Feeding new australian tank raised hippo tang

[jojo]

Hello. Yesterday I purchased a baby australian tank raised blue tang and I havnt been able to get him to eat yet. I wondering what would be the best food to entice him into eating. I was told that the liquidlife marine plankton with cycopleeze was a good food for getting picky fish to eat I tried that today without much luck. Is this noramal for them not to eat during the first couple days? I would really to like to get him eating because his belly seems to be a little concaved. Thank you in advance for your help.

JoJo

 

[The Apprentice]

Feed the Blue Tang

Hi JoJo have you tried Mysis Shrimp I have a Leopard wrasse that wouln't eat anything and this was the trick while trying to get the wrasse to eat my Blue Hippo tang and Powder blue tang tore into the Shrimp like candy I think its a good starter for fickle fish..Good luck ...Jeff

Hello. Yesterday I purchased a baby australian tank raised blue tang and I havnt been able to get him to eat yet. I wondering what would be the best food to entice him into eating. I was told that the liquidlife marine plankton with cycopleeze was a good food for getting picky fish to eat I tried that today without much luck. Is this noramal for them not to eat during the first couple days? I would really to like to get him eating because his belly seems to be a little concaved. Thank you in advance for your help.

JoJo

 

[jojo]

Thank you Jeff. Yes I have tried mysis no luck with that but I did get my other fish to start on mysis. I'm thinking I might try looking at the grocery store and buying some fresh nori.

 

[jojo]

Well I got him eating today. The first thing he went for was the liquid life marine plakton then I threw in some mysis, formula2, and brine shrimp plus he seemed to be eating it all. The bad news is my green chromis starting picking on him I got 1 out with the old food in the net trick but I still have 1 left and I have no idea how to get him out. Now the tang is showing sighns of ick (white spots) after getting ruffed up by the chromis. Last time my tank had ick I used kent garlic extreme and bought my uv (36watt csl) and had good results but my corals seemed to suffer with the use kent garlic extreme and my water stayed cloudy for a while so I would prefer not to use it again. Any advice on a different brand of garlic? Or selcon maybe? Thank you in advance.

Thanks,
JoJo

 

[The Apprentice]

tang is showing sighns of ick

JoJo if your tank is big enough to support this. I to have had trouble with Ick and have had Very good luck with Golden Neon Gobies cleaning the Tang's up from this. I have never medicated my Tangs and the Golden Neon s just will clean them up it really Fasinating to see this big tang just race up to a 1 1/2" gobie to get cleaned give it a try..... Jeff

Well I got him eating today. The first thing he went for was the liquid life marine plakton then I threw in some mysis, formula2, and brine shrimp plus he seemed to be eating it all. The bad news is my green chromis starting picking on him I got 1 out with the old food in the net trick but I still have 1 left and I have no idea how to get him out. Now the tang is showing sighns of ick (white spots) after getting ruffed up by the chromis. Last time my tank had ick I used kent garlic extreme and bought my uv (36watt csl) and had good results but my corals seemed to suffer with the use kent garlic extreme and my water stayed cloudy for a while so I would prefer not to use it again. Any advice on a different brand of garlic? Or selcon maybe? Thank you in advance.

Thanks,
JoJo

 

[jojo]

Thank you Jeff. I dont know anywhere around here that has any of those gobies but my lfs has cleaner wrasses I'm asumming they would do the same. I also have a skunk cleaner shrimp that does a pretty good job of cleaning the fish but he doesnt seem to be interested in the tang maybe because the tang is so small only 1 or 2'' alot smaller than the shrimp. I think I'll pick up a cleaner wrasse on the way home from work tomorrow and see how that goes.
JoJo

 

[Terry B]

Sorry, but cleaner fish and shrimp are far from reliable cures for ich. People that carefully quarantine all fish for 3+ weeks PRIOR to placing them into their reef rarely have ich outbreaks in their reef tanks. Are you quarantining all fish before they go into your display for 3+ weeks? You may have some luck with feeding the fish garlic, but I find it to be a better prevantative than a cure. You might get by with feeding the fish garlic soaked foods and using a powerful UV light. However, in all probability you will not get rid of the ich completely that way. It will usually raise it's ugly head again when the fish are stressed. If you want to eliminate the parasite from your system then you are going to have to remove all the fish to another tank for treatment. The best treatments that actually eliminate the pest are hyposalinity, copper, or the transfer (or Hyposaline-Transfer) method. The display should then be left fishless 30 days to 6 weeks to allow the parasite to starve for lack of a host. You will thank yourself later if you educate yourself now about ich. Here is the place to start:
http://www.marineaquariumadvice.com/aquarium_fish_1.html

