Powder blue tang primer

[SEAMONSTER]

You are lucky... Powder blues are not the easiest fish to maintain.....
I maintained mine for over a year and I consider myself lucky. Neon gobies do eat parasites off fish. This is in no way a cure for ich, but it offers fish some relief. In the wild reef fish and predators seek out cleaning stations. If the cleaning station is removed, they look for another one, or they perish. So you see, cleaning stations are extremely important to reef fish for their health and the gobies have some protection from predators.

 

[SEAMONSTER]

my fishes don't have ich or anything either....

 

[pontiac]

well, i do not agree that u need a cleaning station for ur fish health, it is un needed, but this is just my opinion, all the cleaners do is make the fish look a lil better at best, the white spots u see are not in fact ich, the spots are whats left after the infection so they are not in fact taking the ich off of the fish, they are just making the fish feel a lil better, and, as i said this is just my opinion and im sure not shared by all.

 

[pontiac]

there is a thread in reef discussion on here that is all about ich everyone should read it.

 

[knight2255]

Just got my pbt in yesterday. Ordered it online from Petco....was expecting something around 3" and received a 5.5" monster! I feel really bad about keeping him in my 20g qt. I might get a big rubbermaid this evening and fill it up.

 

[blutang007]

Need some advice please!

Need some advice please!

Hi there i need some advice on my PBT. I got him about 2 weeks ago. He was eating mysis at lfs before I got him. Really healthy and good colors, about 2.5 to 3inches.. Since I got him i put him in my 29 gallon quaratine tank. He shows no signs of ich or any flashing, stratching. Still eats half cube of mysis a day and half sheet of nori, all soaked in selcon and garlic. He's getting fat. My display tank had an ich outbreak and I lost most of my fish. So now I'm running it fishless for 3 months. My question is should i treat the PBT with cupramine or hypo. What is the best method. I'm leaning more towards hypo but I still need your guys input on this. And should i get him more fat before treating him. I really love this guy, any input would be great. Thanks all..

 

[kv2wr1]

I don't think treating with cupramine or hypo would be a bad thing, but if he is not showing signs yet, then just keep feeding him for now. 2 weeks may be too soon to show signs so I would just keep him in the QT for 6-8 weeks. I've always heard with the Acanthurus tangs that it's a good idea to just treat them prophylactically anyways since they usually carry ich and velvet, but I would get him fat first if he's not showing signs and then treat him. Sometimes you may see a spot or two, but that could also be something else. I had a display that had ich so I left it fallow for 75 days. No fish showed any signs until I but them back one by one. Then the PBT had a spot, but after closely examining it, it was lymph and not ich. Good flow, good water quaility with a pH of 8.1-8.3 and nutritous foods seems to make lymph go away.

 

[blutang007]

Thanks

Thanks

Thanks kv2wr1 for your advice. Right now my PBT is still eating nori and mysis. I do plan on getting him as fat as possible. Doesn't seem to be interested in pellets yet.. Any ideas to get it to eat pellets.. Still ich free Do you think Hypo is a better method. I've heard cupramine stops their appetite..

 

[kv2wr1]

Mine did fine with cupramine, but I kept it at about 0.35-0.40 ppm and slowly ramped it up to that level over a course of a week since I had copper sensative fish in the hospital tank along with the pbt. They will usually stop eating if they can't tolerate the copper at a certain level. When I had it at 0.35-0.40 ppm all of the fish ate, but when I was at 0.50 a few of the sensative ones stopped eating so I ramped back down to 0.35-0.40 ppm for 4 weeks. Hypo will work if it is ich, but if he's carrying ich and velvet only cupramine will work on that. I use new life spectrum pellets and cobalt aquatics spirulina flakes (they have beta glucan in them). He will sometimes eat the pellets & flakes but is more of a nori, rod's reef and mysis fish. I soak all frozen food in selcon and vita-chem.

 

[knight2255]

Put my pbt in the tank yesterday. He was in qt for 2 weeks with chloroquine phosphate and prazipro. I would've liked to have kept him in longer but he wasn't eating well and I figured since he still looked great that I should put him in the dt with my yellow tang in the hopes he would learn to eat pellets.

