Tang eating my gorgonians!!

[FishAndAquatics]

Hi there. I have a 3 inch orange shoulder tang and for some reason, it will destroy and eat all my gorgonians and sea fans but won't pick at anything else except that. Why is he doing that and how do I get him to stop?! He's eaten probably like 150$ worth of these things.

[Genera]

Maybe they look like algae? What kind of gorgonians are they? Scientific names would be helpful!

[FishAndAquatics]

Purple frilly gorgonian, purple sea whip, red sea fan, and a purple sea fan! Very large pieces and just shreds them

[FishAndAquatics]

Oh and he won't even touch the blueberry sea fan. That's the only one he hasn't touched. And sorry, I just saw that you wanted scientific names!

Pseudopterogorgia elisabethae is purple frilly

Pseudopterogorgia sp. is purple whip

Gorgonian sp. is purple and red sea fan

I can't find out the exact name for the red and purple

[ca1ore]

Probably now it has developed a taste for gorgs there is nothing you can do. Sounds like an underfed fish though. What do you feed it?

[FishAndAquatics]

He eats mysis cubes, brine shrimp cubes, mega marine angelfish food, pellets, flakes, and nori.

I feed 3 cubes of mysis, 1 brine shrimp cube, and one mega marine angelfish cube, a small sprinkle of flakes and pellets, and 3 strips of nori a day. I always thought I was over feeding them a little bit, but I'm not 100%

[ca1ore]

OK, that is not an underfed fish, clearly :lol: Just bad luck probably. That it is not eating the non-photosynthetic blueberry suggests it's after the zooanthelle algae. I think you'll have to choose between fish and gorgs.

[Genera]

Does your purple or red sea fan look something like this (a different color of course)? If so, where'd you get it?!

http://reefguide.org/pix/venusseafan1.jpg
http://www.mexfish.com/fish/rsfan/rsfansnowa.jpg

Also, I think you tang though one of them looked a bit like algae, so he took a nibble and though wow that tastes good, so he started to eat more and more of them, and has a taste for them now. The blueberry gorgonian is non photosynthetic, which may be why he doesn't eat it, compared to the photosynthetic ones, but I have no idea why. How do you keep the blueberry alive?

[FishAndAquatics]

Thanks for the replies! Yep! The red and purple sea fans are those exact ones! About 8 inches and super cool! I bought them at seasidetropicalfish in Huntington CA for 55$ each. The blueberry, ( 55$) I bought at the same place and is about 10 inches and eats reef snow and pods! I always have luck with those hard to keep animals too! It's doing fantastic in my tank so far and I keep it in a shadier spot because when they're under direct light, they have an algae buildup which kills them, and I have very strong flow on all of them to make sure they get their proper nutrition and it keeps the macro algae from sticking to them. I really don't want to get rid of the tang, but the sea fans are very rare, so I guess I might have to give him to a friend of mine :fish2::mixed:

[FishAndAquatics]

You totally have to go to seasidetropicalfish! They carry nudibranches, exotic staghorn hermit crabs, sea fans, blue, rainbow BTA's, and they even have 15 inch acro and poci pieces with acro crab hitchhikers in them! It's so worth the trip.

[Genera]

Sadly, I'm not in California. If I ever take a trip to CA near Huntington, I'll definitely check it out, I looked at their virtual tour on google street view, and it's pretty cool.