immafishguy
Active Member
- Joined
- Sep 24, 2016
- Messages
- 172
- Reaction score
- 81
Hi guys, thought I'd do a discussion thread about these fish as I know many of us have had problems with them in the past and I also thought I'd share how I was able to have success with them in a reef tank. I'd also like to hear you guy's input as well.
The genus Acanthuridae encompasses the group of fish that includes but is not limited to: Powder Blue, Achilles, Powder brown, Gold Rim, all mimic tangs, Sohal, Orange-shoulder, etc.. Now for the sake of the thread, I'd like to keep it more focused on the group of "powder tangs" (Powder Blue, Achilles, Powder brown, Gold Rim) so to speak as they are seemingly more difficult to keep than any of the others.
The number one problem associated with these fish are their high susceptibility to ich. Now like all fish, it is possible for this group of fish to build up an immunity to them; however, the reality of the matter is that it is highly unlikely. In the 12 years of reef keeping and through the dozens of powder blues I've gone through I maybe had 1 or 2 that was actually was able to fight it. The way the fish's body is designed is not ideal for parasite prevention. The scales are small opposed to large and the slime coat is relatively thin. Furthermore, these fish are also very hyper-active and with that come more stress. More stress in turn leads to a weaker immune system, thus leading to higher susceptibility to parasites like ich. So what can we do?
First thing is always following proper quarantine. The best solution is prevention. My personal QT process is as follows:
Fresh water bath with PraziPro prior to introducing the fish into quarantine. This will take any flukes that may be present off. The dosage I use on these fish is 1ml Prazi/1 gallon of water. (RODI works fine).
TEST DAILY!!!
Ammonia (NH4): 0.00
Nitrite (NO2): 0.00
Nitrate(NO3): 10 or below (I aim to keep the nitrates as low as possible. When the nitrates get around 15 or so in a coppered environment, they usually go belly up. I've unfortunately learned that lesson the hard way many times)
Salinity:1.022-1.023: lower salinity is easier on the fish's body
Coppersafe consentration: 0.25 (coppersafe is just my personally preference).
Temp: 80-82 (I try to keep a slightly temperature to speed up any parasitic life cycle).
PH: 8.3-8.5 (Keeping a higher PH will actually help to thicken the slime coat).
Duration: 2-6 weeks (though many quarantine procedures advise 30days or more, I have been able to get away with slightly less. The key to this is to be very observant. Theoretically a fish infected with ich should be good to go after 7 days. Why? If we are strictly talking about ich, cryptocaryon irritans, the life cycle of the parasite on the fish's body only lasts from 3-7 days. Now what we need to watch for, is the appearance of ich on the fish. For the first 7 days, if the fish is infected, you should see signs of the parasite appear on the body. Around the 7th day mark, you should see very few spots or none at all. This is usually when I preform a water change.
When I preform a water change, I will typically remove the fish and do a deep clean on the QT. I scrub it down and rinse it out with fresh water. Doing this allows me to accomplish 2 things. 1.) sterilize the tank and kill any tomonts that may be adhering to the glass. (Though this will not help kill the ones possibly in the plumbing and biological filtration, it doesn't hurt.) 2.) do a 100% water change. Many of you may not like the thought of doing a 100% water change, but I've personally found it very helpful. The other thing I do is use the opportunity to give the fish a second freshwater bath. I do this again just in case any made it past the first one.
Once the Quarantine has been reset up, and the fish have gone through the bath, I'll monitor the fish for another week. The second week is very crucial as it is here where we see if ich reappears. If it does, I'll repeat the process until the fish has been visibly parasite free for 2 week (14 days). Assuming the fish never shown any signs of infection from day 1, this is when I would usually add them to the display.
The next thing to address is diet. These fish eat, a lot! They also have relatively fast metabolisms. I had a customer of mine once call them the anthias of tangs haha. I've found that having seaweed in the tank at all times helps a great deal.
The best way that I've found to do this is to take the seaweed paper and roll it with garlic and selcon in it. The supplement here is to get more vitamins to the fish and help to boot their immune system. Here's the process:
1.)lay seaweed paper flat.
2.) take dropper from selcon bottle and spread selcon evenly on the sheet.
3.) repeat with garlic
4.) hold it in half
5.) roll it perpendicular to the way you folded it.
The reason for rolling opposed to folding it is because we've all had tangs grab at nori then rip off giant chunks to then get lost and rot away. The benefit of rolling it is that they can take a real bite full but not make a mess. Which will assist in better water quality; we are trying to keep it pristine remember
.
Last thing I'm going to go over is if you already have ich in your tank. My honest opinion if you've got ich in your tank currently, or had an out break recently, is to go fallow and give yourself a new base to start from scratch with. If its been a year or so without any sign, I might feel more comfortable in that situation to go ahead and try adding one, but post QT of course haha.
