large tang small tank

....please read everything in the post before trying to crucify me lol

alright a friend of a friend of mine just had a tank break down and i got a bunch of LR and stuff for free because he was moving to florida. the size of his tank was a 30 tall (24Lx12Wx24H) and in the tank was probably 40-50 lbs of fiji rock and the inhabitants of the tank was a maroon clown, 3 stripe damsel, and a blue hippo tang. a large hippo tang at that ~6+ inches and fat as a pig beautifully colored etc just plain healthy. he said he had gotten the tang probably atleast 6-7 years ago when it was only like 1/2" long when he was still to tank keeping and the tang had grown up happy and healthy since then. upon the break down i took the fish since they wouldnt have a home anymore and found homes for everything but the tang who is for no presiding in my 55(double his orignal tank length/size) and hes still fat healthy and beautifully colored etc with no problems other than his tail fin a little shredded(from when we were fishing him out during the break down he wedged himself between a few rocks hiding). My plan for him is actually to move him to a larger tank when my friend gets a problem fixed with his 450g he'll probably be moved there.

now hes happy, healthy, fat, colored nicely, friendly, and eats just about anything i put in the tank etc and has been just like that since his previous tank which was half the size. is it actually possible for a tang to be perfectly content with a tank this small because it baffles me. however i do have to admit his swim patterns are nothing like other tangs ive seen....i have an mp10 which i keep set to wave mode and he likes to kind of just go up and down and stay in the same spot while "surfing" the flow from the mp10 lol and thats what he does for the most of the day and every once in a while he'll go swim through the caves i have set up in the tank but never really shows any interest in swimming the length of the tank...hes been in my tank for almost 3 weeks now still awaiting his potential new bigger home to have some kinks worked out of it

i know its not typical for tangs to be happy healthy etc in smaller tanks and i definitely wouldnt recommend someone going out and trying it but under this circumstance is there anything wrong with him bring in a 55? atleast for now?(i know he can get larger)

 

He can and will get MUCH larger. As long as this is a temporary home and he stays well fed, i see no problem with it. It's not ideal... but should be ok.

You are very right on its swim patterns though. This species is extrememly weird. They just never want to follow normal conventions when it comes to tangs.

 

my opinion

if someone comes on with a 55 gallon and asks "Can I have a regal tang"
anyone can certainly advise against it, and this is not a bad thing IMO

your situation is different as the desicion is made and the fish is already there
as such I wish you well, and hope the fish remains healthy and happy

and also if the 450 tank does become available, some pictures of that beast would be appreciated

I got a swimming certificate for less distance than that tank must have?

 

At 6inches I am not sure how much larger it will get, if it was raised from a 1/2inch juvie they just do not usually reach full size like they do in the ocean. Different groups of tangs have different swimming patterns with the naso tangs being the long distance swimmers where space is an absolute must if Im not mistaken, but some of the other tangs only swim as much as they need to find food. In a glass box with food being dropped in there is no need to swim miles each day my blue hippo is only around 1.5-2inches and does not "surf" thats more or less what the clownfish do but it loves to swim around all the rockwork and dart through caves and tunnels

 

I concur, I have raised a hippo tang from 3/4" to 3-4" it is now. It was a rescue from petco and was crawling with ich when I got it. The manager gave me a huge discount because neither of us thought it would live. I qt'd it with some cupramine for 6 weeks prior to letting it into my tank and now it is fat and happy in my 72 bow. I never feel that it is cramped for space in my tank.

I will be moving it into my 125 when it is up and running, but that is a few months off yet. Hopefully it will be more happy there.

 

lol yea hes got a funny swim pattern and doesnt really follow the tang stereotype much

 

i know what you mean and it wasnt so much of a decision to get the tang, the tank was being broken down as the guy was moving to florida and i had originally came for the rock but he had nowhere to put the tang so i held onto him until a more suitable home could be found....i was actually hoping to transfer him into the 450 immediately but my friend has a school of chromis that has been attacking anything larger than them until they stress them to death so its not an option yet until he gets rid of the chromis....hes been using some techniques straight out of a cartoon though lol including using a shop vac to suck them out and then transferring them to a sump lol

 

Now that's funny.

 

yea well its almost as funny as the first attempt....have you ever heard of someone having a mouse problem so he gets snakes to eat the mice and has a snake problem so he gets mongooses to eat the snakes then has a mongoos problem so on so forth lol....well he took a whack at that one as well by trying to get a lionfish to eat them and when he didnt he had a problem getting the lion fish out as well lol....it is a massive tank

 

Oh boy your friend keeps compounding his headaches.