Quality Marine announced that they were successful in captive breeding Purple Tang, Zebrasoma xanthurum in their Los Angeles facility. One of the highly sought after fish all around the world, they are well known for their beautiful contrasting colors and distinctive personalities. This will be an welcome news to the hobby. Once thought an impossible mission, we are now successful captive-breding yellow, blue and now purple.

I learned about the painfully excruciating process of getting this species of fish to successfully breed from various respected breeders and I know that they would have had tons of obstacles to overcome and probably very costly to get this first batch to come through. Renee Touse who worked in Oceanic Institute (people who brought us Yellow Tangs) in Hawaii brought her expertise in breeding the Zebrosoma sp and helped to get this through. I predicted that it will fetch higher prices at first then as they get the process down to the T and in routine, it will come down just like the Yellow Tangs from Biota Aquarium Group in the recent years but according to Kevin Kohen’s press release it seems like I was wrong on the pricing. It will be marginally closer to the wild caught counter parts and all the proceeds will go to the Rising Tides Conservation.

Pictures of fellow Zebrosoma sisters, baby and transparent Yellow Tangs from Biota Aqurium Group.

I want to offer huge congratulations to Quality Marine and specifically to Dean Kline and Renee Touse for this monumental success and we look forward to see these babies in our local fish stores and in our home aquariums in near future!

Click on the link here to see the video of the Purple Tangs chowing down on some delicious food!