It feels like we are living in a Golden Age of Angelfish breeding as this week, Dr. Matt Wittenrich, Co-Founder & CEO of Poma Labs Inc, announced that his company has bred and raised the Tiger angel, Apolemichthys kingi, for the first time in captivity.
The Tiger Angelfish, or “Kingi,” was the stuff of legend twenty years ago, with trade stories about turbid, “shark-infested” South African waters adding to the rarity of catch. We have been lucky to have seen their availability increase in the last ten years, however, working with one or two in aquarium stores as well as Jake Adams curating one for the Reef Builders Studio.
Tigers were thought to be restricted to subtropical waters off South Africa but the latest imports have all come from further East, in Madagascar. Tropical temperatures haven’t affected these fish so far, and we’ve enjoyed their widest availability and lowest (but still four-figure,) price tags to date. We’ve even seen a naturally occurring hybrid, but we didn’t think they’d be bred anytime soon. Until this weekend…
A brilliant fish breeder
Matt Wittenrich has been successfully breeding saltwater fish since he was a teenager, and the Poma Labs’ aim to make rare, difficult, elusive species easy to obtain, fat, healthy aquarium specimens has definitely been achieved with species such as the Conspic angel, Cheatodontoplus conspicillatus, and now we can’t wait to see captive bred Tiger angels come through.
Matt has forewarned his customers that his team (that includes his daughter,) has encountered a number of issues with raising the first Tiger angels, limiting their numbers, but we are so pleased with their epic achievements so far and feel that if anyone could, Wittenrich could. We’ll expect some awesome pictures too, right from eggs to super cute eye-spot-baring juveniles. Someone get this guy some Peppermint angels!
For more information on how the now 12-year Tiger Angel project came about, check out their website and Facebook page. Main photo credit Poma Labs Inc.
