Naso Tang not eating

[Utkarsh]

Bought a new naso tang, wasnt eating from day one. Its day 4 and its still not eating. The tang developed ich on day 3, i am slowly ramping up cupramine to 0.5
But i am finding hard to feed this tang.
I have tried ocean nutrition flakes formula 1&2, red seaweed nori, green seaweed nori, brown seaweed nori. NLS marine pellets, live brine shrimp, frozen shrimps.
Yet to feed frozen bloodworms and frozen mysis cubes. But i dont think it will eat those. So wont pollute the water further.
Any suggestions what to do, i have read numerous post before writing here, it seems naso tangs are hard to feed. What should i do?

 

[Utkarsh]

Bought a new naso tang, wasnt eating from day one. Its day 4 and its still not eating. The tang developed ich on day 3, i am slowly ramping up cupramine to 0.5
But i am finding hard to feed this tang.
I have tried ocean nutrition flakes formula 1&2, red seaweed nori, green seaweed nori, brown seaweed nori. NLS marine pellets, live brine shrimp, frozen shrimps.
Yet to feed frozen bloodworms and frozen mysis cubes. But i dont think it will eat those. So wont pollute the water further.
Any suggestions what to do, i have read numerous post before writing here, it seems naso tangs are hard to feed. What should i do?

@Humblefish @4FordFamily @melypr1985 @HotRocks

 

[sean rand]

Looks like it has black ich also aka a type of flukes

 

[Sarah24!]

Hello,

I would use a good frozen mysis with frozen spineral food mixed with some Probiatic flake food. Then (key point) use two cap fulls or garlic guard every single time you feed.
The garlic guard entices them to eat. Has always worked flawlessly even which a few of my fish had stress ick. Good luck my friend.’

 

[Utkarsh]

Hello,

I would use a good frozen mysis with frozen spineral food mixed with some Probiatic flake food. Then (key point) use two cap fulls or garlic guard every single time you feed.
The garlic guard entices them to eat. Has always worked flawlessly even which a few of my fish had stress ick. Good luck my friend.’

Thank you, will surely feed frozen mysis. The above mentioned food which i have given to this naso, i soaked each and every item in freshly prepared garlic juice. Dont have garlic guard, and what i believe garlic guard is also just garlic juice. So prepared a freshly prepared juice, but the fish isnt showing any interest.

 

[Mjrenz]

Bought a new naso tang, wasnt eating from day one. Its day 4 and its still not eating. The tang developed ich on day 3, i am slowly ramping up cupramine to 0.5
But i am finding hard to feed this tang.
I have tried ocean nutrition flakes formula 1&2, red seaweed nori, green seaweed nori, brown seaweed nori. NLS marine pellets, live brine shrimp, frozen shrimps.
Yet to feed frozen bloodworms and frozen mysis cubes. But i dont think it will eat those. So wont pollute the water further.
Any suggestions what to do, i have read numerous post before writing here, it seems naso tangs are hard to feed. What should i do?

Using cupramine probably isn't helping, that's an ionic copper which is more risky to use with nasos
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/fish-and-treatment-guidelines-with-chart.283450/
A chelated copper like copper power or chloroquine phosphate would be a safer treatment for him

 

[HotRocks]

I do prefer copper power as well. The Naso has always been a difficult fish for me to get eating in QT. Live brine will usually do the trick.

They usually start eating nori before they will eat frozen foods as well.

 

[Utkarsh]

I do prefer copper power as well. The Naso has always been a difficult fish for me to get eating in QT. Live brine will usually do the trick.

They usually start eating nori before they will eat frozen foods as well.

Copper safe isnt easily available where i live, plus cupramine has worked just fine in treating other tangs as well, purple tang, whitecheek tang and kole tang.

As for eating part, i fed live brine the fish is outright refusing, even ordered red seaweed and brown seaweed specially for this tang. My other tangs and foxface chomp on regular green nori.
But this tang isnt eating at all.
Feeling quite helpless, this way this tang will wither away soon. What more can i do?
If this tang survives 14-15 days of cupramine treatment without eating, i am thinking of putting it directly in qt, i have read in many posts that then naso starts to graze on live algae present on rocks. Is this a suitable idea?

 

[Mjrenz]

Copper safe isnt easily available where i live, plus cupramine has worked just fine in treating other tangs as well, purple tang, whitecheek tang and kole tang.

As for eating part, i fed live brine the fish is outright refusing, even ordered red seaweed and brown seaweed specially for this tang. My other tangs and foxface chomp on regular green nori.
But this tang isnt eating at all.
Feeling quite helpless, this way this tang will wither away soon. What more can i do?
If this tang survives 14-15 days of cupramine treatment without eating, i am thinking of putting it directly in qt, i have read in many posts that then naso starts to graze on live algae present on rocks. Is this a suitable idea?

@HotRocks is MUCH more knowledgeable than I am at all of this but you could also try hyposalinity, it is much easier on the fish. The only problems with it is that it will kill most stains of ich but not all and if a disease pops up that must be treated with copper he will need to be taken out of hypo before being treated.

 

[4FordFamily]

I do prefer copper power as well. The Naso has always been a difficult fish for me to get eating in QT. Live brine will usually do the trick.

They usually start eating nori before they will eat frozen foods as well.

