Prolific angelfish breeders Poma Labs announced the news of not one but two exciting breeding successes this week. The first is the Yellow-Ear Angelfish, Apolemichthys xanthotis, the 19th Angelfish species bred by the leading aquaculturists and they believe, the first time they have been bred and reared in captivity.
Second is a unique accidental cross between the Regal Angel, Pygoplites diacanthus, and the Tiger Angel, Apolemichthys kingi. Crossing angelfish species is one thing, and several species hybridize naturally in the wild. But crossing angelfish from different genera is exceptional, and the Regal x Tiger angelfish hybrid is truly a one-off so far. We caught up with Poma Labs’ Matthew Wittenrich, to tell us more:
“The regal x tiger hybrid showed up in our first batch of tiger angels. We didn’t notice anything unusual until the fish was about 60 days and we moved them out of the larval tank to a new, growout tank. We noticed one juvenile that was not quite like the rest. At first, I thought it was a regal angel since we have a pair in the tank that seemed to be maturing, but the pattern seemed a bit off, almost inverted from a regal angel juvenile. We have not raised any regal angels out of this tank, but do see them spawning occasionally. This is pretty cool and I believe represents the first cross-genera hybrid in angelfish. We haven’t seen any hybrids since in successive larval runs.”
Xanthotis x kingi hybrid angelfish
“Interestingly, this is the same tank that the xanthotis came from so it is probably only a matter of time before we get a xanthotis x kingi cross. We have had the xanthotis pair for several years. They seemed to be maturing and spawning over a year ago, but we never collected any viable eggs. Our first larval run was sort of a mystery since we thought we had a tank of tiger angels.”
The juvenile xanthotis are quite remarkable in their black and yellow dress. They are so similar to juvenile maze, blueline, meredithi and many other Chaetodontoplus spp. Surely, the black and yellow color must mean something in the marine world, mimicry of sorts no doubt.”
