The Purple tang has been captive bred and it comes to fruition from a familiar player in the world of reef fish aquaculture,巴厘岛Aquarich. It’s only been a couple years since the breakthroughs in breeding the closely related yellow tang by the Oceanic Institute and the purple tang is only the third species of surgeonfish to be fully captive bred.
The purple tang,Zebrasoma xanthurumis an endemic of the Red Sea characterized by a nearly solid purple color with a bright yellow tail, and a variable pattern of dark spots on the head and stripes along the body. The purple tang is highly conservative in its appearance, almost always with normal coloration, with very rare instances of solid purple specimens likeACI’s Purple-Purple Tang, and even more rare is thepiebald variation到目前为止only documented once.
For several years a Sri Lankan company has been collectingpost larval purple tangsand rearing them to sellable size in captivity but Bali Aquarich’s recent milestone is the first complete closure of the larval cycle ofZebrasom xanthurum. This is very exciting for a number of reasons, especially since Bali Aquarich has a long track record of breeding and raising angelfish hybrids, so it would be a remarkable achievement if we ever saw hybrids of the purple tang with any number ofZebrasomacongeners.
The yield for this first successful clutch of captive bred purple tangs doesn’t appear to be very high but hopefully Bali Aquarich has success in refining the protocols and we see many more of these fish available to the reef aquarium hobby in the future.