Can't keep hippo tangs.

[travis32]

I'm frustrated, I don't know if I should just avoid these fish all together or what...

Here's my current stock list:

1. chevron tang.
2. Bi color foxface rabbit fish
3. good size malanourous wrasse (sp?)
4-5. 2 black / white clown fish.
6. 1 swallowtail angel.
7. Starry blenny.
8. rainsford Goby (he's so lost in my 125g. Lol, still see him around though).
9. Sleeper goby.
10. 5 RBTAs.
11. Green carpet nem.
12 lots of LPS - Elegance, duncans, pipe coral, acans, frogspawn, montis, etc.

Just to name some stuff that is doing awesome in my 125g tank with 30 gallon Eurobrace sump.

Everytime I introduce a hippo tang it dies. I've introduced 3, maybe 4. I love the fish, but, the longest one lived in my 125 is 4 weeks.

the last one I got was a tiny baby. It was under 1" in size. more like 1/2" probably.

He ate awesome in the fish store and was doing awesome in the fish store, highly active, and seemed healthy. I acclimated for 3 hours. The fish store water was 1.021 My water was between 1.026 and 1.027. I did a drip acclimition of 1 drop every 2-3 seconds. The lowest I've acclimated. Hoping that because their delicate nature it would have the best chance of survival. I did it in a gallon bucket. He was swimming around and doing awesome in the bucket. After 3 hours, the water was within .001 of my water. And the bucket went from 1/8 full to around half full in that 3 hours.

He was still swimming around and doing awesome when I dumped him in the tank. The lights turned off within an hour of putting him in. He swam with my clowns for a bit and they let him almost took him in as one of their own. He swam into the rocks and I haven't seen him since. That was last Sunday.

I have seen no corpses anywhere, nothing jumped out that I can tell, nothing in the sump, I moved my rocks, cleaned my glass, and no signs of him anywhere...

I'm hoping he's really scared and just hiding in a really awesome hiding place. My rainsford goby is 1/20th the size of like my swallow tail angel and Maybe even smaller, and I see him contstantly out sifting sand off rocks and stuff. My sleeper goby doesn't touch him. And if something that small thrives I would think the hippo would too. There's plenty of algae in the rocks and stuff for it to live off of if it is hiding. But, wouldn't it be out swimming around within 4-5 days. I'm pretty much assuming it's dead.

If the tiny hippo is dead, well, that makes it my 4th hippo.. I've tried, tiny, small, medium, haven't found any very large ones to try, but, so far, none of them live. All my other fish are healthy and doing awesome, with my oldest one going on 2 years old (my sleeper goby).

My temp swings between 74 and 81 (at the most). PH swings between 7.9 and 8.3. PH at times has dipped down to 7.8 due to vodka dosing.

Thanks for any input!!

[Gogandantess]

I avoid them just like I do powder blues.

[tyler206]

i think you need to buy from someone that have him for while, dont buy at fish store any more, it might help

[Ambition]

Sorry to hear that you are having a hard time keeping them. It sucks to have a tough time keeping just one specific kind of fish.

While a small hippo tang will be fine in a 125 gallon tank for a short time, the tank isn't big enough to keep one long term. They need at least an 8ft, 240 gallon tank to be kept in. One guideline I follow is, stock for the tank you have now nit the one you may have later. Also, your tank seems to be too fully stocked to be able to fit another larger sized fish.

It doesn't sound like you are QTing your fish before introducing them to your display. I highly recommend at least 4-6 weeks of QT. 8 weeks being ideal.

[A sea K]

My temp swings between 74 and 81 (at the most). PH swings between 7.9 and 8.3. PH at times has dipped down to 7.8 due to vodka dosing.



Both your PH and temp swings are excessive and possibly the culprit, I'd favor the PH to be more of an issue but a 7deg temp swing is not so good either. Put the two together and that will cause a fair amount of stress.
Your acclimation procedure sounds pretty good, 1.021 to 1.026-7 thats a pretty good jump in salinity but the 3 hr acclimation should be easy enough. Any other stressors that you noticed on introduction, most notably harassment from other tankmates?

