Lavender tangs.. Good for reef?

My husband and I are in Hawaii right now and have been doing a lot of diving and snorkeling. I have absolutely fallen in love with a very common tang that I see out here. We were planning to get a tang for our 110 gal show tank when we get back from vacation.

Has anyone had experience with brown surgeonfish (aka lavender tang)? Are they particularly aggressive...mess with my coral.. Etc? How much do they typically cost? Our original idea was to get a kole tang. And I have read that getting two tangs is a bad idea.. So i need to pick only one. If the lavender tang is known to be a butt head like the powder blue....

Right now we only have two black occ.
Any advice on this matter?

Thanks!
- Erin

 

Real easy to keep and very peaceful. Make sure your food has Spirulina algae in it or supplement with it.

As with all tangs, I would soak their food in vitamin C and HUFA's a couple of times/week to make sure they don't get HLLE.

 

^^Good info, thanks!

My Lavender is my favorite fish! Active, eats well and gets along with everyone and no problems at all with my corals.
Remove any macro algae you want to keep before you get one... I had some nice Dragons Breath and she munched almost all of it in two days... I now feed her, among other foods, algae sheets that I tear off pieces and let her chase around to eat instead of using a clip.
My Oc clowns have grown up with her in the tank, no problems. She has also finally allowed the cleaner shrimp to clean her, she use to run from them. haha
I got mine as a rescue fish, but have seen them priced between $30 - $50

I think this fish is unrated or not well known as they are absolutely beautiful with a great personality, a great reef fish IME!

Good luck!

 

My lavender stays nice and purple with some orange spots. Very pretty fish!!!! He does try to get tough but its never an issue. Pretty common for an Acanthurus, though WAY nicer than a PBT. I think in a 110 a Lavender and a Kole tang would work out well since they are different genus. I have a Black/Scopas, Lavender, and Tomani tang in my 125g and there is no aggression (ok the lavender and meluranus wrasse chase a bit at night because my Lavender freaks out when the wrasse sleeps under the sand. Literally puppy guards his favorite spots. Anyway most the time they swim together>)

 

Thanks so much for the info! I'm super excited at the thoughts of potentially being able to keep both!

 

Yeah all my tangs get along really well. I got my Tomani and Lavender from Live aquaria, and introduced them at the same time. This is a pretty popular method to keeping multiple tangs. If you are getting them locally, add a decent sized kole first (2.5-3.5 inches) then after a moth or two add a smaller sized lavender (2-3 inches) since the kole (or any Ctenochaetus genus) are a little more passive. Keep them fat and fed and I doubt you will have an issue. I LOVE tangs. My Lavender even poops on my acros like i want him to!

 

Thanks for the advice!