Have any of you seen or heard of any reports of scopas tangs or any zebrasoma tang for that matter eating or nipping at acro corallites...i put a scopas tang in my tank about 2 weeks ago and i came home today to find a munched up ora joe the coral and hawkins echinata..i have never heard or seen such a thing the only other fish in this tank are 3 maroon clowns and a starry blenny. All other fish been there for almost a year.. no other corals bothered and im not talking about just flesh missing im talking about whole tips skeleton and all gone...the only large invert in the tank is a sea hare and he had been there for 6 months plus...it looks like i added a parrot fish instead of a scopas tang??? Im dumbfounded and a little bit ill yo.say the least any help in confirming this would be awesome
acropora eating scopas tang (zebrasoma scopas)???
- Thread starter tunedtank
- Start date
Algae grazers will eat the zooxanthellae contained within the corals if, as ThRoewer says, there is insufficient algae. Causes are: too many algae grazers, insufficient tank maturity, insufficient tank size.
So is it safe to say yall have witness or heard stories of then eating at acropora corals then?? Would you say 2 fish and and sea hare are are too many herbivores for a 100+ gallon tank???? The tank is very mature has been running for almost three years now....although i never see much algea in this system i assume it is being picked off as it grows...,just never had this problem before and over the years iv seen and know many people that have never heard of this has well....so do you think adding sheets of nori to combat this will help i cant have a rouge tang munching down all my acros???? Whats the consesus...thanks for your help and replies
ThRoewer
New member
In an SPS tank this doesn't have to be.
If the tank is mature and the usual nutrient control systems like GFO, nitrate filter, algae scrubber,... are in place, algae growth inside the tank can virtually come to a halt. Also, corals and coralline algae may outcompete the hairy algae tangs eat. In my tanks with corals hairy algae never got a good foothold and have gone virtually extinct by now. I have to scrape coralline off the front glass on a weekly basis. I even had some of my large turbo snails starve to death due to lack of green algae.
If you want to keep algae grazers like tangs in a low nutrient SPS coral dominated tank I would suggest to set up a "dirty" tank near a window that gets ample sunlight to grow hairy algae in. Place some rocks into that tank and let them get covered with algae and then transfer them into your coral tank to let your grazers clean them up. Have enough algae rocks to rotate the tanks so that your grazers have a steady supply.
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