? for yellow tang owners

[murph]

I put a yellow tang in my tank on the advise of fellow hobbyist to help deal with the hair algae that is starting to get ahold of my tank. Problem may be that my clean up crew is a bit on the week side, only 15 snails at the moment.
I was pleased to see today when I got home that the tang had gone through a boat load of the stuff but had eaten only off live rock and the CC substrate, there is basically nothing left to it in those areas now.
Question now is will he turn his attention toward what is growing on the back glass of the tank or should I fill out my complement of snails for that job?
By the way the yellow tang has turned out to be a spectacular fish and quickly becoming my favorite. Not any where near the hyperactive speed demon racing around the tank like I had expected. Hopefully this specimen wont live up to there ick magnet reputation and the story will have a happy ending.

 

[murph]

LOL don't even bother with a reply guys. IN the time it took me to sit down and type the first message I got up out of my computer chair walked back in the room with the tank and sure enough tang was at work on the algae growing on the glass. I have a feeling by this time next week I will be buying algae to feed him, but thats certainly a better situation.
Only problem I can see with this fish is my CBS made the mistake of giving him a few brief cleanings when I introduced him to the tank. Now every time the tang sees the shrimp he lines up close hoping for another cleaning. I can literally "see" the CBS getting irritated with the whole situation.
Weird part is when I went up to the tank I bought him out of at the LFS he was being serviced by a neon gobie so I bought the both of them. Since putting them in the tank the gobie has gone nowhere near the tang. Makes me kind of wonder.

 

[merredeth]

Originally Posted by Murph
Weird part is when I went up to the tank I bought him out of at the LFS he was being serviced by a neon gobie so I bought the both of them. Since putting them in the tank the gobie has gone nowhere near the tang. Makes me kind of wonder.
Sounds like a jealous gobie or as I like to call them B#-!&^!
My yellow tang will eat algae anywhere in the aquarium. but really seems to spend most of the time getting into the LR.
Denise M.

(three days of no sleep and I'm on caffeine overlaod)

 

[chiquita o]

Chances are the neon goby will go back to the tang. My neon lives on my yellow tang. They are quite entertaining. My tang seldom goes to my cleaner shrimp to get cleaned. Now my coral beauty on the other hand gets serviced by the shrimp on a regular basis and the goby doesn't go near him.

 

[jojo_b]

i have green, mini seagrass looking things that have taken over a powerhead and a couple pieces of liverock. and i have a yellow tang who does not seem to be interested.
is your algae different, murph? is my tang not hungry? is my greenery not algae?

 

[fishfanny79]

I have some hair and 8 tangs...none of them really touch it. I just installed a PhosBan reactor last week, so hopefully my phosphates will be in control all the time. Sometimes tangs just don't eat hair algae. Either that or they like the red, green, and brown that I feed them on a regular. LOL I have 5 algae clips going at all times. Plus I feed them meaty foods...and on occasion romaine lettuce and some spinach. They also love TheraA and frozen food. Maybe if I starved my tank, my tangs would eat the hair.

They think they are in a saltwater restaurant. My naso actually bit me and took some skin off the other day when I was feeding them.

 

[fishfanny79]

P.S. 3 of my tangs are yellows. Oh and my scopas THINKS he's a yellow.

 

[murph]

My hair algae was starting to get a pretty good foot hold, it had covered the back glass of the tank enough that you could see it swaying in the current created by the PHs and there were a few patches here and there on the LR.
Its been less than a week and the tang has pretty much mowed through all of it. I have put some calurpa in the tank from my fuge but the tang actually seems to prefer grazing on the LR and glass. He has also figured out that a much better bet for getting a cleaning is the Gobi and Gobi has started to get the same idea.
It has worked out much better than I had hoped for and the tang has pretty much become the center piece of the tank as far as livestock goes.