Powder Blue Tangs - How difficult to keep?

[mskvarenina]

MY FO tank has been running great for about 2 years now and I haven't lost a fish in almost a year.

Recently I a powder blue tang to the tank. He was beautiful when he when in but just 4 days later his body was riddles with ich and odd markings. A few of the other fish in the tank have also developed some ich and I'm treating the treating the tank with copper now (sorry I don't have the means to setup a QT tank).

My question is is this common for powder blue tangs to get sick quickly? I saw on Liveaquaria they rated with fish for experts only and I seem to recall a similar thing happened to me 20 years ago when I tried to keep one.

 

[Marchillo]

You should qt all fish before they go in the DT. ICH is very common among tangs and TTM with a few weeks of qt would have done wonders. Now that ich has been introduced to your system, you can't put fish back in for 72 days. How big is your tank?

 

[Dkuhlmann]

You do know that copper will kill all of your snails and any shrimp or crabs you might of had. Plus copper will always be present since it will be soaked in by the rocks, making it highly unlikely that you'll ever be able to keep any snails or crabs even shrimp in the future. There is a poly sponge available that will soak up the copper from the system but I don't know how effective it would be. Hypo would have been a better choice in your situation.

Also all tangs are ich magnets, it's too bad that this happened. All you can do is try and keep all fish healthy no matter what you have to do, feed them high nutritional food. With good health they stand a better chance to overcome ich.

Hopefully someone with lots of experience with this will chime in

 

[Marchillo]

I missed the part where he said he treated his whole tank with copper.

Yeah the snails will die and you ruined all your rock and sand. Some fish can handle certain levels and some can't.

 

[whosurcaddie]

Its very common in all tangs.

 

[C.Eymann]

I missed the part where he said he treated his whole tank with copper.

Yeah the snails will die and you ruined all your rock and sand. Some fish can handle certain levels and some can't.

Ouch, yeah wrasses seem to be very copper sensitive IME.

How difficult are powder blues? Out of all tangs, especially Acanthurus Tangs they are 2nd to the Achilles tang in difficulty IME. My opinion is that certain species of acanthurus Tangs need to be housed in displays larger than 200 gallons, Achilles, powder blues, clown, sohal etc etc. All are extremely aggressive, yet very delicate and prone to stress.

How big is your display? Yes like others said you ruined your reef by adding copper, you will now have to treat this as a fish only system. Make sure your powder blue is appropriate for your display, feed heavily and do more research before your next fish purchase, also if your powder blue pulls through you probably won't be able to add anymore tangs due to the powder blues aggression towards them.
Good luck

 

[mskvarenina]

Yes a QT is best practice but I've been doing my tanks without q QT tank forever and don't seem to have a problem.

It's a fish only tank so I don't have any snails or crabs and I've done copper in the past when I had issues. Once the issue is cleared up I remove it with a poly filter. I know folks have said it stays behind but always after running the PF and ROX carbon it comes right out.

So I guess we'll see, usually the copper clears everthing up, I was just wonder if the power blue was a bad choice.

 

[Marchillo]

What sized tank do you have? Tough to answer your question with the info you provided.

 

[C.Eymann]

Yes a QT is best practice but I've been doing my tanks without q QT tank forever and don't seem to have a problem.

You do now???

 

[mskvarenina]

Oh sorry, yes it's a 93g tank. Not too big but not too small either. Usually all the fish are quite healthy and good eaters so they don't come down with anything.

The powder blue is funny. He looks terrible right now, while I initially saw alot of white spot on him, how he almost looks all sliced up like someone took a razor blade to his body. He's still quite happy though swimming around grazing on all the algae on my rocks (actually he' cleared most of it in places were he can reach) and he's also eating whatever food I put in (which is usually mysis shirmp or some other high quality frozen food) so I'm expecting the copper to kill the parasites that are free swimming and he'll probably recover well. Then as he gets stronger in the tank his immune system will build up so we won't be as susceptible to the parasite again.

 

[ca1ore]

The challenge with the powder blue is its high succeptibility to skin parasites, and getting it to eat. Such acclimation issues are what make it a difficult fish. Once acclimated, it can be quite hardy (though also aggressive). It is also quite common for a tank to contain ich, but be asymptomatic until the introduction of an 'ich magnet' like the powder blue that then quickly reveals the heretofore unknown problem.

 

[ab5ebdxer]

I have a Powder Blue that is about 6 years old and he has survived two bouts of ich in that time. Ich is always present, however when a fish is stressed they become more susceptible. Adding new fish to any tank is a big stress. Being the fish added is a huge stress. I feed garlic almost daily to my tangs food and in bouts of ich will buy a cleaner goby. I have 5 tang in a 210g reef.

 

[Sapelo]

I have a Powder Brown in my 300 gallon. I dealt with ICH in QT and do have the occasional "OMG" moment with him.
He is not especially aggressive but it's a 300. I'd be surprised if the Powder Blue is content in your 93 long term.

 

[Dundermifflin]

This won't fix the problem, but it will help in the future. You should be running a strong UV in a FO tank that houses tangs. I QT everything, but also run a large emporer aquatics UV in my DT and have great success.

 

[OrQidz]

Oh sorry, yes it's a 93g tank. Not too big but not too small either.

I think a lot of people would say that is too small for a powder blue tang...including Liveaquaria (since you mentioned looking there). They recommend at least 125 gallons.

 

[rfurst]

Pretty much everything I have read suggests they are hard to keep. I had one in a 180g and it never developed any issues. I did buy it at a very well regarded LFS at about 4" and they had had it for a couple months. I QT'd it for 6 weeks and did a fresh water / methyl blue dip so I was very careful with it. I had to try, is one of my very favorite fish.

 

[CHizer]

It's my opinion that they are very difficult but if you do all the right things you can call them "kinda" difficult.

Pick out a healthy, eating fish
Quarantine it and make sure it's parasite free
Put it in the proper display that you've quarantined each fish.
Needs to be the right size tank with the right tank mates.
Provide proper nutrition and variety in it's diet.

If you do all these things you've really increased your chances at long term success.

 

[mskvarenina]

So now 30 days later the powder blue is still alive and still coated with ich but seems completely healthy. None of the other fish (about 10) show any signs of ich including a purple tang I introduced at the same time.

I'm still running Cupramine at 0.5. I guess I'll just let it ride like this until the powder is ich free because it doesn't seem to be bothering anyone else.