Kole tang vs Yellow tang - feeding habits
 

Hey everyone, i'm trying to decide which of the two would be best suited to my tank; i know that they both feed on filamentous algae, but the Kole tang will apparently eat a wider variety of algae like substances. My tank seems to grow everything except for nice long green algae, more like a shorter patchy matt of algea, diatoms, a little cyano, possibly dinoflagellates again (grrrr). Is the Yellow tang gonna touch any of that stuff or is it gonna stick to only the nice green stringy type algae?

Thanks in advance

What size is your tank?

My Kole religiously eats anything filamentous. I've seen him nibble at hair algae and bryopsis on a few occasions but he doesn't eat the stuff.

Koles are from the bristletooth family. They'll use their teeth to scrape filamentous algae off your rocks and glass. Never had a yellow but I'm pretty sure they stick to the hair algae type stuff. If your tank is big enough, you could add both to work as a team.

Sorry to semi hi-jack this thread, I am looking for an algae eater as well. What footprint is best for the 2 tangs mentioned? I have a 5ft 142 or 143ish gallon tank. Tank is pretty new, but the radions is already causing some green algae growth. Would love to attack it before it spreads like wild fire :mrgreen:

My tangs have constantly picked at algae, and stir up the surface of my rocks with the picking, I very much like them. I have a bariene tang and recently lost a kole tang :(. The biggest helper in the tank for actual algae control has been my lawnmower blenny, that guy is an algae machine! Foxface is another good choice and even picks at my bubble algae, and also adds some yellow to the tank.

Perfect, thats all I need to know. I have a blenny I need to move to my big tank, and I picked up a foxface last night. I put in an order for a kole tang as well, I am hoping the trio will keep the algae to a minimum.

Thanks for the quick responses! I'd kinda forgotten about the Lawnmower Blenny, but you're right it would be a good fit as well. I was thinking one of those two tangs might be nice as I don't have any larger swimmers in the tank at this time, and cliche as it is I like the look and personality of the Yellow tang.

For the record I have a 70gal DT with lots of swimming room (light on the rockwork). I know the tank may be a touch on the small size for natural food production but I am OK with supplementing its diet with outside food.

for his size I'll bet my tailspot does even more work than the kole. he's in a permanent state of grazing. funny because he looks so angry and violent the way he goes about it!

Those three should keep your algaes in check. Except for Valonia, my personal scourge.