Who Said Kole Tangs Don't Eat Hair Algae

Stuart60611

New member
Well, I have a young 3 1 /4" kole tang who is doing some serious damage to the substantial amount of hair algae in my tank. He/She has cleared several large rocks and is now working on the balance. I wanted to post this b/c I have read many postings where people opine that kole's do not eat hair algae, and this is definitely not my experience. My algae species I am pretty sure is debersia or a close cousin. My kole's affinity for this algae may have something to do with his/her youth.
 
I think it comes down to the fish. I have seem my juvenile lemon mimic tang eat hair algae as well and they are not known to either.
Lucky you getting one that will help take care of that hair algae problem though.
 
Is it underfed? Are you feeding the right things and often enough? Just a thought but an underfed fish will eat just about anything.
 
My Kole eats just about everything. NLS pellets, nori, mysis, rod's, any algae on the rocks or sand and hair algae. I do have the Indian Ocean species Ctenochaetus truncatus but I doubt that makes much of a difference.
 
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My kole is definitely not under fed. My tank is fed very heavily which is a large reason why I have hair algae. :spin3: Everyday I feed one very large pinch of NLS large pellets and one very large pinch of the NLS small pellets. My kole loves them. I also feed a large spoonful of my homemade food which consists of a wide variety of meaty marine items for my other large fish (see stock list in my profile) soaked in selecon and vitachem. My kole is not particularly interested in the homemade mix, although he will go after the small left over bits that settle on the rock and substrate. He is still going at the algae hard. He seems to be focusing on each end of the tank and largely ignoring the middle. However, today I saw him start to peck a bit at the middle rocks. Every rock had substantial algae, and I would say he has cleared about 40% of it. I am also dealing with addressing the source of my algae problem. I have purchased a new skimmer which is more suitable for my system (had a bit of an undersized one before), and I have added a large pellet reactor where I am currently running a full liter of ecobak. My remaining algae is starting to brown up which also may be part of the reason the kole is devouring it. The only issue I have had with the kole is upon adding him to my system my tusk did not like him and took a nice bite out of his top fin. It has healed up pretty good, no sign of a bacterial infection, and the kole and tusk get along fine now without any aggression between them. I think the kole entered the tusks cave immediately upon introduction (I was there to watch the attack happen), and the tusk got freaked out at first and attacked. I also think that the fin should regenerate in time, and the kole does not seem adversely affected by it.
 
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