lfs selling baby hippo tangs???

[daniel89]

My lfs got some baby hippo tangs. Well lemme make this clear how baby we are talking. No bigger than a nickle. They are super small like can lay on the tip of my index finger perfectly.

I was so tempted to buy one then i started thinking these fish are way to small for there normal size and with a price tag of 30$ should i buy one?

I ment to get a picture but didnt and was spaced out by how small they were! And that even a company would ship them at that size...

MY thing was in a 125g tank that size and watching him grow would be a great feeling and to know i can say i raised him from the size of my nipple! lol but then i feared him going down my hob overflows and going into the skimmer

Any one care to tell if i made the right decision on not buying one?

P.s. I did although put 3 fish on hold untill they eat and show they are good to go (they were just delivered that morning) bicolor foxface, coral beauty angel, yellow tang

 

[TampaReefer79]

My lfs got some baby hippo tangs. Well lemme make this clear how baby we are talking. No bigger than a nickle. They are super small like can lay on the tip of my index finger perfectly.

I was so tempted to buy one then i started thinking these fish are way to small for there normal size and with a price tag of 30$ should i buy one?

I ment to get a picture but didnt and was spaced out by how small they were! And that even a company would ship them at that size...

MY thing was in a 125g tank that size and watching him grow would be a great feeling and to know i can say i raised him from the size of my nipple! lol but then i feared him going down my hob overflows and going into the skimmer

Any one care to tell if i made the right decision on not buying one?

P.s. I did although put 3 fish on hold untill they eat and show they are good to go (they were just delivered that morning) bicolor foxface, coral beauty angel, yellow tang

I'd have to say that you made a great choice by not bringing one home. I used to work at a LFS and would never order tangs that small. In my 'opinion' any tang less than 2" should be left alone. Smaller than 2" just don't do very well for some reason. They are awful fragile at that size.

 

[AuroraDrvr]

Baby hippos have astronomically high mortality rates. I would guess into the 95% region. They are very hard to care for, requiring constant attention and feedings.

 

[TampaReefer79]

Baby hippos have astronomically high mortality rates. I would guess into the 95% region. They are very hard to care for, requiring constant attention and feedings.

We're just guessing, but I'd venture a guess that your figure is quite close. 95% mortality rate (give or take) and yet LFS will still order them. Why? Because people with Biocube's want a 'Dory'. As a LFS, they should take a stand and not order/sell them. That would give the collector's the hint and they'd stop collecting them. If the demand dies out, so will the supply. At least in theory. My LFS will straight up not sell a fish to someone if they know it won't be housed right. That's the way I feel they ALL should be...unfortunately they aren't. It's all about dollars and cents...when it should be dollars and 'SENSE'.

 

[velvetelvis]

+1

One of the most frustrating things to me is that as hobbyists, we drive the market. People like to blame the acquisition of fragile, difficult-to-keep, doomed animals on the stores that stock them. But if there were no demand from hobbyists, and if people EDUCATED themselves first and resisted the temptation to buy inappropriate species, stores wouldn't order them anymore, because they would lose money on them. We create and sustain demand, so we can also turn it in a more sustainable, responsible direction.

Back on topic...daniel89, your heart is in the right place, but somebody's already done it for you. If you want a nice blue tang and have the room for them, DD* regularly offers tank-raised SA blue tangs--singles and trios. They're still juveniles, but acclimated to captivity and eating prepared foods.

*I realize I seem to plug Diver's Den every other time I post, but I'm not getting kickbacks from them, honest. They just offer a lot of good tank-raised and captive-bred fish.

 

[daniel89]

I knew i made the right decision.

 

[IPowderBlueTang]

I knew i made the right decision.

I have a LFS around my area bring in 10 tiny hippos and they were selling for $55 each. In a month time they all perish in the 20 gal holding tank. I was also tempted to get one for my 33 gal eventually to my 120 gal. But wanted to see if they would last a month. I ask an employee that I trusted and he told me they never sold any at that price, they all died.

 

[TampaReefer79]

I have a LFS around my area bring in 10 tiny hippos and they were selling for $55 each. In a month time they all perish in the 20 gal holding tank. I was also tempted to get one for my 33 gal eventually to my 120 gal. But wanted to see if they would last a month. I ask an employee that I trusted and he told me they never sold any at that price, they all died.

