The successful captive breeding of the yellow tang in aquariums took more than ten years of effort. So to celebrate we’re going to help the Oceanic Institute take a longer form victory lap with yet another update of the captive bred Zebrasoma flavescens.
Today’s update comes to us in video form, and it is the first moving images to show the 187 little miracles, swimming and schooling together in their first mature grow out tank. Prior to this the larval yellow tangs had always lived in a series of pelagic water vessels with careful, gentle flow and nothing for them to run into.
The first video that was released by the Oceanic Institute was a short teaser clip that showed an assortment of the yellow tangs in their late larval phase without color and almost completely clear. Compared to the other colorful yellow tangs, the late larval yellow tangs look naked, you can see right through them until they reached the final stage of their larval development.
Now that they are teeny tiny versions of the adults, these post-larval yellow tangs will live a very similar free-ranging lifestyle as their adult counterparts. Their lives will be filled with structures, grazing, posturing to other tankmates, fighting a little bit, and hopefully a little bit of breeding to complete to cycle.
Seeing fish school is a wonderful sight, and made all the more wonderful when it’s captive bred specimens that are the result of a decade of work and research. Now that the method for captive breeding of yellow tangs has succeeded, we hope that this grow out tank of juvenile tangs is the first of many that will be built to house many more of these fish in the future.
If you want to help with this endeavor, you can support the continuing work of the Oceanic Institute through their ongoing GoFundMe campaign.
