How do I entice a powder blue tang to eat?

[alexsoxfan01]

I bought a powder blue tang from LiveAquaria.com the other day. It arrived tuesday afternoon. I acclimated him and then introduced him to the display (I'm working on getting a Quarantine tank). So far all he does is swim the entire length of the tank, go through every cave he fits in, and peck at the live rock like crazy. Everytime I watch him he is grazing on my live rock. Since I cant put food in front of his mouth, I do try to at least put it by where he is grazing. I have tried seaweed hanging on a clip (its by his favorite cave, but he ignores it), frozen mysis shrimp, frozen brine shrimp, frozen herbivore food, and frozen whole shrimp. It doesn't matter if a piece of food is within a few inches of him. He will not touch it. All he does is just graze on the rock.
Any ideas on how to get him to eat?

 

[TRe]

Try soaking the food in garlic!

 

[Fishmonger70]

Give him a couple more days to get used to your system. He will eventually eat.

 

[Lotus]

It can take saltwater fish up to a week to eat after you get them. Give it some time, and keep feeding--he'll eat eventually.

 

[strout]

When I feed my RBTA pieces of fresh shrimp, I cut up smaller pieces and give the fish a few pieces. They seem to love this, you might give that a try.

 

[mlipst]

My powder blue tang was doing the same thing. After several days they will get hungry. You could try some Julian Sprung's SeaVeggies flakes. By the time I moved him from quarantine to the main tank he was eating regular flake food like a little pig. Still grazes on the rock but will also eat anything I put into the tank.

 

[SeaLifeDirect]

Also don't hang around the tank too much. He could be scared to eat in front of you if he's not used to eating in front of people. Did the garlic trick work? I find that helps too.

 

[alexsoxfan01]

Ok, so today I decided that if he did not eat I would try the garlic. I went to the tank and put in some seaweed on a clip. I left for about 20 minutes. Most of the other fish nibbled at it but not the tang. So I just went to take out the seaweed and it dispersed into little shreds as I was pulling it out of the water. Oddly enough the tang swam and ate most of those pieces. I guess hunger may have got to him because it happened before and he didn't eat the shreds.