I have a 5 gallon 21 inch wide tank (you’re probably shuttering gearing this when I have blue tang in the title), which has about 6 pounds of live rock, and 1 clown fish. I had the clown in there for 2 weeks and it seemed to be doing really good but I wanted to add in one more fish. I went to my LFS 4 days ago to get an anemone and saw a small tank filled with a bunch of small blue tangs, I asked the man who runs the store if I would be able to put the blue tang and clown fish together in my tank (he knew the size because I told him while talkig about the tank and then later when looking at anemones he told me one was too big for my tank) so I went ahead and bought the tang for 40 bucks with an anemone. I bring him home and do all the stuff to initiate him into the tank and then put him in, he starts swimming around immediately, going through rocks, and swimming with the clown. So I thought he was going to do good. He’s still acting fine, swimming, eating. But it wasn’t until after I got him that I did some online research and you could imagine my SUPRISE when I found out they grow up to 12” and need atleast 6’.
So getting to it, I can afford to get the IM Nuvo 30 within the next 2 weeks to move him too but it will probably be more like a month for me to set it up and actually move him into it. The Nuvo 30 is 36” and I think a big improvement but obviously, not enough for his whole life. I would then be able to upgrade to a 100+ gallon tank in 1 1/2 - 2 years. He is only an inch rn and I read they grow an inch per year so I thought it would be too bad to keep him in a 36” tank until he’s 3 inches, even my clown fish is bigger than him. I’d love to keep this fish but let me know how bad it would be to keep a 1 inch blue tang in a 36” tank for up to 2 years.
TLR: didn’t know anything about blue tangs, bought one for my 5g, learned about em, planning to upgrade to a 36” Nuvo 30 for 2 years until I can buy a 100+ gallon tank, or forget all that and bring him back to the fish store.
So getting to it, I can afford to get the IM Nuvo 30 within the next 2 weeks to move him too but it will probably be more like a month for me to set it up and actually move him into it. The Nuvo 30 is 36” and I think a big improvement but obviously, not enough for his whole life. I would then be able to upgrade to a 100+ gallon tank in 1 1/2 - 2 years. He is only an inch rn and I read they grow an inch per year so I thought it would be too bad to keep him in a 36” tank until he’s 3 inches, even my clown fish is bigger than him. I’d love to keep this fish but let me know how bad it would be to keep a 1 inch blue tang in a 36” tank for up to 2 years.
TLR: didn’t know anything about blue tangs, bought one for my 5g, learned about em, planning to upgrade to a 36” Nuvo 30 for 2 years until I can buy a 100+ gallon tank, or forget all that and bring him back to the fish store.