Yellow Tang Tank Bred

Yellow Tang Tank Bred or Zebrasoma flavescens aquarium bred. These marvels of modern aquarium keeping have been around a few years now and we have tried them before. However, we found that the price seemed to chase away the conscientiousness of in our experience everyone. Things have now changed dramatically and with the Hawaiian fish ban. With the tiny trickle of wild Yellow tangs that still arrive in the trade costing two arms and five legs, the price of the tank bred yellow tangs is more tempting.

Tank bred yellow tang, now the only option.

Not quite, there has been a slow trickle of tangs from areas other than Hawaii. I do think however that the Aquarium bred yellow tang is the more sensible option. Price of course, for most people will be the main reason, now tank bred yellows are cheaper.

Cheaper captive bred yellow tangs for sale in the states.

The significant difference in price between the UK and America is not greedy retailers as some people think, it is freight and import duties that the US sold fish prices do not include. These fish originate from America. They have to be flown here and there is a lot of cost and bureaucracy involved which adds to the sale price.

See Through heads on tank bred yellow tangs, Zebrasoma Flavescens.

As in the picture you can see that the yellow tang looks like it has lateral line disease. However, the captive bred yellow tangs skin has no erosion it just lacks pigment.  What the affected captive-bred and raised fish seem to be showing is what is termed “epithelial thinning.” I cannot myself guarantee that this is not permanent as I have never grown one up.  The breeders though assure us that it will colour as the fish gets bigger. It must be said though that despite the unusual colouring compared to their wild counterparts they are really cute. At the time of writing we have a large shoal of them in quite a large aquarium unlike wild tangs at this age / size there is no bickering.