Naso Tang (Lipstick variety)

[WDLV]

I've got a "lipstick tang" that I've had for about a week.  I have yet to see this guy eat.  I've tried several types of flake food, pellet food, live brine, frozen brine, spirulina enriched brine, brown seaweed selects algae, and formula two frozen algae.  He has pecked at the seaweed selects and frozen brine but usually spit it out.  I say him peck at some caulerpa once and see him peck at some hair algae in the tank.  Now hes developed some black spots and loves to hang out with the cleaner shrimp.  Does anyone have any advice for either of these two problems?  Is he a goner?

[dgasmd]

Well, some fush can be tricky to get to eat. If you soak the nori or seaweed select on some garlic, it may help some. As we learned from our last speaker in the last meeting at the NAIB, you could put him in a sort of quarentine tank and put B12 in the water. It is an appetite stimulant and will amke him go nuts for food. Then feed him. After a week of this, he should be ready to eat the glass in the tank. I ahve eprsonally never tried this, but the guest speaker does this to most of her fish with great success. If I find her email around, which I think I have lost (Tom Walsh should have it), I will post it so you can ask her directly.

In my very limited experience, naso tangs are the least prone to get ick. They can develop more readily these black spots (parasites) that you are seeing. I had this happened to a yellow tang and after a while he got rid if them on his own. The cleaner shrimp should definately help. If this is a fish only set up, you could try lowering the salinity also.

Sorry I can't provide you with more help.

Alberto

[chideloh]

Naso's favorite food is the grape caulerpa, so if you can get some of that feed that to it. It will also eat lettuce and other caulerpa. If you have a refugism take stuff out of there and feed different caulerpa to it.

I find them to be very finicky eaters. Unless you have abundance of caulerpa in your tank, it probably won't do too well.

HTH

[AquariaUSA]

Be sure to get the refugium going! All Naso species usually have higher diet requirements than the others, and should be fed a couple times per day if possible. Macro algaes are very important to keep them super happy. When they are big enough, they will take anything you put in the tank via hand feeding methods, so make sure you acclimate them over to accept hand feeding. I can "grab" most of our Naso species out there, and hand feed them if needed, but usually all I have to do is walk up to a tank. Frozen Krill, Mysis, and Squid cubes soaked in Selcon and Garlic will help them battle the black spots. Cleaners will keep the black spot population down, so should not be a problem.

Thanks for the great suggestions. I finally got him to eat the Formula Two last night. Hopefully he will continue. http://www.cmas-md.org/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

[chideloh]

How's your naso doing?

[mhossom]

Nasos like grape caulerpa, huh! http://www.cmas-md.org/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/tounge.gif

do you guys think that they get too big for a 120?

btw, tomorrow I'm removing all of the rock from my tank and scrubbing all of the Macro off of it.

I have enough in my refugium to feed the Naso for after he finishes cleaning my tank.