No tangs
- Thread starter haydn
- Start date
Well 2 months in, no tangs and despite 12 urchins, lots of snails, a BIG! Sea Hare and physical removal. This is the tank. OK I had high(ish) PO4, now almost undetectable, Nitrite/Nitrate are undetectable. This is the tank GRRRR! Ulva.
I have changed the LEDs in the sump to give a more red spectrum light and the algae in there has started to grow much more strongly. I am going to increase the flow in the tank by another 40,000ltrs/hr (when the LFS gets the wavemakers in)
The Ulva in the tank is slowly going, it is definitely not coming back as fast- The upside is my LFS and most of the tangs in my area are as fat as butter and I have 6 Emperor Cardinals by way of a swap :lolspin:
I can definitely say this has been (and still is) an interesting experiment and TBH I'm still not sure if it is possible to run a large tank without tangs. I have found it certainly takes more patience and work.
I have changed the LEDs in the sump to give a more red spectrum light and the algae in there has started to grow much more strongly. I am going to increase the flow in the tank by another 40,000ltrs/hr (when the LFS gets the wavemakers in)
The Ulva in the tank is slowly going, it is definitely not coming back as fast- The upside is my LFS and most of the tangs in my area are as fat as butter and I have 6 Emperor Cardinals by way of a swap :lolspin:
I can definitely say this has been (and still is) an interesting experiment and TBH I'm still not sure if it is possible to run a large tank without tangs. I have found it certainly takes more patience and work.
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fishguy2501
New member
How about rabbitfish? There are a few different species that dont look like fox faces or there are a few different species of foxface if you dont want just the plain yellow ones. My rabbitfish keep up with algea just like my tangs do.
scottmccray
New member
Are you running GFO?
Yes I do feel I'm winning. with a large system things move so slowly...
Yes I have been researching these and it may be something worth retrospectively adding on, but I'm not sure how well it would work in conjunction with the fairly aggressive skimming and Siporax tower.
Thank you
that's exactly what my wife says.As far as I am aware they are planktonivores feeding in the water column not algae browsers
Too big (the majority get towards a foot or more) and gross feeders, they would add significantly to the bioload, and dominate the tank.
Whats GFO?
Moort82
New member
Ŕowa phos, or rust in a bucket if you like.
I quite like the look of it and it's nice to see a tank allowed to mature for a change.
It might not be easy to run a big tank without tangs but many people do it with nano tanks and it's just a case of up scaling, albeit massively. Would love to see if your planned angels make any impact.
Yes, 1ltr in a reactor tube with approx. 300 ltrs/hr running through it. It gets changed about twice a week when a PO4 test on the output water shows it is becoming exhausted.
Thanks, fortunately I like fish and think the corals are bit players in my tank so I am not in a rush to fill it up.
Yes, it the scaling up that is the problem, a 20gall tank may need some 10 snails, a couple of urchins and an algae blenny but scaling those numbers up to 400gallons................:eek1: But fun
OrionN
Moved on
A lot of snails will make short work of these algae. If you get about 4 tropical Abalone (they grown to about 8 inches). It will take some time, but if you keep the nutrient down, you can control it with various snails.
To each his own, but Powder Blue, Powder Brown, Yellow and Purple tang will control your algae without problem. They will do fine together in tank your size. IMO, there is not that many fish more beautiful than those fishes. They are common, but I would be hard press to find more beautiful fish, from the subtle colors of Powder brown to the brilliance of Yellow Tang.
Did you know that there are 7 distinct band of colors on the back dorsal of a Powder brown tang (A. japonicus)?
To each his own, but Powder Blue, Powder Brown, Yellow and Purple tang will control your algae without problem. They will do fine together in tank your size. IMO, there is not that many fish more beautiful than those fishes. They are common, but I would be hard press to find more beautiful fish, from the subtle colors of Powder brown to the brilliance of Yellow Tang.
Did you know that there are 7 distinct band of colors on the back dorsal of a Powder brown tang (A. japonicus)?
I must admit I haven't considered Abalones. They do not tend to be seen for sale often in the UK.
