The purple tang, Zebrasoma xanthurum, is a celebrated marine aquarium fish and one of the most iconic endemic species in the Red Sea. Just a few short years after Rising Tide’s first breakthroughs with the related yellow tang, Bali Aquarich announced their own first successes with culturing the yellow tang’s bourgeois cousin.
Quality Marine has a long track record of supporting aquaculture and captive breeding by breeders all over the world and they are the first in the country to receive the world’s first captive bred purple tangs. These first captive bred purple tangs are not to be confused with the captive reared purple tangs who’s seed fish were collected as tiny juveniles in the Red Sea and raised in Sri Lanka.
Captive breeding is known to introduce some physical ‘artifacts’ and there were some anatomical challenges in the first few clutches of captive bred yellow tangs but these purple tangs from Bali Aquarich are virtually perfect! However if Mr. Su’s efforts continue in good numbers it’s almost an eventuality that we’ll see some purple-purples come out of these Indonesian Z. xanthurum.
The color of these purple tangs is very bright, they have excellent striping on the body and throughout the face and the fins are so symmetrical it looks like they were graphically designed. The purple tang was the first special reef fish we ever owned so we really hope that Bali Aquarich has continued success with these purple tangs and that Quality Marine has a steady supply of these for the aquarium trade because we’ll be looking to get one ourselves!
