what temp. ???

[arpanlib]

hi,

just wanted to know what is the min and max temp. for keeping tangs ???

 

also let me know if the ICK can be cured by high temps. and low salinity levels ???

 

thanx for the help.

 

arpanlib

[Brianc_4]

If you got ick on a tang than dose his food with garlic extract, it works great without affecting he rest of your tank. There is also some good products for ick out there that are copper free, you might want use to kill the parasites that remain, so it doesn't recur. I can't give you any solid recommendations on a certain product, simply because I haven't used them. Good luck!!

[Physh1]

The best way to prevent ICK in my opinion is stability in your tank. Keep the salinity and temp from varying and that'll help a ton.

 

Garlic extract in their food is helpful but if ick breaks out anyhow a higher temp helps (high temps speed up the ick parasite life cycle) and lowering the salinity helps too (lower salinity makes it harder for them to multiply and spread).

 

Cameron

[sjpresley]

Raising the temp speeds up the parasites life cycle to speed recovery when medicating. I wouldn't do it in my display; it will probably just stress the tang, and other inhabitats, which will make them more susceptible to the disease.

 

Lowering salinity won't help either, you have to lower it past 1.010 to kill the parasite, and you'll kill pretty much everything else before that.

 

In general, these are things people used to do as last ditch efforts that have been carried over to make people feel like they are doing something.

 

Soak food in garlic extract. I did this while treating with Marine-max (bought it at Foster and SMith or That Fish Place for about $12) and cured ich on a Centropyge in my reef. Vital DNA is also proported to help fish fight off the disease. Both of these products proport (and actually seem) to have pro-biotic elements that strengthen fishes immune systems.

 

I have only heard bad things about kick-ich. Except for from the guys at the LFS; who admit they have never used it.

[LiQuiD]

Glad I took the time to post to your other thread about your icky Tang to then move down the list and notice that it has already been said 3 times over in this one. Argggh! Although the one thing I have noticed everyone saying is the garlic to the food trick. Remember the original thread, the tang isn't eating and when it does, it is feeding off his hair algae. Unless he removes his LR and sprays garlic on his algae, I don't think the garlic tactic is going to work well on a Tang with a caved in belly. The main way to cure ick is prevent ick by means of happy healthy fish. This fish is far from happy or healthy for that matter and in my honest opinion is it is all just a matter of time.

[wmfink]

Temp over 80 degrees is bad news for a tank and really bad news for a tang.

 

One thing you could try that a know works is to get a cleaner wrasse from your LFS. When I had my 55 gallon with a yellow tang it got a bad case of ich. I bought a cleaner wrasse and within minutes of putting it into the tank, the tang approached the wrasse and leaned to the side so the wrasse could do its thing. Ich was gone in a couple of days. Just make sure that the LFS will take the wrasse back b/c once the ich is gone they will slowly starve.

[Catspa]

Optimal temperature for yellow tags is "73 degrees at noon and 66 degrees at midnight" - (Reynolds and Casterlin, 1980) - Marine Fish USA and REEF 2003 Annual

[sjpresley]

Okay, say those are the optimal temps for yellow tangs from some locality. Fine.

 

Here is a sampling of mean temperatures over the course of years from different reefs.

 

Belize 79.2 - 87.1

Arno Atoll 82.7 - 87.2

Bikini Atoll 81.5 - 84.5

Enewetok 80.6 - 86.0

Great Barrier Reef 77.0 - 82.4

Guam 83.3

Johnston Atoll 82.0

Kapingamarangi 84.2 - 87.8

Pt. Moresby 83.1

Rabaul 84.7

Saipan 83.3

Tuamotu Archipelago 85.1

Ontoa Atoll 73.0 - 93.0

 

Notice how most of them average significantly greater than 80 F. And some never even sniff 80, but stay much warmer? You would have a really hard time sucessfully arguing such temps are bad news for reef inhabitants; and still a pretty hard time arguing it is bad for tanks, considering that many if not most reefers keep their tanks at 80 or above and their tanks do just fine. Mine fluctuates between 82 and 84. There are links to pics on the members board if you want to see the bad news.