Cheers,
Terry Bartelme

 

[jojo]

Thanks Terry. No I did not quarintine the fish. The lfs were I buy my fish from quarintines there fish at least 2 weeks in a system with formulin and ozone. The fish was clean when I purchased him but started showing sighns after my chromis started picking on him. To me it seems that regals, powder blues, and such break out with ick when they are stressed regardless of quarintine at least from what I have seen. I do run a strong uv it is a custom sea life double helix 36watt on an 80gal. Is there any particular brand of garlic you recomend? I have used Kents garlic extreme in the past but it seemed to stress my corals and cloud my tank so I would like to try something different. How about Selcon?
Thank you,
JoJo

 

[wrightme43]

It all depends on how bad it is, and how the fishes immune system is. IMHO. Sometimes I have seen vita-chem, and kent extreme garlic soaked foods clear it up. Sometimes no. I never have had Kent extreme cloud my tanks. I use it as a preventive and food attractant. 2 drops in a shot glass. 3 drops of vita chem, and a good pinch of new life spectrum marine, or freeze dried plankton or krill, or even with marine supreme. Are your feeding him algae? I have found that with out algae, tangs do like crap, they will get sick and die. DONT OVER DO THE VITACHEM be conservitive. Like Terry said. try a fresh water dip, maybe try a formalin dip. Read up on how to do it. Or start a post on how do you treat your sick fish. Hope it helps you. Good luck. STEVE

 

[Terry B]

Hi JoJo,

Maybe our definition of what it means to quarantine is different. To quarantine means to isolate as in all alone. If the fish shares water with another fish then it is not quarantined. Unless your LFS isolates each fish and they do not share the same water (example: multi-tank system, or more than one fish in the tank) they are not properly quarantining the fish as far as I am concerned. Also, the MINIMUM quarantine period is 3 weeks. Anything shorter is risky and several more weeks is safer.

Formalin is not that effective for treating ich and it should not be used for anything but a short term bath (say 45 minutes). Ozone can be useful, but it is very difficult to measure and get the right dose to kill parasites in the water without harming the fish. You can’t declare a fish “clean” of ich unless you take some samples of the skin and/or gills and check them with a microscope. The test is NOT whether or not you can see white spots on the fish with the naked eye.

Proper quarantine is essential. Ich just doesn’t appear spontaneously. If it is in the tank or the fish is infected then the spots may suddenly appear when stressed. If the parasite is not already on the fish or in the system then no amount of stress can make it appear. Its really not a mysterious parasite.

With a powerful UV light with the correct water flow and new bulbs, a UV can help in some cases. However, it is not a reliable cure. You can try some Kyolic brand liquid garlic extract. It is water soluble, and close to odorless. Selcon is basically highly unsaturated fatty acids with vitamin C. It is not a cure for ich. I can only recommend those treatments that work consistently and they are limited to: copper, hyposalinity and the transfer method. Everything else is just hit or miss or worse.

HTH,
Terry Bartelme

 

[johnsmb]

I have a few questions regarding ich and quarantines. First I should admit that I have not quarantined my fish to date. But, I am going to be doing so in the future!

How do you ever know for sure there is no ich in the tank? My understanding is that the ich may be present, but only show itself when the fish are stressed. I have had my tank up for over a year, last fish was added about 8 or 9 months ago. Can I assume there is no ich, or don't I really know?

I think you said that ich is not always readily visible - so isn't it possible a fish may carry ich even after the quarantine period? I mean if the fish was not stressed and didn't actually break out in ich, couldn't it still be carrying some anyway?

I'm just trying to understand how it works.....

 

[Terry B]

People that properly quarantine all fish for 3+ weeks PRIOR to placing them into thier display aquarium rarely have a problem with ich. It is most often imported on newly acquired fish that have not been quarantined (sound familar?). The only sure way to get ich out of a reef is to remove ALL the fish for at least 30 days. Then the fish can be treated with a proven method in a seperate tank. There is no absolute 100% guarantee even if you do quarantine, but you can improve your odds from 50/50 to 95+/5 in your favor with quarantine.
If you haven't already read this series of articles then I recommend that you do. This series will answer a lot of questions about Cryptocaryon irritans (ich) in detail. You can start with this:

http://www.marineaquariumadvice.com/aquarium_fish_1.html

Cheers,
Terry Bartelme