Have you ever bought a beautiful fish at the LFS and when you got it home realized that you don't know what it eats?
I know I have.

What is this fish eating? Also, notice how fat it is. See how it doesn't seem interested in the coral just inches away? It reminds me of cattle. Just like cattle graze all day long on grasses and grains these herbivorous fishes graze on algae all day long. When this Yellow Tang gets removed from this environment and ends up in your aquarium, what will you feed it? Remember, it wants to graze all day. Brine shrimp once a day will not satisfy it for very long nor can an herbivore stay healthy eating mostly meat.
If you were a grazer locked in a room with no avenue of escape where this selection of food below was the only thing available, what would you do?
If you were a grazer locked in a room with no avenue of escape where this below was the food selection, what would you do?
Thankfully, there is lots of the stuff below for us to eat

Here is more reading on the subject. See the article Herbivores vs. Carnivores
Edited by Mark Peterson - March 30 2010 at 10:07pm