It would appear I missed a fair bit of discussion throughout the course of the afternoon. Allow me to respond chronologically.
Yes. Well done with the math. Your only problem is that fish, no matter the size, age, etc shouldn't be kept in a tank under the minimum requirements. I've seen many experienced saltwater enthusiasts state that its the minimum size FOR THE FISH. Not for the adult.
An interesting proposition. Here you are stating that the size of the fish itself is irrelevant, the only thing that matters is an arbitrary blanket number asigned not even to the individual species, but to a whole grouping of marine fishes which vary greatly in size and tendancies? Just want to clarify, please correct me if otherwise.
crister13 said:
To kdpuffer: yes it's jam packed with rocks, and in that picture, I agree with you you much. BUT usually there are caves and swimming lanes through the rock that aren't visible, so the room the rock takes up in completely free swimming space is made up by adding caves and small lanes.
I was under the impression that the general 6ft sentiment was in regards to clear, unobstructed, straight-line swimming space due to the active nature of the tang. If the fish is fine with weaving through rocks at less than full-speed, why is it opposed to weaving around a shorter tank at the same speed?
*skipping over nonsense about babies and closets etc.*
spoonman said:
I think the issue is the swimming habits of the fish and not the size of the fish. Most tangs like to zoom from end to end of the tank, while cardinals and firefish and such sit in one place most of the time.
While this can be true, I do not find it is always the case or equally so with all tang species. They do spend most of their time actively moving, but not necessarily in a straight line from end to end. Even if it were so, again I refer back to my measurements deduced earlier. A 4" tank zooming from end to end of a 36" tank is no different than a 8" fish zooming from end to end of a 72" tank, unless there is some strange logarithmic/inverse relationship between fish size/age/mass and propulsive ability.
Gboy66 said:
But as aquarists, are we out to provide the bare minimum for our creatures? Are we always thinking about how we could cram more colorful fish into our tanks by bending the needs of these fish? I certainly try not to do that. And thats not somthing i would recommend to another aquarist either. If we know a fish is a big swimmer, regardless of its current size, i feel we should add it to a tank based upon its's ADULT size.
Actually, that is more or less exactly what we do. If we were truly interested in the environmental demands of the specimens, we would never remove them from their natural habitats and subject them to life in the greatly reduced spaces that all but the largest public aquaria can afford to grant them. This whole hobby is a series of technical compromises that manage to support life in an ecosystem of a size that could not exist in such a state in nature. I understand the sentiment of granting a fish as much room as possible from an emotional standpoint, but I do not see the means by which this arbitrary figure of exact minimum size requirements has been reached, and the manner in which it is applied seems less than critically sound.
crister13 said:
Exactly. Thats one of the reasons using the math in that situation was worthless. The recommended tank size for snowflake eels is a 55g tank. They get 2 feet long. If you apply that to all fish, that would mean you could keep a fish double the size of the width of your tank and half the length. That doesn't make sense. AT ALL.
I was referring to tangs, and the math applies relative to fish of the same species which have the same basic series of requirements relative to their size. If you want to bridge the gap to other species, that is an entirely different discussion and attempting to compare the two is relatively futile. I was under the impression that the "rule" was 6ft tanks for tangs - not 6ft tanks for all aquatic specimens ever. Eels do not belong in this discussion, but if you would like to discuss that point I would be happy to do so via private means, or perhaps in a new thread.
Nu-Nu the eel said:
Guys these are the rules, and you have to respect them. If you dont then why do we have these rules in the first place? Sure you can put a tang in a 55 gallon or even a 10 gallon tank but it is wrong to do this to a creature that has been pulled out of the ocean and out of its 100+ school of tangs to be put in your aquarium. I wanted a tang for my 66 gallon tank but i didnt for these reasons ^. Gotta respect the rules.
This is no written law, no one here is obligated to respect anything that is asserted on an internet forum as the end-all be-all course of actions. To quote a movie of which I am sure you are aware, they're more of guidlines really.
The level of hypocracy in your statement is blatant - on a logical scale it seems no less significantly humane to remove an animal from its home and herd and place it in a 5ft or 6ft or 7ft aquarium. The removing and containing remains equally inhumane in all circumstances. If you want to discuss humane treatment, that is the core issue. If you want to discuss realistic methods of captive housing which promote long term survival at the greatest return in regards to capital, time, and space used, this is the place to do it. This also brings up the interesting conundrum - tangs school in large numbers in the wild, yet are rarely kept successfully in groups in aquaria, even in systems numbering on the thousands of gallons. Why is this so? I cannot say myself, but it is thought provoking none the less.
crister13 said:
Ok, I'm just asking here because I really don't know, but how much saltwater experience do you have angel? I have a yellow tang. And actually, he never swims bursts across the length of the tank. He ONLY swims in the rock, but does take up the whole tank while doing so, and this is a 6' tank, not 4'. And the reason people are arguing about the math, is that that is an invalid argument, not what I said about the snowflake eel. He actually, if you read his post, generalized it specifically to the LENGTH of the fish. Not the thickness, not the bioload, and not the behavior. So, me giving the example about the eel in fact is valid. He generalized it, I went along with the generalization and proved that behavior matters.
