Powder Blue Tang

[gntinboden]

My newly acquired powder blue tang does not seem to know how to eat foods that are offered to it in the tank. I have tried flake, mysis, seaweed clips, and colerpa algaes. For the first 5 days it would not even look at any of these items. It now is starting to try to eat but is getting thin and I dont want to loose it. Wandering what is the best food for this fish and how can I get it to eat. I feel this fish came right from the ocean and bounced off their warehouse aquarium to mine and did not know what to eat. What do these fish eat primarily in the wild.

 

[kjr_trig]

Powder Blue's are algae grazers in the wild, but may not like eating nori off a clip, here is good way to get them to eat more "naturally" similar to how they eat in the wild.
Take a strip of seaweed (Nori or any commercially available, prepared seaweed strips) and soak the strip completely in water for about ten minutes or until it is sufficiently soft and slimy. Then take a four-inch section (the length doesn’t really matter, but four inches is convenient) of either one inch or one-and-one half PVC pipe and wrap the wet seaweed around the PVC. Secure the seaweed in place with a couple of rubber bands.
Place the seaweed wrapped PVC in the sun and allow it to dry, may take several hours. As it dries, the seaweed will glue itself like cement to the PVC pipe. After that, simply removed the rubber bands and place the seaweed encrusted PVC in the aquarium. Herbivorous fishes will be attracted to the seaweed and will scrape the algae off the pipe as opposed to tearing it from an algae clip: a much more natural way to eat for herbivores.

 

[stevedave08]

Originally Posted by kjr_trig
http:///forum/post/3204531
Powder Blue's are algae grazers in the wild, but may not like eating nori off a clip, here is good way to get them to eat more "naturally" similar to how they eat in the wild.
Take a strip of seaweed (Nori or any commercially available, prepared seaweed strips) and soak the strip completely in water for about ten minutes or until it is sufficiently soft and slimy. Then take a four-inch section (the length doesn’t really matter, but four inches is convenient) of either one inch or one-and-one half PVC pipe and wrap the wet seaweed around the PVC. Secure the seaweed in place with a couple of rubber bands.
Place the seaweed wrapped PVC in the sun and allow it to dry, may take several hours. As it dries, the seaweed will glue itself like cement to the PVC pipe. After that, simply removed the rubber bands and place the seaweed encrusted PVC in the aquarium. Herbivorous fishes will be attracted to the seaweed and will scrape the algae off the pipe as opposed to tearing it from an algae clip: a much more natural way to eat for herbivores.
That's a great method. I'm going to do that for my fishes. I have a blue hippo tang, purple tang, and an LMB that eat the seaweed off the clip, but they all get super aggro when I put it in the tank and end up ripping it off the clip and it just floats around with them pecking at it until it's gone.

 

[mastertech]

+1 That sounds like a great method of feeding! i'll try it.

 

[24saltydog]

That is a nice idea but why go through all that work. Just get a piece of rubble rock and rubberband nori to it. The fish will still eat off the rock the same way. IMO the less work I have to do the better.