I'm Starting to Dislike My Hippo Tang

[najer]

She still hides a lot and spooks easily, but she's gotten to the point that she'll make kissy face at the glass when I come close.

Love this, all my fish get kisses through the glass and will interact with me, I no nothing about fish diseases but I am trying to learn, I would also say stress.

 

[jda]

The best thing that you can do long term is to get a bunch of real ocean live rock and maybe a cup of sand from a truly established tank. They will populate the substrate and rock and any ich that falls off of the fish to want to start a new life-cycle will have to compete for their lives. I could put that blue into one of my tanks and ich would not be a problem. This is not likely eradication, but it is fool-proof control for most situations. The sterile tanks of dry sand and dry/dead rock of today are petri dishes for fish disease to flourish. ...then add in the stress of QT, TTM, etc. and this is harder than ever to have happy and healthy fish. Mine get isolated in a diverse tank with sand and rock (no meds or hypo) until they are eating and not skittish... then into the display.

Hippos are tough fish. They need well fed so that they grow an inch or two a year - most do not feed them this much. Then, they need lots of vitamins to overcome HLLE and the scars that they get from being clumsy - NLS or other HIGH QUALITY pellets are good for this. Mysis are good too along with some greens. I mostly feed them NLS pellets, some sort of pellet with high spirulina content and mysis. They also need plenty of places to disappear and hide - the arches and caves that humans make do not help and just a pile of rock that they can get back into appear to be better.

 

[Michael Gray]

Ich will always come back unless your qt all fish and also let the tank sit fallow for I believe 76 days for ich to die. Otherwise treating the blue 10 times as soon as he goes back Into a tank that has ich. It will reinfect. My blue gets scared easily and darts into the tiniest spots. He doesn't seem as bad as yours but. When he gets scared. He's a wuss

 

[Hugh Mann]

I know I should pull everything, treat them all and fallow the tank. It's exactly what I would recommend if I was reading this thread. Unfortunately that is not an option for me at this point. I currently lack the resources to house all my fish in a comfortable environment for the lengthy fallow period of ich. That, and treating them for it will be a bit more complicated. Can't copper my eel without killing/reducing its lifespan significantly, I've been told its similar with maroon clowns, and with the current state of Canadian laws, I cannot get anything else to treat the ich. Even the copper took 2.5 months to arrive from the US. TTM or hyposalinity are my only real options to treat all of them. I'm really hoping I can manage the ich until I have my 230 set up, so I can move them in as soon as they are ich free.

An update on the tang. She is still spot free aside from the belly/fin, and I still can't determine if it's ich or scrapes. Haven't seen any flashing. She's calming down a bit, but still hides if I peer into the tank to get a good look. Eats amazingly well, colour is good. With my camera, I can see she behaves like a normal tang during the day or when I'm not around the tank.

 

[Auquanut]

She's calming down a bit, but still hides if I peer into the tank to get a good look. Eats amazingly well, colour is good. With my camera, I can see she behaves like a normal tang during the day or when I'm not around the tank.

If you decide to keep her, hopefully she will relax a little bit over time. I love mine with all of her quirks.

 

[Reefing_addiction]

Well, here you can buy white worms on ebay. You only need a small amount to start with and you just grow them in a small plastic tub with potting soil and feed them bread or cat food and keep the soil moist and that is it.

I would think someone there has these things since they are food for all sorts of amphibians/fish, etc..

White worm Starter culture Organic fish/frog/newt food FREE SHIPPING! | eBay

WHITE WORM Starter colony. white worms are easy to raise, and your fish will love you for doing so! White worms are smaller cousins to earthworms that are part of natures janitorial crew.

www.ebay.com

How do you feed these to your fish

 

[Tamberav]

How do you feed these to your fish

put some plastic craft mesh on top of the soil and their food on that and you can catch them that way as they will come up through the mesh to eat.

 

[jeffchapok]

I've been managing ich successfully for a while, including with a hippo tang. I only notice the occasional speck here and there. But a couple of months back it got really bad and I lost a royal gramma to it and thought I was going to lose my female clown. That's when I discovered that the bulb in my UV sterilizer had burned out. I replaced it and within 2 days noticed the fish getting better again. Now the clowns appear ich free and I'm back to only seeing a spot or two every few weeks on my tangs. The fish aren't flashing at all.

I'm convinced that UV is a necessity to manage ich and that's the first thing I'll check if I ever see another flare up. BTW, I run my UV 24x7.

 

[kartrsu]

I’m sorry for your troubles. I also went through a tough QT process with my blue tang. Multiple copper treatments, acriflavine dips, FW dips, peroxide dips, TTM, you name it. My fish HATED me afterwards and were ultra skittish cause of all the stress I was creating. Took some time, maybe a month or so for them to realize I was source of food, before the warmed up. But honestly, anytime something was wrong like an infection / spots / scrapes / HLLE, my blue tang was the first to get all darty and shy or even aggressive to my other fish. Keeping it healthy has helped it come down a lot.