new kole tang

[chefsreef]

i have a new kole tang . i had him for a week now but i have not seen him eat. all he does is hide. from what i seen he has no ich and is not thin. should i be worried and how can i get him to eat .
i keep 3 kinds of seaweed on clips everyday. i feed both frozen and dry food.

 

[Potacka]

Try something live like brine shrimp, that will usually get slow eater started.

 

[marrone]

First, was the tang eating before you brought it? Kole tang are grazers, so they'll will pick off the algae on the rocks in your tank. Try and feed it spirulina flakes, that's more along what it needs in its diet to survive.

 

[chefsreef]

i know i rushed in buying him . he was not eating in the store they just got him in.

First, was the tang eating before you brought it? Kole tang are grazers, so they'll will pick off the algae on the rocks in your tank. Try and feed it spirulina flakes, that's more along what it needs in its diet to survive.

 

[chefsreef]

ty ill try just hope the other guy don't eat them off 1st lol

Try something live like brine shrimp, that will usually get slow eater started.

 

[marrone]

You should always make sure that a fish is eating before you buy it, as a lot of time it may never start to eat, or by the time it does, it maybe too late. Don't waste your time with Brine Shrimp, it has no value and you need to get the fish eating food that will help keep it alive. Kole Tang are grazers, so it you have algae growth on your rocks it will should start to pick at that.

 

[skene]

I usually feed a variety diet with garlic and selcon to help entice a fish to eat.

 

[Potacka]

The live brine will sometimes entice them into eating, you can then mix in foods that are more appropriate. First priority is to get him ingesting food.

 

[marrone]

Outside of the brine shrimp not having any value it's not what it eat in the wild, so it's not something that will usually get it to start eating. It's not a good thing to use and is really something that people shouldn't do, but it's something that has been recommended in the past and people always bring it up, even though now there are plenty of other alternatives that are way better.

 

[Dre]

A Kole tang is one tang i would never buy again or recommend...

 

[Potacka]

I was saying use the live brine as a stimulus not a staple diet. I have used it many times in the past to "kick start" a fish that was slow to start eating. The lack of nutrition value is not important for this purpose. It's a simple technique that works.

 

[marrone]

And you want to use a food source that is completely different than what this fish eats in the wild to try and stimulate it to eat. This fish is a grazer on algae trying to get it to eat brine shrimp is not something that it's is use to or would most likely take too. Also, the nutritional value is important, as if you can get the fish to start to eat this maybe the only thing that it's eats for sometime, and being that there is little to no nutrition value, this would not be a good food source to use, especially when there are plenty of other sources out there that are better and closer to what the fish eats in the wild.

 

[Potacka]

Funny my Kole eats brine shrimp, so have many fish I've had that weren't supposed to eat them. Why are you being so arrogant? I was sharing my proven experience to try to help the op.

 

[marrone]

Plenty of fish will eat brine shrimp but their is little to no nutrition to it, and feeding it to fish who bulk of their diets consists of green matter and different types of algae doesn't make much sense, nor does trying to use it to get them to start to eat, especially when there are plenty of other alternatives out there, which are closer to what the fish eats in the wild, and that would be a far better choice to use. The problem is that you don't see this and think brine shrimp is a cure all, which it may have been something to use a very long time ago, when there were limited foods out there to use, but that's not the case anymore and hasn't been for quite sometime. Now a days it shouldn't even be something that is even talked about using to get fish starting to eat.

 

[thirty6]

could you put macro in the dt to try and get it to eat? or algae sheets. My tang is finally eat the sheets that i put in, funny thing is so are the wrasses that i have

 

[Potacka]

Didn't say it was a cure all, just something to try. You on the other hand have offered little advice but just want to keep stamping you feet trying to prove that you are right and that I am wrong.

What's your problem? Is there only one way to get a fish to eat?

 

[marrone]

I really don't think you read what I posted, did you.

 

[Potacka]

I don't think you did

 

[homegrowncichlid]

Brine shrimp only has one purpose. I believe live brine shrimp is what the collectors/distributors use to get any fish to eat otherwise fish loose their will to live and waste away. If distributors had access to other live foods they would use it, but brine shrimp is the fast, easy way. ONLY because of this need to keep fish alive long enough to be shipped, do the fish we have recognise brine shrimp as food. With tough fish, I start feeding them live baby brine, then onto frozen brine and finally train onto frozen mysis. A marine fish can't live off of brine shrimp.
Jump back to subject.
Kole are from the genus ctenochaetus and have brushes for teeth, and differ from zebrasomas and acanthurus which have the normal pointier mouth. Because of this main difference, ctenochaetus can't bite off anything. So if you have calurpa leaf, he can't eat it like another tang, but can only graze off the surface of the leaf and since the leaf moves around, he doesn't quite get in contact with it. He can eat off any other solid surface and is great at preventing hair algae buildup, but once it gets beyond a certain bushiness, he can't eat it anymore. Since his mouth is so bulbus, he is also no good at getting into the fine spaces. Ctenochaetus are as much as a denitris feeder as they are algae grazers. So keep your lights on, grow whatever slime you can on your glass and rocks and the Kole will scrape it up. You can also try wraping algae sheets around a pipe so that it's tight against it. Use a rubber band and any one of your filter pipes.

They are really hardy, I keep one in my main tank, and one in my calurpa filled refugium. I think my last one took about 10 days before it started eating and thats when I threw in live rock into the quarantine tank.

 

[Potacka]

Chefsreef, any updates on your tang?