Tang Eating Corals

Zacharys22 · May 6, 2019

Hi everyone, about a month ago I bought a scopas tang and it was tiny! It has almost doubled in size now and for the past week, I noticed my corals were stayed closed a lot and not fully opening. At first, I thought it was my water parameters so I did a water change and everything checked out but the corals still weren't opening. It wasn't until I saw the scopas tang picking at my corals. My tank consists of LPS and softies. First I did was try to catch it, which took forever. The tang is currently inside my sump for the time being. It was well-fed every day but still decided to pick at the corals. Is there any suggestions on what I can do to stop this so I can move it back into the main display. As of now, I am thinking about getting rid of it to prevent this from happening again.

Fudsey · May 6, 2019

I don't think that you can change him back to not eating your corals. Once they get the taste for them they tend to continue. I'd look at maybe trying to trade him in at a LFS.

ca1ore · May 7, 2019

Generally when tangs start at your corals it’s because they’re not well fed. They’re inefficient processors of food (most herbivores are) so probably needed more. Agree that once one gets a taste of your corals there’s no getting the genie back in the bottle. Feed plenty of nori if you try again.

Jesterrace · May 7, 2019

Zacharys22 said:
Hi everyone, about a month ago I bought a scopas tang and it was tiny! It has almost doubled in size now and for the past week, I noticed my corals were stayed closed a lot and not fully opening. At first, I thought it was my water parameters so I did a water change and everything checked out but the corals still weren't opening. It wasn't until I saw the scopas tang picking at my corals. My tank consists of LPS and softies. First I did was try to catch it, which took forever. The tang is currently inside my sump for the time being. It was well-fed every day but still decided to pick at the corals. Is there any suggestions on what I can do to stop this so I can move it back into the main display. As of now, I am thinking about getting rid of it to prevent this from happening again.

Once a fish starts nibbling enough for the corals to visibly retract you really have no choice but to get rid of the fish. Tangs nibble on corals more often than folks would like to think so this doesn't surprise me. You could try nori as mentioned above but it's highly unlikely that this will get better.

Zacharys22 · May 7, 2019

Thank you for the feedback everyone! I have decided to sell the tang. I’m going to let my corals recover a while before I decide to get another. And if I do end up getting another one down the line I’ll be sure to feed it even more to prevent this!

Jesterrace · May 8, 2019

Zacharys22 said:
Thank you for the feedback everyone! I have decided to sell the tang. I’m going to let my corals recover a while before I decide to get another. And if I do end up getting another one down the line I’ll be sure to feed it even more to prevent this!

I firmly believe that like Dwarf Angels, you need to make sure that they have a healthy daily feeding of seaweed/nori to improve their disposition.