yellow tang having a deluxe dinner!?!?!

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skiflyer

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May 27, 2004
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Hi,

I just saw a horrible thing happening in my tank. My fire (blood) shrimp was walking around looking for food when all of the sudden my yellow tang started attacking him, ripping off legs and other body parts. And sure enough half an hour later the shrimp was beheaded by my yellow tang.
My question: Is this normal behavior for a yellow tang???

I'm fairly new to this hobby, and already it is getting frustrating, i don't even eat meals that cost $32. Especially frustrating because the shrimp was more expensive than the yellow tang.

Has anybody ever experienced similar>?
 

jessie

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i have a yellow tang and a hippo tang. they are in with 2 skunk cleaners, 2 peppermint shrimp and a whole bunch of crabs and i have never had any problems with them.
 

OrionGirl

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Aug 14, 2001
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Actually, very few tangs are predators--most triggers are, but tangs are omnivores, that usually eat more in the way of algae and detritus, or plankton.

Who was in the tank first? What are you feeding the yellow tang?
 

jessie

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well i thought i would let you know what i feed mine and maybe that will help. once a week i get live brime shrimp, they love it. about every other day i feed them either frozen brime or formula one. and i put seaweed salad in every day so they can have their "constant grazing food". with that i have never had any problems wiht my tangs bothering anything in my tank. with the exception of new fish. the yellow may harrass the new fish for a day or so, after that theirs no problems. maybe orions on to something. your tang might not be getting what it needs to eat. then again it might just be a mean fish... never know.
 

skiflyer

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I feed them flakes in the morning and forzen brine shrimp at night, i also always have lettuce clipped in the tank for them to graze on.
the yellow tang was in the tank first, but they have been getting along fine for a while.
 

Max

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Jan 26, 2004
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Try feeding him some seaweed instead of lettuce. Lettuce is mostly water with a little sugar and doesn't have much nutritional value. Other salad greens like kale and spinach have a lot more nutrition for your fish. However with anything from the land you're not giving your fish his natural diet and you're also introducing loads of phosphate, nitrate and other trace elements that you probably don't really want in your tank especially if it's a reef. I'd stick to natural marine foods like nori, " you can get it in the oriental section of most large supermarkets" and spirulina,"sp" flakes. The Yellow tangs at any rate need lots of room to roam around and a large amount of vegetable matter in their diets. Tang is German for weed after all. :D I have seen ,"at the lfs in crowded tanks", and heard from fellow fish keepers on line that tangs will use that little spine on there back sides to really slice up other fish that invade their territory or that look like them too much .
hth
chris
ps they need lots of room to swim too like 50+ " only if you have a lot of space with no rocks and even then good luck".
 
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