blue tang

[matycake]

Just got my self a blue tang and was wondering if anyone had some tip to care for him or her better
Thank you in advance for the tips
Mat

[Dakotamay]

Hi Mat,
Congrats on the new addition!
Blue tangs are relatively easy to care for. That being said. Keep your water params as stable as possible. Feed a mixed diet.
Our tank gets frozen mysis, blood worms, NLS Thera +A pellets, Julian Sprungs Sea Veggies and finally a flake food for marine fish. I don't feed the flake daily. Our blue tang loves the Julian Sprungs in a clip. I just put it on the bottom in the sand as she won't touch it if it's dangling in the water from above (picky fish lol) But, that's what makes them all so unique.
You may see an ich breakout when you first introduce the fish. This is quite normal for blue tangs. Keep the stress down and it should recover on it's own without treatment. The best help for the tang to keep it rid of ich and other parasites is a Scarlet Skunk Cleaner shrimp. They're not very expensive. They'll set up shop and your tang will visit regularly when it wants to be cleaned.
In our tank, our shrimp has the duty of cleaning 3 dispar anthias and our Dory. It's funny to watch them all line up and literally take turns being cleaned. Our shrimp eventually gets fed up and goes on strike for a bit lol. The fish you can tell are clearly disgusted when he does this. They then try to coax our blood shrimp into cleaning them and sometimes he does. For the most part he too just runs away from them.
Enjoy your new addition.

[FocusFin]

Ich magnet.

If you haven't quarantined him you can probably expect that he will have an ich outbreak sometime (usually when under stress) so be prepared for it. It doesn't necessarily mean it will spread to your other fish and usually you can overcome it without moving the fish to a hospital tank.

I found the best way to care for Blue Tangs is through nutrition. Often they don't get the proper diet no matter how hard you try but this can be helped with a diet supplement like Selcon. It's not very expensive and a small bottle can last months.

You put a drop or two on on the food once a day and let it soak in for a few minutes. Not only does it help prevent ich in your Tang but it also builds up the immunity of your other fish. I make my own frozen cubed food and put a drop on each individual cube before freezing.

I sold a Blue Tang recently that grew from 1 inch to 5 in two years and along the way kept having ich outbreaks. One day I noticed he looked like he had been rolled in salt. I started using the Selcon and not only did it clear up, I never had another outbreak.

Good luck.

[Hookup]

same as above.  Mine, which is a yellow bellied hippo, is doing well after about 2 years and is a big pig... I'd guess it at about 8"+  and every time he swims around I think of how well they nailed it in Finding Nemo... obviously the animators watched a lot of hippo tangs... very cool.

I feed three types of faunamarin food, but the spirulina pellet food is big.. i make sure to feed that daily... I also use the veggie clips and nori... but haven't for a few months... just lazy i guess... it is a good thing to feed and virtually a requirement for tangs in general.

One thing I was doing wrong was putting in the nori semi-reguarly and the tangs would attack it... this is bad... you want to have it there all the time so they graze on it constantly.. not attack it...   tang's are grazers... so im told this is a more healthy way of feeding them the nori sheets.

I've not had much problems with ICK... the PBT was worse... but with premium foods and feeding regularly all the fish have overcome ICK in the system... one of my anthias has pop-eye right now... it's almost gone after being a good 1cm extended a week ago...

just keep feeding quality, healthy foods frequently (watching nitrates) and things work themselves out very well.

as an idea,
I feed each day:
  Autofeeder 3x/day mix of FM health and spurilina pellets (maybe 40 total pellets each feeding)
  Manual Feeding 2x/day mix of FM health(lg), spurlina (lg), base (maybe 40-50 total pellets each feeding)
  4-5 cubes of frozen something (either mysis, brine or bloodworm - never the same twice)
  1-2 cubes of frozen cylopeze (little red things)

I do this about 4x a week.  The other 3 days I might miss a the frozen cubes completely (oops) or skip the manual pellets.

  I also feed in a specific order... I feed a lot of the lg pellets first to get the bigger, agressive fish "full" (the tangs and anthais specifically)  then I go for the frozen foods... this allows the smaller fish to get to the frozen stuff before the bigger ones get it all at the waters surface...   the cylopeze i feed whenever... its mainly for the LPS and smaller fish... also gives everyone a workout... i think it takes more energy to chance those down than they provide.. LOL.

This system of feeding has been very effective for me, and my nitrates are hover between 2 and 3ppm... without any vodka dosing or zeolith systems... just filtersocks, skimmer and 50gal changes/week.

[matycake]

Thank you, to all of you for the information it was very helpful think I'm gonna build my self a quarantined tank not to sure what I need but I will do some research