The last thing I want to say is that I don't know everything, so don't by any means think I'm saying that this is the only way to do things. We are in a hobby where most of the data we have is anecdotal and on top of it, it is with living things where anything is possible.
Thanks for reading! Happy Reefing!!
The genus Acanthuridae encompasses the group of fish that includes but is not limited to: Powder Blue, Achilles, Powder brown, Gold Rim, all mimic tangs, Sohal, Orange-shoulder, etc.. Now for the sake of the thread, I'd like to keep it more focused on the group of "powder tangs" (Powder Blue, Achilles, Powder brown, Gold Rim) so to speak as they are seemingly more difficult to keep than any of the others.
The number one problem associated with these fish are their high susceptibility to ich. Now like all fish, it is possible for this group of fish to build up an immunity to them; however, the reality of the matter is that it is highly unlikely. In the 12 years of reef keeping and through the dozens of powder blues I've gone through I maybe had 1 or 2 that was actually was able to fight it. The way the fish's body is designed is not ideal for parasite prevention. The scales are small opposed to large and the slime coat is relatively thin. Furthermore, these fish are also very hyper-active and with that come more stress. More stress in turn leads to a weaker immune system, thus leading to higher susceptibility to parasites like ich. So what can we do?
First thing is always following proper quarantine. The best solution is prevention. My personal QT process is as follows:
Fresh water bath with PraziPro prior to introducing the fish into quarantine. This will take any flukes that may be present off. The dosage I use on these fish is 1ml Prazi/1 gallon of water. (RODI works fine).
TEST DAILY!!!
Ammonia (NH4): 0.00
Nitrite (NO2): 0.00
Nitrate(NO3): 10 or below (I aim to keep the nitrates as low as possible. When the nitrates get around 15 or so in a coppered environment, they usually go belly up. I've unfortunately learned that lesson the hard way many times)
Salinity:1.022-1.023: lower salinity is easier on the fish's body
Coppersafe consentration: 0.25 (coppersafe is just my personally preference).
Temp: 80-82 (I try to keep a slightly temperature to speed up any parasitic life cycle).
PH: 8.3-8.5 (Keeping a higher PH will actually help to thicken the slime coat).
Duration: 2-6 weeks (though many quarantine procedures advise 30days or more, I have been able to get away with slightly less. The key to this is to be very observant. Theoretically a fish infected with ich should be good to go after 7 days. Why? If we are strictly talking about ich, cryptocaryon irritans, the life cycle of the parasite on the fish's body only lasts from 3-7 days. Now what we need to watch for, is the appearance of ich on the fish. For the first 7 days, if the fish is infected, you should see signs of the parasite appear on the body. Around the 7th day mark, you should see very few spots or none at all. This is usually when I preform a water change.
When I preform a water change, I will typically remove the fish and do a deep clean on the QT. I scrub it down and rinse it out with fresh water. Doing this allows me to accomplish 2 things. 1.) sterilize the tank and kill any tomonts that may be adhering to the glass. (Though this will not help kill the ones possibly in the plumbing and biological filtration, it doesn't hurt.) 2.) do a 100% water change. Many of you may not like the thought of doing a 100% water change, but I've personally found it very helpful. The other thing I do is use the opportunity to give the fish a second freshwater bath. I do this again just in case any made it past the first one.
Once the Quarantine has been reset up, and the fish have gone through the bath, I'll monitor the fish for another week. The second week is very crucial as it is here where we see if ich reappears. If it does, I'll repeat the process until the fish has been visibly parasite free for 2 week (14 days). Assuming the fish never shown any signs of infection from day 1, this is when I would usually add them to the display.
The next thing to address is diet. These fish eat, a lot! They also have relatively fast metabolisms. I had a customer of mine once call them the anthias of tangs haha. I've found that having seaweed in the tank at all times helps a great deal.
The best way that I've found to do this is to take the seaweed paper and roll it with garlic and selcon in it. The supplement here is to get more vitamins to the fish and help to boot their immune system. Here's the process:
1.)lay seaweed paper flat.
2.) take dropper from selcon bottle and spread selcon evenly on the sheet.
3.) repeat with garlic
4.) hold it in half
5.) roll it perpendicular to the way you folded it.
The reason for rolling opposed to folding it is because we've all had tangs grab at nori then rip off giant chunks to then get lost and rot away. The benefit of rolling it is that they can take a real bite full but not make a mess. Which will assist in better water quality; we are trying to keep it pristine remember
.Last thing I'm going to go over is if you already have ich in your tank. My honest opinion if you've got ich in your tank currently, or had an out break recently, is to go fallow and give yourself a new base to start from scratch with. If its been a year or so without any sign, I might feel more comfortable in that situation to go ahead and try adding one, but post QT of course haha.
The last thing I want to say is that I don't know everything, so don't by any means think I'm saying that this is the only way to do things. We are in a hobby where most of the data we have is anecdotal and on top of it, it is with living things where anything is possible.
Thanks for reading! Happy Reefing!!
