Male naso refuses to eat

mcpiii1124

Addict
I have had a 5" male naso for about 3 weeks now and he is absolutely refusing to eat.
When I got him he picked on algae but now it's all gone and he is starting to look thin. He ate in the store before I took him home.
I have tried:

Pellet
Mysis shrimp
Live black worms
Flake
New era grazer rings
Nori on a clip
I put nori rubber banded to a rock in there today to see if maybe the clip was scarring him

Anybody got an idea?
He is getting thin but is still active.
 
Took couple of my tangs a week if watching othere fish eat off the nori clip to start eating. What did the fish store feed it?
 
Definitely try brine? I have not had much luck with Naso tangs - mine always seem to go on a hunger strike at some point, or get themselves pinned to the side of my vortech pumps.
 
i had the same prob with a blue line angel.
as soon as I put a clam in the tank from the store he ate like a pig. just get clam the little one and crack it in half and put the shell on the bottom he should start picking .
mine eats like a pig now it was so bad I was going to feed him with a tube till I tried that.
 
Encouraging him to eat clams might be a bad idea if you like to keep ornamental clams. The fish won't know that the $200 blue Maxima wasn't meant as food.
 
i had the same prob with a blue line angel.
as soon as I put a clam in the tank from the store he ate like a pig. just get clam the little one and crack it in half and put the shell on the bottom he should start picking .
mine eats like a pig now it was so bad I was going to feed him with a tube till I tried that.

He's talking about a Naso Tang... Angels are known to pick on clams anyway, I'm not sure how many Tangs out there go for clams, but I haven't heard any stories. Two very different fish!

Anyway, try some fresh nori if you can find it, not the packaged dried stuff. Or grab a some kind of leafy macro algae. The fresher the better, and tangs love to graze so a piece of algea covered rock (or frag plugs lol) from someones tank might help, just be sure not to let it get crazy and infect your display lol.
 
nori, take the sheet and fold it till it is half the size of a dollar bill. cut strips into it but leave one side uncut so as to keep them all together. put it in your algae clip on the back wall of the aquarium or wherever this guy hangs out most. walk away.

i have a clown tang that gave me all sorts of trouble. this method is posted somewhere here on RC and it worked for my fish. but i had to do it exactly as described as he was too stressed to eat up front where he felt insecure.
 
Squid, and shrimp from the grocery store. I have live brine your welcome to,however I know you're far away. If you want to attempt to try to get a convoy to get some from me you're more than welcome.
 
See if you can find someone with sea lettuce (ulva lactuca?) I use to grow a ton of it and my tangs went crazy for it. i also gave some to the lfs for their picky male naso tang who gobbled it all up. the stuff grows crazy fast, unfortunately i have been out of it for quite some time.
 
I had a devil of a time getting a naso that I used to have to eat. I tried everything under the sun.

She ended up LOVING red gracilaria, which is a live red macro algae. I noticed that it's in stock on that reef cleaners page earlier.

But what actually worked well was rubber banding dried seaweed to rock so that none of it sticks up. Like...fold it up a few times and rubber band it twice so that it's low on the rock and not having pieces floating up. These guys like to eat film algae on the rocks, I think.

Those two things totally worked for me. My naso is about 12" now and fat as she can be. She's housed in my friend's lagoon and is one of the very few lucky nasos I see in this hobby.

I hope these things work for you as well.
 
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