Following the hype on the multicolored aberrant or Koi scopas tangs that showed up in the last few years, our friends at Bali Aquarium scored a very nice Super-Xanthic Yellow Scopas Tang this week. Unlike the aberrant Scopas tang that all come from the same isolated offshore reef, and is due to localized inbreeding, the Super-Xanthic yellow Tang is a lonely winner of the gene lottery, holding a pair of 2 recessive genes.
When the aberrant scopas are collected by the hundreds once in a while, when the collectors take the dangerous trip to the secret location in the Indian Ocean. Even though just a couple like our WWC mascot White Chocolate are really truly unique and amazing. Sometimes we see especially in the northwestern Pacific ocean, some hybrids of Scopas tangs and Yellow Tangs, that usually hold a more chocolate color and usually don’t exactly have the same lined pattern.
The Super-Xanthic yellow Tang is not a hybrid of two species and is an occurrence that happens only once in the while, in normal healthy natural population. And thus, some of this yellow Scopas can occur about anywhere in the vast range of this particular species that spreads all the way from Africa to southern Pacific.
This particular specimen was collected in central Sulawesi. From the untrained eye, this fish just look like a regular yellow tang, and it’s only with close inspection, that the fish geek, will notice the speckled face and lined body, a particularity of only Zebrazoma scopas tang.
This particular fish has been recovering well in Bali from collection and travel, and after a good quarantine treatment is already eating well, and start even ask for food. It will take the second part of it journey that will lead it to Aquarium Industry in the country down under, where the reef scene is particularly active at the moment.
