How important is tank length for tangs?

[sfsuphysics]

I really don't want to go to the "but I've seen them...." line. But I just got a neat little lemar cube tank, roughly 80 gallons, 32" wide 24" tall 24" depth, I'm running through my mind what to do with it, and one of the options is put my stony corals over in that, basically transfer everything over, including the fish, which at a yellow tang, kole tang, clown fairy wrasse, and double barred rabbitfish.

Now the tank they're coming from is a 100g tank, but 72" wide x 18" x 18" so it has quite a bit more swimming length. Just wondering how stressful a move it would be. I do have another tank 60" wide x 18" x 24" which is my softie tank, but that tank is quite full of softies (and anemone).

I do plan on eventually getting a much larger tank hooked up, however the time frame on that is really indetermined, so I'm not going to pull the "they're going to eventually go into a larger tank" line either.

So ideas, my gut says don't put them in the 80, but I'm not sure.

 

[mrwilson]

I think they'd proably be better off in your 60" softie tank. Even if it's packed full of softies and 'nems, I suspect there would still be greater straight-line swimming room in it than in your new cube. Why not put them in there?

 

[sfsuphysics]

Well that tank is very full, since softies grow quite quickly compared to stonies. Other issues is the "hiding spots" are really limited and occupied. In the tank are a couple tomato clowns, a flame angel and a foxface, which I've been told will most likely show agression towards the other rabbitfish. Sure I can swap fish around, but the flame angel is healthy, and I don't need it nipping at my stonies.

Who knows, maybe I"ll keep the 100g as a "sump" for the cube just to have the water volume for it and leave the tangs & rabbitfish in that.

 

[Jerry W]

My first sw tank was a 56g column tank. It was 30x18x27H. My lfs at the time was fairly unscrupulous and readily sold me a yellow and a kole tang. While the fish ate well and didn't show any symptoms of illness, there was a constant display of schizophrenic behavior. Frantic pacing back and forth all day. There was also quite a bit of aggressive posturing from the yellow towards the kole. Personall, I think the shock of moving them to such a limited system is going to have bad results. I wouldn't do it. Trade them or give them to another hobbyist. You can always get tangs when the upgrade comes.

 

[snorvich]

Agree with above.

 

[sfsuphysics]

Thanks for the replies, deep in my heart I felt knew the answer just really wanted someone to hammer home as well. I definitely don't want to give them away, after all the Yellow and Tomini Tangs (I mistyped and said Kole earlier) are buddies .. well ok they don't bug each other. I think I might just keep the 100g up maybe make it a quasi-QT tank for corals in the "I don't care if they die" fashion.

Either way I'm sure the woman is going to love it... one more tank! WOohoo!(sarcasm) Although this means the pool table goes .

 

[sfsuphysics]

Ok, the mad scientist has returned with another question (and I'll be kind enough not to start a new thread... unless no one replies to this ).

How important is DEPTH to these fish? Reason why I'm asking, is one of the potential scenarios to use this freebe Leemar tank is to use a preformed pond liner as a secondary water holding area, don't really want to call it a sump and don't really want to call it a refugium (because there will be fish in it!) but needless to say the horizontal swimming distance will be on the order of 6.5 feet in one direction, 5 feet in another direction, as it's a "L" or "kidney" shaped pond liner. I basically want to use a top down lagoon/pond instead.

However the depth goes from 8" to 16" so it's not very deep at all through a majority of the swimming area(8" mostly). Now I've seen plenty of tangs in frag tanks on the order of this depth in LFS but I know you can't use what you see there as a gauge, but I'm simply wondering if this will be an issue.