[travis32]

the chevron is pretty territorial, so initially the tang went and hung with the clowns, they investigated it, but left it alone and the chevron tried to invade the clown territory, The clowns did their submission ritual and so did the hippo and once the chevron was satisfied it left... The angel had to investigate too... they all kinda went as a group.. LOL. or Posse. I guess I would think temperature changes in the ocean would happen regularly. PH swing is a little high, but it's always been that way. Haven't had problems with other fish. or even the most sensitive of corals. I've got some SPS that grow quite well in this setup. But, I guess, I'll just have to give up on them. Maybe one or two in 100 will be healthy enough to work out.. And well, how many does one have to go through to find that one or two. Not worth it!

[A sea K]

There is some issue that is causing it related to your system. As for temp swings in nature, not very much on a daily basis unless in a very shallow water environment where the daytime sun can cause fluctuations which would not be a normal habitat for a hippo. Normal reef areas are actually very temp stable.
It might be with the temp changes, add a more than normal PH swing and throw in several well established fish asserting dominance to the newcomer is just too much stress added for the new Hippo.
Hippo's arent that hard to acclimate IME. I've had two and no problems associated with either one. The first was around 4" and my latest one is only about an 1-1/2".

[LobsterOfJustice]

I think the temp and pH swings are pretty high, as is the difference between your salinity and the LFS. Also, when I worked at a LFS we didn't have great luck with them either, so it might not be you. Have all 4 come from the same store?

[travis32]

Two were from an online store. And two were from LFS.
Well, I thought it odd I hadn't found a corpse. I mean I do have a CUC and it's possible it ate the corpse, but, I've had other fish die and even after a couple weeks the corpse would come floating to the top even if it was 1/2 way devoured... I think I've only had one fish completely disappear on me in the tank and not get it's corpse out. I make it a point to locate corpses so as to not spread rotting fish flesh throughout my tank... Not a habbit of mine...

So, I couldn't find it's corpse or anything anywhere.. Well, my starry blenny has been living in my sump for the past month. (He keeps going in the overflows somehow, and pretty soon he's going to be too big to survive the trip. So, I left him down there to heal and recover in case he was injured on the trip down. He's been doing great so, I finally fished him out. When I did. I still saw movement out of the corner of my eye in one section of my sump. I was going to see if I could fish out the peppermint shrimp that took a trip to my sump a while back..

Well... there it was.. The baby hippo tang swimming about... It had made a home in a coral skeleton and rock that I had put in my sump. It was just swimming about doing just fine. I had fed the sump a few times a week to feed the starry blenny... Well, I guess I know who else is / was getting food. LOL.

It's so tiny, I'm not sure how I'm going to catch in the sump with the skimmer and stuff in there. Don't want it to get hurt.. So, I may leave it a little while longer. but, it's alive.

Now to make sure it's eating... I'm so happy it's still alive.. :)

[A sea K]

I dont know what other stuff besides the skimmer is in your sump but it should be fairly easy to catch the hippo. If there is a light over your sump turn it off, when you get up in the AM flip the light on and this will temporarily stun the fish making him easy to net capture.

[Andrew]

Regals are pretty hardy and not too difficult to care for. The worst part is making sure you treat for ich or else they will end up with it. Have you bought them all from the same place?

[travis32]

Well, I got the hippo out of the sump... However, it's got the same thing all the other hippos have. It's not ich... A sorta pet peeve of mine is that everyone assumes white spots is automatically crypt. I've researched alot of "white spot" syndrome online in reef fish and there are over 10,000 parasitic copepod and parasitic worm infestations that can resemble or look just like ich. The hippo's have seem to all had ankor worms of some type. this tiny one does also... Two or three leisions on it's side where a worm most likely was. It will most likely die of infection now that it has cuts in it's side. It acted hungry and seemed to eat, so that's a first compared to any of the other hippo tangs.

It's not ich though. Very nasty worms that from what I've read, they have a life cycle that can last over a year in a tank with no fish. I've been told be a reef friend that a formaline dip is about the only way to attempt to kill the worms in the fish. But, there's not a good chance of fish survival doing that.

None of the other fish I have, have any signs of ankor worms. It's only the hippos.