Getting a Biota Tang to eat

[liudachris]

Hi all, just received a small biota yellow tang in the mail yesterday. Drip acclimated and into the DT. He's swimming around and exploring but won't eat anything offered. I have tried flakes, mass-stick, and nori. How long does it take for them to come around and start eating? @Biota_Marine
Thanks in advance.

 

[blaxsun]

Try rubber banding a 1/4 sheet of seaweed to a small, flat rock. This encourages and nurtures natural feeding instinct of most fish.

 

[Biota_Marine]

Hi all, just received a small biota yellow tang in the mail yesterday. Drip acclimated and into the DT. He's swimming around and exploring but won't eat anything offered. I have tried flakes, mass-stick, and nori. How long does it take for them to come around and start eating? @Biota_Marine
Thanks in advance.

Hey Chris, we generally advise against drip acclimating because it increases the stress from shipping. You can find our acclimation guide on our website here: https://shop.thebiotagroup.com/pages/acclimation-guide .

That being said once they acclimate to the new environment they typically go after pellet feeds first. You can try TDO or DKI pellets because that is what we're feeding at our facility, after that some of Hikari's spirulina enriched brine shrimp is a great way to get algae in their diet along with nori and grazing.

 

[jda]

These fish do not know that what you are feeding them is food. Another fish will have to show them how, or it will take time for them to just figure it out on their own. I have some captive bred rabbitfish that won't even eat Ulva or nori whereas a wild one will eat all that it can reach in the first few hours.

 

[Biota_Marine]

These fish do not know that what you are feeding them is food. Another fish will have to show them how, or it will take time for them to just figure it out on their own. I have some captive bred rabbitfish that won't even eat Ulva or nori whereas a wild one will eat all that it can reach in the first few hours.

Our captive bred yellow tangs are fed prepared foods like pellets, masstick, and nori from a very young age. They're familiar with a wide variety of prepared foods readily available to aquarists and will recognize these as food. Appetite loss is usually due to stress, but they can recover quickly in good conditions. We recommend feeding them small pellet foods like the DKI 0.8mm or TDO B2 pellets the next morning after they arrive. Here is a video showing the yellow tangs in our facilities eating nori, pellets, and masstick:

 

[secret_reefer337]

When I got mine, it didn’t eat the first day. The next day it is in contest with the rest of the “giant” tangs. Maybe yours is still acclimating to the new surroundings and don’t feel so safe being around other fish. Give the baby tang time to get used to your tank and other inhabitants, it will surely eat well soon.

 

[liudachris]

We got ours to munch on some nori by tying it to the rock work. Hope we can get him on mass stick or something else later bc nori everyday would be a pita.

 

[jda]

I know that they eat at your place. They do not always know what mysis shrimp and other types of food are. It can take them a while to figure it out. I feed flakes and pellets too, so I have never had a problem with this. I got a biota yellow tang and it followed mysis shrimp around for a few days, while eating other things, looking at it in amazement before it finally saw my other fish eat it and decided to try some.

My whole point is that CB fish do not always act like wild ones... mostly in good ways since they eat prepared foods and stuff, but there are still some learning curve things too.

 

[Rpaulin]

I received my baby Yellow Tang on Thursday 7/27 as well. I followed Biota’s acclimation procedures to the letter, kept the lights off, let the baby rest, etc. etc. I also have it in its own little QT/Observation tank and plan on waiting a couple of weeks before introducing to my DT (which will then be in an acclimation box). After I put it in the QT, I waited a couple of hours and then dropped in a few teeny tiny pellets…it darted right to them, kind of played around with them, nibbled on them, spit them out, then went back for it when it realized, hey, I like this! Since then it’s been eating like a champ! So cute to watch….here’s a picture on Day 1…it’s Day 3 now and it’s already coloring up nicely!