disappointing to hear, but hopefully it was a rare occurrence or maybe the fish had an underlying illness that wasn’t apparent to me.

 

[PhilSD211]

Had it happen to me as well. Not sure how long it was stuck on the powerhead but I freed it and it lived through that for 2 years till I recently traded it as it was getting too big for my tank.

 

[Miller535]

While anything is possible, in my experience healthy fish almost never get stuck to power heads. I have little clowns that sit right next to mp40's. Other then clownfish, I don't know that there are many fish hardier then yellow tang's. My bet is the tank is really new, the rock in your picture shows that. And or you got a sick fish. But I would lean more towards the tank being really new. Mark levenson just posted a video on his youtube channel (Melevsreef) about this very topic, titled "let's talk about tank maturity".