Lazy herbivores!

[joseph scott]

sometimes I withhold nori when I see an increase in algae in the tank. I look at my fat yellow tang, and foxface, and I think you lazy fish! No Nori for you! But I have never been able to hold out on them for more than a couple of days. So I’ll buy more snails for my valentini puffer, and melanaris wrasse to snack on....anyone else feel this way?

 

[James M]

Can’t blame the fish for not eating nuisance algae

 

[User1]

Well, you could always make it a bit more difficult for them and feed less. It is actually the opposite for me. Both my Rabbit and Lt. Tang scour the rocks even after finishing off the nori sheet. In fact my Lt. Tang was downing two sheets a day at first then scaled it back to one between the two. I've even cut that in half to help promote their work among the rocks. Seems to work and their bellies are still plump (I just don't tell them).

They key to snails is balancing the numbers to manage the problem but not starve. That and also keeping predators of snails at bay. Too many snails too fast and they'll make short work of the algae and then slowly die off. My current tank is 210 that completed the cycle in April. I moved over my 40 breeder around the 15th of April. Algae slowly started to take over has all newly cycled tanks do with the phases and all but it was somewhat always managed. Last two months I started to get a really thin thick green algae that the Tang would pick on but not clear out faster than it grew. So had to order some snails.

It took them less than 10 days to get 90% of it cleaned out...

 

[Frtdrmrose7]

My PBT will eat any algae he can find and he still gets a sheet of Nori daily.

 

[KrisReef]

sometimes I withhold nori when I see an increase in algae in the tank. I look at my fat yellow tang, and foxface, and I think you lazy fish! No Nori for you! But I have never been able to hold out on them for more than a couple of days. So I’ll buy more snails for my valentini puffer, and melanaris wrasse to snack on....anyone else feel this way?

Last thing I would do would be to add more snails, as they are destined to become snacks for your wrasse and other fish who will then poop them out and feed the algae your tangs are ignoring and make things worse in the tank. You need to be tough! Do what I do, and yell at the fish, something like:
"No more food for anybody until you lazy tangs eat all of that filthy algae outta there!"

Not really, but I do cut back on all rations when my algae starts growing faster than my cuc & fish can keep up with. If I have excess algae I have excess food that my system is not dealing with. I like thin fish.

 

[joseph scott]

My main problem algae is some sort of short, fuzzy, tough Brillo pad like algae. It is so tough that it is mostly impervious to my best algae eliminator the old toothbrush!

 

[mort]

Withholding nori isn't the answer. Tangs and rabbitfish get lazy because they fill up on higher protein foods like mysis, pellets etc. Algae is lower in nutrients so they have to really eat a lot to get the same as the average pellet food.
In the wild they graze all day because they have to, in our tanks we give them a high calorie buffet a couple of times a day so they are less inclined to show their natural behaviour. So I'd keep the Nori but reduce the other foods slightly for a while.