New Fish & Refugium questions

[TheChad]

Hey all,

I just got a new fish, it's a Yellow-eyed kole, and I picked it because he was very active. I have had a few different tangs in the past, but every single one of them didn't eat much algae, they would rarely pick at the rocks and wouldn't eat the seaweed strips that I would hang.

However this Yellow-eyed kole is EXTREMELY active and while he's only maybe 3" long, I watched him for about an hour just go absolutely NUTS picking at all the rocks in the tank, he seemed to like the hair algae the best, grabbing huge bites of it.

Now all my other tangs I've had would eat mysis shrimp with the rest of the fish, but at least so far the Yellow-eyed kole wasn't even interested in the shrimp or the seaweed strip I provided, he was plenty happy with the natural algae...

Obviously this is GREAT, however I am a bit worried that eventually he'll eat all the natural algae and not eat anything else, then die. Is this something I should be concerned about? Is it possible that he's just really hungry from lack of feeding at the LFS? He's only been in my tank a couple of days, so I'm sure he's still getting use to things...



Now to my second question, about a year ago I had a custom sump built for me, which has a built in refugium, I put 1 bottle of reef mud on the bottom, then some black sand on top of that. The refugium area is about 15"x15"x15". I also put 3 fist size rocks in there. I never put a light or any macro algae in there, until 2 days ago.

I just bought a hand full of cheato algae and a Coralife 11" T-5 light which has 2 6w T-5's... Is this enough light for the Cheato algae? Is this all I want/need in the refugium? Should I put anything else in there? I know there are already tons and tons of pods, tiny snails, mini stars, and some other bug type critters... Also the Coralife T-5 light came with 1 actinic built and 1 regular bulb, is this okay or should I change one of the bulbs?


Thanks for the help,

-TheChad

[melosu58]

According to your first question he`s a herbivore and he will eat vegatable matter. Most like likely you`ll always have algea trying to start somewhere and he`ll keep it in check. Just keep those dried seaweed strips out. Mine is 8 yrs old and he`s just as hyper as ever and I dont have much algea in mine either. You`ll be OK. You should be OK on the macro algea.

[Fishguy2727]

I would have more light on a fuge than that, mine is smaller and has 2 27watt screw-in compact fluorescent flood lamps from Home Depot. Macroalgae is naturally in very shallow water in tropical areas so it gets and loves tons of light. The more light it has the faster it grows and the more nutrients it removes.

Why is there so much algae in the tank? There shouldn't be enough hair algae for a tang to be chowing down on huge chunks of it.

Try to get the tang converted over to prepared foods sooner than later. Dried seaweed is popular and most tangs have no problem taking to it. I mainly feed and recommend New Life Spectrim Thera+A pellets.

[TheChad]

The algae is from my sump/fuge being down for about 3 months with a plumbing leak, so no skimmer, uv, etc..

Also I havent had a sand sifting fish in quite ahwile so the sand doesn't get turned over.

All that with MH lighting, grows alot of algae..


-TheChad

[melosu58]

As I mentioned earlier they are herbivores. Make sure they have plenty of vegetable matters like sea weed and spirulina.

[Fishguy2727]

Nassarius snails will help with the sandbed.

[TheChad]

Originally Posted by Fishguy2727

Nassarius snails will help with the sandbed.

Yeah I have 3-4 of them, I also have a sand sifting sea star, but none of them move the top of the sand enough to stop algae from growing on it..

I have found that the ONLY thing that works for keeping the sand white 100% of the time is a Diamond Watchman Goby!

-TheChad