yellow tang starving all of a sudden

[clive1001blue]

bought a yellow tang it was happy as a p.i.s. for 1 month infrequently browsing algae when it didn't know I was watching and was munching brine shrimp and blood worms with the best of them, now all of a sudden it's wasting away and doesn't seem to browse at all yet still freaks for the shrimp...threw some lettuce in to try to 're-train' it to browse before I get a chance to buy some nori et.al., but it completely ignores the lettuce. tank params are aok, plenty of delicious young caulerpa patches all over the place, anybody know how to get a yellow tang back "on the program"?

 

[clyde]

might be blocked up, lettuce is bad.

how long it hasnt been munchin ?

if it does eat shrimp etc.. brine shrimp is so so so nil in nutrients, so switch to mysis, or some actual homemade seafood, like pro-pops, forumula one, etc.

i suspect those brine, and bloodworms are not doing one good if you're feeding those exclusively.

 

[LTrain]

I'm not a member of the tang police, but I was curious as to the size of your tank.
Having inadvertently starved a tang in the past, I've learned alot, my current yellow tang I've had healthy for almost 4 years now...(in a 75)
I've learned that I really can't give him enough Nori to eat. His metabolism is much faster than any other fish I've ever had...
I think this is another reason they require big tanks, because the consume and thus produce a much higher nutrient load that can be problematic in smaller tanks...
I can feed him to bursting with Nori and formula one and the very next day he will look a tad emaciated...he is voracious.
I'd start with Nori and a nutrient rich food formula ASAP.
Good luck.

 

[LTrain]

Oh yeah, I forgot,
I know that myself and others have had some success with soaking food (brine shirmp, in my case) with liquid garlic extract...do a search on the board, I've found it did seem to help appetite and with ich, though the scientific evidence is largely lacking as to why...

 

[JohnD]

clive -

Welcome aboard.

My tangs like the green Seaweed Selects. Try soaking a section of that in some garlic extract. Also, Ocean Nutrition has garlic extract added to their Formula 2. That might also help.

 

[shr00m]

i know its not as good as real live macro... but if you can get your tang trained onto seaweed selects they love it... at least my purple does...

 

[clive1001blue]

thanks for the advice all... its a 100 gallon with approx 100 lbs live rock, carleson surge device, 3 power heads, classic berlin skimmer, i got some nori today and san francisco ?reef entree? the tang (and shrimp, crabs et. al.) went straight for the nori!!!!!!!! I'll have to clip the nori to the side of the tank out of reach of the inverts because they are lazy buggers.. either that or the nori tastes way better than the algae and detritus theyre picking up elsewhere. as evidence of the tang loving this stuff, he pinched out a massive you know what. since i attached the nori to a blob of rock and dropped it in, maybe the tang will realize the other algaes on the rocks can be a delicious treat too.

 

[EmilyB]

Consider cross/strapping the nori to a piece of PVC with elastics, (drill a hole in the PVC) and use fish lineor whatever to lower and raise it in the tank. They can't rip off big pieces this way. :wink:

 

[shr00m]

great to hear he's eating.... i had to feed mine live macro algae at first to get him to stop eating only mysis... now he eats nearly anything green like spirluna or seaweed selects... and of course nori....

 

[Anonymous]

try freezing some broccoli florets or a whole head of broccoli and then attaching the frozen head to a peice of rock and then remove before it gets nasty/squishy.

 

[clive1001blue]

dang critter died, failure to thrive?, herbivores have always given me grief. the shrimps moved right in on the corpse, I used to get bummed out when a critter died, now I just sort of get angry. This tang had a literal smorgasbord of goodies on a 100 gallon tank with no competition for grazing real estate. The thing I regret the most is that this fish was minding its own business (and probably doing quite well, thank you), captured from a reef, shipped across the globe, and now thanks to me, it's dead. nice fate... I don't blame the water because all inverts (mobile) are rocking :evil:

 

[Aquadude]

It's frustrating I know. Don't feel bad. Maybe the fish was not healthy to begin with. Myabe it was caught using chemicals or mistreated during shipping. You never know.