You hear that with these tiny tangs (not just hippo's) all too often. It's sad. We need to line up the people putting the orders in at the LFS and :uzi::uzi::uzi::uzi::uzi:

 

[JHemdal]

I've long been vocal about people not buying tiny hepatus tangs - for obvious reasons already stated. However, in the last six months or so, "tank raised" baby hepatus have been showing up. These are wild-collected as acronurus larva, and then raised in tanks to the juvenile stage. Since I haven't worked with any of these fish, I'll withold judgement until we know if they are just as delicate as the wild collected ones. Of course, there is no way to visually tell them apart, so even if they do better, how would the final purchaser know they were getting the "real deal"?.....

Jay

 

[velvetelvis]

The ones I mentioned for sale online are listed specifically as being raised by Sustainable Aquatics (complete with trademark). I'd hope, anyway, since two well-known companies are staking a little of their reputations on the fishes' survival, that (a) they really are tank-raised and (b) they'll fare well and reach adulthood.

The latest batch I saw on offer were all about 2" long, so they weren't teeniny coin-size bitty babies--maybe that's a hardier size, if they're already acclimated to captivity and eating well?

Since most people haven't encountered tiny baby tangs before, this is one area where I will lay some blame on stores as well. They know these babies aren't going to make it, so selling them is unconscionable. So is not informing their customers of the fact that in the unlikely scenario that these delicate little fish even survive and grow up, they're going to grow up to need huge tanks (huge as in hundreds of gallons) with pristine water conditions.

But this points up a problem that affects all levels of the reefkeeping hobby and business--uninformed people who haven't done any research. And this is something that every marine aquarist--even the overindulgent mom or dad who buys a whining kid a "Nemo"--has to do. Believe me, you can't always rely on the people at the LFS or the Petco to inform you.

I once had both an employee and a manager at a (usually very good) LFS tell me that a nudibranch (which they couldn't identify) was reef-safe. I went home later, flipped through a pocket reference that I'd bought from that very store(!), and found out that it was a species that inevitably died and wiped out whole tanks in captivity. A friend of mine was told by a kid working at a chain store that she didn't need a haul-out place for the turtle she was thinking of buying, because it could breathe underwater. People working in the industry are capable of being stunningly ignorant, so it's crucial for us to gather information for ourselves instead of just relying on their advice.

If every hobbyist would log some serious time reading about saltwater fish and inverts--not just forums where members may offer up anecdote, opinion, and sheer misinformation as if it were ironclad fact, but also magazines and books--they'd give themselves a great gift. If you're really interested in the hobby, the reading will be entertaining as well as educational. It can also save you a lot of money and aggravation, because you won't be relying on the sometimes questionable information given by people whose livelihood depends on your buying that critter you're asking them about.

Whew. I overslept for church this morning, but I just did some preaching of my own.

 

[xxtriggermanxx]

I'm might be stirring the pot here ,but I've only bought small hippos. for me (and let me say this now), This is my exp only. I never added them first ,I would always add them small ,this way they were never thought of as a food competitor and left alone .The fact is the only one I ever lost was one i purchased in the 3 1/2 inch range..that was beaten to death by a 6 inch sailfin. Totally my fault. My only issue with Hippo's is that when they reach about 5 maybe 6 inches and decide to eat my coral...This has happened many times. that's when they go back to the store. So I guess when you line up all the peolpe that have anything to do with bringing small hippos out of the ocean give me a call. I'll line up with the rest of them. :wave: Ray

 

[Juice It]

I just got a trio of the small 1 1/2 -2inch tank raised from DD and they seem to be night and day from the little ones that you can almost see through at the LFS that are terrified when you look in the tank. These 3 are bold, eat like pigs and seem to be very healthy.

 

[velvetelvis]

:thumbsup:

Maybe you could start a thread on them and post updates with pictures every so often? I'd be interested in seeing them grow up.

 

[Doomed]

I bought a hippo tang that was about the size of a nickel about 2 months ago and besides one time where he got ich pretty bad, I have had no problems. He's about the size of a quarter now and he's already getting a belly on him.

I also have a red sea sailfin that was the size of a nickel when I got him and he is a little bigger then a quarter now and I never had any problems with him. I've had him for about 5 months.

Both of these fish are in my tank with a much larger purple tang, yellow tang, sailfin tang, and a powder blue tang. All of these are more then twice the size of the hippo and red sea sailfin..