 

The yellow tang is found around the islands of Hawaii, Ryukyu, Mariana, Wake Islands (and probably others). Temps:

 

Hawaii 72-84

Ryukyu 80-88

Marianas 77-84

Wake Islands 69-80

 

I don't have one, so I'm not going to tell you how to keep a yellow tang, just saying this is the information readily available.

 

I'm still thinking about the ethics of purposefully lowering tempertures to slow down metabolic rates so fish require fewer feedings and may live longer. Would you want to feel slow and sluggish all your life to hang around a couple more years?

[Dave ESPI]

I say........ !

[wmfink]

Wow. Must have hit a nerve with Steve up there. Those high-temp renegades can get pretty testy sometimes.

 

Actually, the temps referenced above are surface air temps and not actual water temps which are usually lower due to winds and currents that cause upwellings of cooler, deeper water.

 

I am sure that there are many successful tanks that have the temp over 80. It is just that disease, undesireable algae blooms and limited protein skimming efficiency (for those who use skimmers) are more prevelant at temps above 80 degrees and for a begginner or even an experienced reefer, it can make the reefing experience unpleasant.

 

According to the poll on this site, 39.9% keep there tank at 80 degrees or above and only 15.9% keep it over 81%. Doesn't sound like "most" to me. Delbeek and Sprung state in the reef- keeping bible that 74-76 degrees is ideal for a reef tank and that's good enough for me.

 

As far as purposefully lowering temps to slow down metabolic rates in fish, I don't think anyone alive would say that keeping your tank under 80 degrees slows down metabolic rates. Sounds like someone just finished watching "Vanilla Sky".

 

Anyway, got to run and go watch the war.

[sjpresley]

NONE of the above data are air temperatures (Why would you think that, like I looked them up on weather.com?), they are surface WATER temperatures, which loosely translated means within the first 10M or so depending on the study (usueally determined by water depth and water column stratification).

 

I would like to see some sources citing low 80 F temps as contributory to diseases in fish.

 

If an animal is heterothermic (like most fish), ANY temperature change affects metabolism rates. Anyone (dead or alive) that knows ANY biology would say that.

 

I don't remember the exact temp. change, but a temp difference of aroud 10 F, will roughly double the metabolism of a heterothermic animal. So yes keeping a tank at 76 as opposed to 82 will make a huge difference in fish metabolic rates (given it is not a pelagic shark or tuna; which are homeothermic).

 

Algal blooms are a husbandry problem, higher temps will accelerate the condition (but not cause it) because....you guessed it, algas are heterothermic as well and the chemical processes that plants rely on are determined by ambient temperature. As I am sure you know, the warmer the environment the faster atoms move which will speed up both passive and active chemical transport systems which drive physiological processes and in this case lead to growth.

 

Well, I said many or most. 40% is definitely MANY.

 

Anyway, I AM a beginner. I started researching to set up a tank last January. And my tank has been set up for 13 months now (Actually, 2 weeks because of the broken tank thing.) If you want to see all the problems I have had and ALL my algae (damn purple and read ###### grows everywhere) look in the members reef section. I have been trying to get more hair algae to grow to ensure there is browse for my snails and C. argi.

 

Vanilla Sky sucks, watch watch the original in Spanish (Arbe los Ojos = Open your eyes), I am sure there are subtitled versions. P. Cruz plays the same character in that one too. She is much sexier in Spanish.

 

Screw the war...it'll be there tomorrow, think I'll pop that bad boy in the VCR.

[wmfink]

Charles Delbeek and Julian Sprung "The Reef Aquarium" pgs. 225, 280. The argument regarding temperature has been made thousands of times. It was started by Dr. Ron Shimek. Here is the argument from both sides:

 

http://www.animalnetwork.com/fish2/aqfm/19...s/1/default.asp

 

To arpanlib who orignally asked the question about temp, thr main thing to remember is stability.

[sjpresley]

Seems like people are starting to listen based on changes in the hobby. How many people kept tanks above 80 F 6 years ago?

 

Interesting thing about the argument. People that study the animals, need to maintain them in the lab, do extensive field work, and have tons of data are on one side. People whose experiences are based on the hobby are on the other.