tangs...shrimps...& puffers

[jon1985]

I am posting this here because tangs are kept in both reef and non reef tanks and more people will see it here.

I am in the process of stocking my 220 fish only and have a question. I was planning to stock tangs, angels, butterflies and a puffer and fully open to not keeping cleaner shrimp. However after talking to a some people they say the health of tangs may suffer without a cleaner shrimp.

Is this true?

 

[kv2wr1]

I've never heard that the tangs' health would suffer without cleaner shrimp. I have a FOWLR and currently have a yellow tang with a porcupine puffer in there along with some other fish. No problems with the tang's health. In fact the tang is the boss of the tank for the time being. I did quarantine the tang first and treated him with prazipro as a preventative for deworming. He did not show any signs of ich and never got ich in quarantine. I had quarantined him for 8 weeks and did a freshwater dip with methylene blue before adding him to quarantine. Even to this day in the display he has been doing well. I do use vitamin supplements such as vita-chem and selcon and do 20% water changes weekly so that may help. I offer a variety of different dried algaes and other foods as well.

 

[jechew2]

I've never heard of this either and I don't believe it to be true. Cleaner shrimp cannot prevent or cure ich (if that's what some are thinking when they say they're important to the health of Tangs).