I will attempt to address this again in case my previous attempt was unsuccesful. Lets start from the end and work backwards. Your example of the eel is certainly valid, if we were discussing the tank requirements of eels. We are not. My implied statement, if transferred to eels, would state that a 2' eel in a 4ft tank (55g) is equivalent to a 4' eel in a 8ft tank (size of your choice...). Surely you see that this is a reasonable, valid deduction, at least in terms of physical space. The debate of tangs seems vastly centered on physical space requirements, so I was going with that. Lets move on to bioload. As the length of a fish increases, its mass (and therefore metabolic activity and waste production) increases logarithmically - a rate faster than the increase of length. A 4" fish does not weigh twice as much as a 2" fish. It weighs something more along the line of three times as much. If we are to base our stocking recommendations off of the increase in bioload relative to size, then a 4" fish in a 55g tank is better of (chemically speaking) than an 8" fish in 110 gallon tank. A 2" fish in a theoretical 27.5g tank would be better off than either. Obviously the larger the disparity between fish size (both in terms of weight and length) and tank size the better the conditions within the closed system, but realistically the proportion of size of the fish and tank is often much more useful, especially when budgets are involved and initial investment of a tank capable of housing an adult is not feasible. Many persons also purchase small specimens, and grow them to the carrying capacity of their tank size - and then sell them either to fellow hobbyist with larger facilities, or back to the LFS for profit. Is this process equally condoned on the grounds that the fish should always be housed in a tank that is capable of sustaining its adult size?
I think I covered the point about swimming in the rockwork sufficiently already, please refer to above.
crister13 said:
I stated the baby fish in min size tank because if something comes up, you're not going to be able to get rid of the fish, and therefore stress it to death. Also, people who see the fish everyday don't see them grow, even thought they do grow quite a bit. People also have a tendency to "fall in love" with their fish and end up not doing whys right for them. I actually was not being disrespectful at all. I said I don't know the answer, and was wondering if you were basing you opinion of of freshwater, where you actually have experience. And he was talking about all fish.
I think everyone understands that the fish grow to slow to see. I am looking for numbers, concrete figures to examine that represent the growth rates in terms of length/weight/age, etc. over time of the fish in question. I was not talking about all fish, I was talking about the fish to which this thread pertains - yellow tangs. Please stop trying to expand my specific examples to a larger base for which they were not intended - it helps further neither side of this discussion. If you are unsure of what precise fish I am referring to, you are welcome to ask for clarification for sake of easing the debate.
crister13 said:
Growth rate depends on water parameters, and feeding schedule/amount. I have had mine for a year and it has grown a little, but I did get it at like 5" so it is close to full grown. Also, I am having an ongoing problem with nitrates which I am doing everything to stop, so probably they grow at a decent speed.
On aside, one could consider it equally inhumane to house a fish in a tank full of nitrates (a toxic metabolite, mind you) as it is to house one in a tank that provides it with less than desirable swimming room (all aquaria, in my opinion - gotta compromise somewhere).
jlsardina said:
Agreed. MOST tangs (excluding those that would be fine in a 90, and those that require 300+ gallon) need a six foot swim room. It's not because of their size. It's because of the swimming habits.
Tangs are INFAMOUS for being easily stressed and ending up dead. If not from Ich- then something else. If we really want to get into it about Ich- look up the full life cycle. It's not over in 6-8 weeks. More like closer to 90 days. Once again- its a guideline. However- aren't there always exceptions to the rule?
You can shove 6 fish in a bio cube- but would you???
This post poses me to raise my previous question again - the seemingly infinite presence of ich in aquaria. I believe much of it stems, as you said, from the underrepresented lifespan and the amount of time it takes to fully eradicate the parasite. One would normally be inclined to argue for proper quarantine procedure, but as the tank size of the tangs are so imposing it seems a bit of a moot point does it not? Not many folks keep a 6ft quarantine tank around, or even a quarantine tank at all. I would venture that many of the premature tang deaths stem not from tank size directly, but the shock of the relocation process as a whole, as well as questionable water quality of many hobbyist tanks and other contributing factors which are often overlooked in exchange for supporting the imposed tank size requirements. There are almost always exceptions to a rule, even the rule that all tangs need a 6ft tank it would seem....
A driving force behind the perpetration of these so called stocking "rules" seems largely in part to the blind following, and regurgitating therefore of, by relatively inexperienced individuals in the hobby. While some of the rules may very well be excellent guidelines to adhere to, it seems silly to fall into the fallacy that all of them are concrete and absolutely necessary. This strikes me as nothing but irresponsible logic. If we are going to impose such strict guidelines, we must be able to support them empirically beyond a reasonable shadow of a doubt. Saying "the rules are right because they're the rules" is hogwash, no two ways about it.
If anyone would like to refute my statements in a reasonable, logical manner founded in reasoning, experience, and data, please do so. I am more than happy to discuss
Cheers!