Baby blue tang... care?

[rklutt]

I am going to be getting a baby blue tang for my 75g reef tank and was wondering if anyone has some good tips on caring for it... like food, fighting ich and so on.... it will be my first tang.

It will have 2 Clowns as tank mates.

 

[Rungeg]

The trick to them is getting it larger. It will be a little hard to feed. Try mysis, or even brine with some vitamins. Good luck keeping the parasites off of it. May try and enrich teh brine with something, and garlic.

 

[jda]

You need to feed the heck out of it. If you don't feed it enough (almost constantly), then it might not live.

 

[adnup]

Mine spent 3 weeks in a QT with LOTS of nori soaked in garlic. He ate well from the begining. Hes growning like mad and doesnt hide at all in my display tank.

 

[Paul B]

I have always found hippo's to be one of the easier tangs. They are also long lived if you can keep HLLE off of them. My fish do not get ich but in the early years when they did the hippo was the first to exhibit spots. Easy to cure though.
If you keep the fish a long time 5-10 years they almost always get HLLE (hole in the head disease) I have found that if you can get enough vitamin A into the fish on a steady basis it will be fine. For that I get vitamin A which is just cheap cod liver oil and put a drop in a container with some tank water. Float a little flake food in it and it will absorb the vitamin. Put some of the flakes in the tank for the fish. Do it about once a week.
Also feed the hippo nori seaweed that you can get at any Asian store. Of course also feed it mysis, plankton etc. Don't give it flakes (except to give it vitamins)
They grow fast and are one of my favorite fish.
Good luck.
Paul

 

[jda]

They do grow fast. I got my current one as a baby and it has never hid or has been agressive. Mine eats anything I put in the tank.

 

[rklutt]

soaked in garlic? do you mean garlic juice like for cooking...

 

[shawn1965]

Your lfs should sell Garlic guard. Make sure the fish is eating before you bring it home. Just like in several post before mine soak in garlic and feed heavy for the first couple of weeks.

 

[rklutt]

Well it was in a group buy from a place in FL... so I don't have time to watch it. It came in last night with a huge cleaner crew. So far it looks freaked out... but time will tell.