Unfortunately there are two sides to every coin- I had a group of Yellow tangs which lived together for some 3 years then decided to systematically kill the smallest until I had one left- It wasn't a pretty sight they can be very brutal. A purple tang that came out in spots if I so much as looked at it harshly, let alone put anything new in my tank- the spots usually spread to the new fish. Convict tangs that happy live in the tank for ages then just decided not to eat and wasted away. Now we come to the Powder Blue- I had a stunning 4" fish which grew to a 7" monster, It was so belligerent the family called it Psycho. Any new fish would be instantly attacked and killed, it took a dislike to a group of 10 green chromis it killed 5/6 and the others hid in the LR and wouldn't/couldn't come out even for food, they died. The PB met its end when it attacked a 10" Foxface, they had be living together peacefully for 2 years, the foxface fought back and stabbed the PB with its poisonous dorsal fin. A lovely little Chevron tang that grew into a 10" specimen and produced so much waste that I couldn't get the nitrate below 50.
You may as why didn't I get the offenders out, but in a tank the size of mine with over 200K of LR and corals maybe 12", 15", 18" across it was near impossible.
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OrionN
Moved on
You got weird experiences with tangs. The only problem with all the species mentioned by you or myself was when I first have them in the tank. Once they are there and settle in, the most ever is an occasional fin tear. That is all.
For algae control without tangs, just a huge number and variety of snails and grazers, along with good water quality is all you needed. I have about 5 different sea urchin, a variety of snail species, abalone (make sure that they are tropical). Oriental groceries sell both temperate and tropical farm raised abalones. They need to be handle by people who know how to handle them. Trying to get them off of the glass by pushing and lifting them from the shell always result in fatal injury to the abalone. That is the reason why most LFS don't sell them. They are exotic looking animals. My last abalone was killed by my carpet anemone. He was 8 inches in length with shell length of about 4 inches.
For algae control without tangs, just a huge number and variety of snails and grazers, along with good water quality is all you needed. I have about 5 different sea urchin, a variety of snail species, abalone (make sure that they are tropical). Oriental groceries sell both temperate and tropical farm raised abalones. They need to be handle by people who know how to handle them. Trying to get them off of the glass by pushing and lifting them from the shell always result in fatal injury to the abalone. That is the reason why most LFS don't sell them. They are exotic looking animals. My last abalone was killed by my carpet anemone. He was 8 inches in length with shell length of about 4 inches.
ThRoewer
New member
Let's start a club [emoji1]
As for the Ulva and several other macro algae, if you want to add large angels, that's one of the algae you might wanna keep. All my regals go nuts over Ulva. I tried to grow it in my tank, but the only places where it ever managed to grow are overflows, acclimatization boxes and refugiua.
All my other alga eaters love Ulva and red macro algae as well: once I left the acclimatization box open it only took one night for all my snails to get in there an quite literally lick it clean.
I'm right now fighting a serious GHA outbreak and the issue is that nobody likes to touch that dren once it got to a certain length. Mechanical removal just seems to stimulate growth. There is supposedly a seahare species that particularly likes GHA, but I'm a bit worried about all the pump intakes
A super large amount of snails can do the job as well, but I found that the die-off is quite large which by itself can cause problems. I'm not sure if the snails just die by themselves, if they get killed by hermits or if my Regal Angels are responsible...
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mav3rick478
Premium Member
How do you guys get the snails to actually stay on the rocks and eat the algae there? Mine always bolt for the glass immediately! My hermit crabs, now that I restocked them to about 8 in a 26 gallon tank are cleaning off the hair algae but won't touch the Ulva. Algae Blenny and Coral Beauty pick at the rocks and sand but they didn't eat the Ulva either. I need something to eat Ulva. ThRoewer if you were closer I'd give you all my Ulva I manually pick out weekly!
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ThRoewer
New member
Some of my snails also feed on Ulva.
BTW, if you have enough to harvest weekly, why not bring it to your LFS for store credit. Tangs and large angels love Ulva, so there are likely enough customers for Ulva as food.
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mav3rick478
Premium Member
Interesting, next time I go to my LFS I'll ask if they are interested in any. Thanks for the advice.
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Any more and we may need a minibus and start a new sub-culture:lolspin:
An interesting thought- I was leaving the angels as I don't want to start feeding to much which may encourage more of the algae to grow but thinking about it I could put them in on a reduced diet and see if they go for the Ulva.
Like you I found very little eats it once it gets to a certain length, I had to use physical removal and then blitz it with herbivores before it got too long. I found urchins and Mexican Turbos the best at removal.
We in the UK seem to be seeing the same thing with some snail batches, with major die offs for no apparent reason. The current thinking is they may be collected in cooler water and don't acclimatize to warmer water.
I take mine to my LFS, he has a tub with old S/W near a window, the customers who want it just take a hand full and pop it into a plastic bag, free. It has proven very popular and he is rueing the day when my tank gets clear of the stuff!
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