Yellow Tang fins and feeding

[wallda]

Hello, I bought a small yellow tang from a LFS about 1.5 months ago. He was in a small 10gallon tank and my 90 looked like a good home for him the 90 had been set up for about 4 months with LR, LS and fully cycled. The yellow tang did well for about 4 weeks, I was feeding him everyday. He was getting very fat so I slowed his feedings to every 2-3 days and he started looking pal and his fins started shrinking. Now I am back to feeding everyday and things are improving. Is this what I should be doing? Or am I still over/under feeding him?
DW

 

[beth]

Tangs are grazing fish and basically need to have grazing opportunties every waking moment. All fish need to eat daily. At least 2x days, preferably 3.

 

[wallda]

Beth, I feed my yellow tang a combination of Seaweed Selects and Brine Shrimp, the shrimp are not really for him, but he seems to enjoy eating them when I feed. I tried putting the seaweed in the tank as a strip attached to a rock, but he would not touch it! So I started breaking a small portion of the sheet into small pieces and dropped it in like flake food, and he eats it that way. Maybe I should try again with putting a strip attached to a rock and see if he goes for it. Thank you for the info, I will start feeding him more often.
DW

 

[beth]

Seaweed Selects and nori are basically the same thing.
wallda, I exp the same problem with putting the sheets of algae in. It would pretty much disintegrate and just end up polluting the tank. Some people have luck with doing it that way, particualarly with a few tangs in the tank. I didn't.
Even with what you are doing, you should try expanding that diet as much as possible. For Mr. Skinny Tank, try offering leafy green romaine lettuce, taking the dark green parts and offering it to the tang on a lettuce clip. This lettuce will not diintergrate. It may take a few days for the tang to figure it out, but he will. If he will eat spinach, that would even be better than the romaine. Get some more variety in to your fishs' diet...all the fish. What you are offering is just enough variety there to provide what fish need.
What type tank do you? LR, reef?

 

[wallda]

My tank is a 90 gallon that is $lowly becoming a reef tank. I have been buying fully cured live rock a$ I can afford it and adding it to the tank. In the end it will be a full reef tank. I will try the lettice/spinach idea cause I can get some great stuff from work and will let you know how it goes.
DW

 

[beth]

Sounds like a plan! Let us know how it goes.

 

[beth]

What's the difference? There are several varieties of seaweed selects that is sold for the hobby, including the red seaweeds. However the nori pkg I had [some time ago, mind you] was basically the same stuff. Smelled the same too! I didn't do the taste test, though. My tangs never liked either nori or selects, thus I had to go to the land leafs. Now nori might have some salt in it or something...