I fed them last night with nls pellets which everything usually devours but mr.pbt wasn't having it. I finally got him feeding today with HBH soft spirulina pellets that I cut up with a knife to make smaller. Big relief to seeing him chowing down!

 

[reef80]

:spin3:Awesome...I hope to have the same outcome once I bring another one of these beauties home....thanks for sharing!!!

Tried three powders from LFS in the past and they don't make through the first 10 days. Bite the bullet and got one from DD and am quite the happy camper now...will qt him past the danger zone and off to the tang pack he goes...can't wait...but the extra $100 can go a long way...

 

[pontiac]

just an update on my pbt, coming up on three months now and no issues, no ich, no scratching, eats like a pig and has become boss of the yellow tang lol, pbt gets a varied diet of nori, pellets, flake, prime reef frozen, and as a treat sumtimes brine shrimp, getting fatter every week

 

[kv2wr1]

Congrats! Going on a year with mine. I got him when he was about 4 inches and now he is at least 6 inches and about an inch thick or more in some places. Eats like a pig too.

 

[reef80]

Nice..Pontiac and kv2....another week and my powder blue goes in my display...he's a beauty to be wrecken with...I can't wait...

 

[BrooklynFishGuy]

This is my first post and I would like to give some input with keeping my PBT thriving. I've heard numerous horror stories when it comes to these guys ranging from being perfectly healthy and dying unexpectedly to getting ich and wiping out whole tanks to beating up everyone in a tank. Although these guys can in a sense be headaches they are manageable. In my perspective these guys are best kept in FOWLR tanks with minimal rockwork. When I say minimal rockwork I mean bigger pieces of live rock that are 10-20 lbs each. This is to limit territorial issues. At the same token this guy should be added with other semi aggressive to aggressive fish. My current tank is be pre drilled with a corner flo, a water circulator made by Hydor, a reef octopus in sump skimmer, uv sterilizer and Eheim canister filter. This set up was running for roughly 6 months before I finally added a PBT. The other tankmates are a Yellow tang, fu Manchu lionfish, juvenile brown banded bamboo shark, and a highly aggressive fire shrimp (he's almost two years old and he's fended off two eels, a bluejaw trigger, the fu Manchu and shark). My tank stock is kept minimal and though the tank appears bland I provide plenty of macro algae to stimulate the tangs. People have had success in reef tanks and with peaceful fish but this setup is the one that has been so far successful. He is fed enscapsulated brine shrimp, spectra pellets, nori, and the macro/micro in the tank.


EDIT: I should also mention I picked my current PBT up at a LFS with people who I know very well. He was eating well at the store for 2 weeks. I acclimated him over the course of two hours. I also added stress coat in the bag before acclimation as a precautionary. The tank is kept at a higher temp range of 78-80 with the salinity being 1.021-1.022.

 

[reef80]

yes...hes doing well

yes...hes doing well

:spin3:Awesome...I hope to have the same outcome once I bring another one of these beauties home....thanks for sharing!!!

Yes...finally got a powder blue that is doing so well for me. I took a cartoon picture of him just for fun. He is about 6 inchs and I would imagine that Heaven would have the colors of a powder blue in it...sad to say that my tank has inck but he is going stronge on 4 months...



In the meantime...I also picked up another smaller one in my sps tryout tank and shes a beauty too...my fav fish definetly of all time.

 

[ReefKeeper64]

Happy and fat.

 

[SDguy]

Hitting the 7 year mark with my PBT :celeb1:

 

[desjardinii]

Wow, 7 years is good, well done, I hope I have that sort of success with my first PBT which I just put in yesterday. He's settled in very well, and is taking both NLS and Nori, I just hope the other Tangs can handle it ok and don't stress him out too much. There's been a little bit of sparring but nothing really vicious so far...

He's also let the Heni give him a clean to, sorry about the dirty glass but it was a candid moment!

 

[Rea17]

Wow, 7 years is good, well done, I hope I have that sort of success with my first PBT which I just put in yesterday. He's settled in very well, and is taking both NLS and Nori, I just hope the other Tangs can handle it ok and don't stress him out too much. There's been a little bit of sparring but nothing really vicious so far...

He's also let the Heni give him a clean to, sorry about the dirty glass but it was a candid moment!

Awesome pictures! Thank you for sharing!