Are Tangs naturally shy fish?

[Hobomofo]

I have a 65 gallon tank with a whole bunch of live rock, and I have two small clowns, a batik star, and some snails and crabs, and a yellow tang. as soon as he got into the water he was fine.. just kind of looking around and scoping things out, and lately all he's been doing is hiding in a cave in the live rock, and i don't really get a chance to see him a whole lot. i introducted a copper band butterfly today, which obviously got the tang more active, but i still noticed that he likes to hide a lot.
he also has a lot of spots on his body, but i was told it probablly wasn't ick, but it could be sand? i am really paranoid about that too. i had two fish earlier die, and one had ick, and although i do have drops, i really don't want them to get sick. how can i tell the difference between ick, bubbles, and sand? thanks so much.

 

[jessie]

my blue tang hid under rocks constantly. i never seen him out from under one for about 1 month, when i put a yellow tang in with it, it started coming out little by little. after about 2 weeks they were always out swimming together. since then the only time they hide is when i turn the lights out.

 

[tahoe98]

Yes many tangs are naturally shy fish. Give him some more time to adjust and he will be swimming all around the tank. As far as the ick question, ick looks just as though you sprinkled salt crystals all over the fish. Bubbles should be more identifiable than this as should sand. Also, if he has it on him constantly then it may be ick because it is not very likely that he always has bubbles/sand on him. One option other than using medication is to freshwater dip him. This means take a cup (needs to be fresh RO water) and put the tang in there for 3-5 minutes at the most. You can probably even see the ick just floating off of him. What is happening is that the ick can't survive in the freshwater environment for anytime at all but the tang can take it for this short period of time. This is kind of a last resort as it does cause stress to the fish by removing him from the tank and having him in freshwater but if you leave the tank light off for a few hours after you put him back in the tank he will probably be alright. Hope this helps.

 

[benjen]

Freshwater dips do not kill ich. They can mostly kill marine velvet (and are one of the few ways to detect it before it's getting lethal). All they do to Cryptocaryon irritans is cause the visible part of the parasite to pull into the fish. To kill ich, you must strengthen the fish's immune system until they fight off the infection (garlic, cleaner shrimp, reduce stress, etc.) or kill the parasite (6 week hyposalinity treatment or a copper treatment).

The best long term treatment is to put all fish into a hyposalinity quarantine for the 6-8 weeks it takes all the surviving cysts in the main tank to die without fish hosts. The very low salinity causes the larval stages of ich to die without killing the fish. Copper chemically burns the ich to death, but it burns the fish too and may kill a weakened fish.

If you just build up the fish's immune system, the ich may come back whenever stress or other issues weaken the fish again.

Read up:
http://www.petsforum.com/personal/trevor-jones/marineich.html