Very shy new Blue Hippo Tang

[Kiko]

: On Saturday afternoon/evening I added a healthy looking Blue Hippo Tang to my tank, and it has hidden in the back corner ever since. I feel bad for the fish, it kind of props itself on the live rock and the side of the tank and rests. A few times I have seen it poking around the reef, peeking around, but it mostly rests in its corner. There is some green algae back there, and I have seen it eat a bit. When it swims, it swims normally.

I picked this one out, over another, more active blue tang, due to its smaller size, about 2 inches. It was in a tank with two percula clowns, and was staying away from them. I have two perculas, one med. one small, that stay on the opposite side of the tank, where they like to hang out. They got along great with the Convict Tangs I had in there, but I moved the Convicts out make room for the Blue Tang.

My 55 gal is full of live rock and is getting overgrown with various green algaes. I had hoped that a "grazer" like the Blue Tang would be very happy there. The Convicts grazed non stop and grew really fast -I never had to feed them.

Is there hope for my Tang?

 

[e-cat]

if you just put him into the take then give him some time too setle in and build some confidence.

 

[jamal-188]

Yeah, it's only been a couple days, some of my fish have been shy for a week or more. My copperband butterfly I got saturday hasn't even eaten anything yet and just hides in a little cave but I'm sure he'll come around in the next couple days.

 

[Kiko]

Thanks for the advice.

The Tang came out after two days of hiding, floating, and leaning on things and is eating well now. There is a ton of algae in there for it too eat, and it spends its time picking at different varieties of sea weed and swimming with my two clown fish. It looks fat after pigging out all day yesterday.

Upon closer inspection, the tang has some small, white, dusty looking spots on it near one of its gill openings. If this is ich, would a cleaner shrimp be able to get rid of it? As the tang continues to eat and get healthier, would the ich subside?