Treating Yellow Tangs with Red Streaks or Blotches

[billsreef]

Hi All,

Due to the sudden insurgence of YT's with red streaking I'm just going write one answer all post on the subject that should solve everyones dilema

Red streaks or blotches in Yellow Tangs is due to bacterial infection. This is often due to water quality or shipping conditions if the tang is a recent import.

Often just a series of water changes to improve water quality, along with an examination of the filtration system and necessary improvements for long term stability, is sufficient to clear this up in several days.

However, should the above steps not cause improvement in the tangs condition within 2 or 3 days or the redness appears to get worse than it is time to break out the antibiotics. Generally it is best to treat in a seperate Quarantine Tank (QT) as antibiotics could negatively effect filtration in a FO tank and are certainly not good to use in a reef tank. The best antibiotics for Red Streak are usually Nitrofuran or Kanacyn IME. For those using Spectogram without any results I would suggest switching to Kanacyn as Nitrofuran is an ingredient in Spectrogram.