This exactly. Red nori, small amounts rubber banded to a rock would be my suggestion as this mimics it’s natural grazing. Red nori seems to be more appealing to finicky tangs.

Live blackworms in very small quantities may work as well.

Naso of that size tend to eat eventually if healthy. As said they do often start with nori.

 

[dieselkeeper]

I once had a naso tang would only eat romaine lettuce when I first introduced him in the tank. Romaine has no nutritional valve. But it do get him to start tasteing/eating other foods. Naso tangs are usually pigs. Hope he starts eating for you.

 

[NoobReeefer]

i had a naso that was a very finicky eater in qt as well....he would only eat live black worms or frozen blood worms, i soaked the frozen blood in selcon. once he went into the main display there was plenty of algae for him to pick at but after a few weeks he went MIA i think he went carpet surfing and one of the dogs ate him lol

 

[George81]

I had a powder brown a few months ago that didn’t make it. It wouldn’t eat either, no matter what I offered for 5 days, I never checked to make sure it was eating at the store. Lesson learned, now I ask them to feed the fish and make sure they actually eat and don’t spit it up, and make sure they don’t casually pick at the food either.
I had him in copper because I bought him from the store where he was already in copper.
It turns out it was flukes he had, and was too far gone to save, The flukes showed up on the 4th day, did a fresh water dip and flukes fell off, I dosed prazipro with the copper, heavily aerated with 2 air stones, he was dead less than 8 hours later.
I’ve since changed the way I qt, I’ll do the two rounds of prazipro first unless I absolutely have to do copper first.

 

[Mjrenz]

I had a powder brown a few months ago that didn’t make it. It wouldn’t eat either, no matter what I offered for 5 days, I never checked to make sure it was eating at the store. Lesson learned, now I ask them to feed the fish and make sure they actually eat and don’t spit it up, and make sure they don’t casually pick at the food either.
I had him in copper because I bought him from the store where he was already in copper.
It turns out it was flukes he had, and was too far gone to save, The flukes showed up on the 4th day, did a fresh water dip and flukes fell off, I dosed prazipro with the copper, heavily aerated with 2 air stones, he was dead less than 8 hours later.
I’ve since changed the way I qt, I’ll do the two rounds of prazipro first unless I absolutely have to do copper first.

Fenbendazole is also a "newer" option for treating flukes, it is also effective for prazi resistant strains of flukes
https://humble.fish/fenbendazole/

 

[Utkarsh]

I once had a naso tang would only eat romaine lettuce when I first introduced him in the tank. Romaine has no nutritional valve. But it do get him to start tasteing/eating other foods. Naso tangs are usually pigs. Hope he starts eating for you.

Would definitely try romaine lettuce today. Thanks for your suggestion.

 

[John Hughes]

Try some Bok Choy, mine attacks it! Pelleted food will stay together longer giving him a chance to taste it in the water and find it on the bottom of the tank.

 

[ngoodermuth]

Were you able to treat the Black Ich? Could be contributing to his lack of appetite.

 

[Sailfinguy21]

Dang i guess i got lucky on my blonde naso.. day one he ate even after he got ich. He eats so much nori and flakes ill feed him like 5x a day and hell still eat.. he even eats other fishes poo when they poo nori flakes.. its gross lol.

The fish i have a imppssoble time to get to eat are kole tangs and tomini tangs. They just want to eat stuff on the rocks or glass.

Also i suggest you never use prazopro on the naso tang. I did once for what looked like black ich.. and he bloated 2x his normal size and stopped eating.. it look lile his anal area was coming out of his body too from the bloating.. i immediatly put him in a different tank and he thankfully went back to normal.. ive read this online of other ppl having the same issue.

The black dots are just from where the ich cysts fell off.


If he actually has black icj.. just do hyposalinity.. my tang handled hypo all the way down to 1.007 for a month.. Hypo will kill black ich it will also kill most flukes as well as normal ich

 

[Lissa1987]

Bloodworms...Only thing I could get my blonde naso to eat and he was Literally skin and bones....However as soon as I found that was the only thing her would eat, I discovered I was severely allergic to them... Thankfully though once he had starting eating with them, i was able to switch him to frozen...Mine never would eat the red Nori...

 

[Utkarsh]

Update on the tang
I had tied brown nori and red nori to 2 small rocks respectively, and left it there the tang automatically started pecking first at brown nori after 2 days. Now the tang eats nori, and has eaten both nori.
Isnt touching any kind of frozen food or live brine shrimp and i aint feeding those now, when its eating nori.

As for the ich and black ich part, i treated this fish for prazipro and cupramine right away at 0.5, didnt dose next batch of prazi, instead dosed seachem metroplex directly in water. The fish was having intestinal worms as it excreted only once completely white stringy poop.
So i continued dosing metroplex in water every 48hrs, the fish is now eating, havent noticed if it still has intestinal worms.
It doesnt have ich now, but will complete full 16 day treatment of cupramine.
Dont know about black ich, it is not present on the fish at the moment.
Plus i am not much concerned about the black ich, as when ill transfer this fish in DT, i have 3 halichoeres wrasse, someone will munch on these black ich for sure.

Special thanks to @4FordFamily for the idea of tying the nori to the rock, it worked like a charm. And thanks to all of you for all your inputs, great community.