Hey Y'all,
Thanks for all the great questions. With a captive-bred fish you're looking at the full length of that fish's life span because we know the actual age when you're receiving our fish as opposed to when you receive something from the wild there's really no telling how old it is. On our site for the Small tangs they're around 110-120 Days old while the medium tangs are closer to 200+ days old (this is an increase of last year when they were shipping out at ~75-90 days old). Meaning you can expect to have a yellow tang for up to 30 years but more likely around 15-20 years when kept in good conditions. This fish was first captive-bred in 2016 so the oldest captive-bred ones we have are 8+ years old at the Oceanic Institute. I know there's many of the first batches on display at public aquariums around the world or even spawning at our facilities working hard to make F1 Generations. The tanks they're spawning in are thousands of gallons fitted with natural seawater and I assure you they're incredibly robust and happy to be spawning on a daily basis in our facilities.
As for the coloration changes, HLLE, and shaping mentioned above of them looking "poorly" or "deformed" many cases this is just because most people in the aquarium hobby aren't fully accustomed to seeing fish at this age. They're still growing and developing everyday which is why you can see us posting dozens of photos every week of customers who have had our tangs established in their tanks because many people see them at their LFS or when they arrive from us and are immediately put off. This is actually why we added the medium option to our site because many customers were worried at the coloration or sizing of our initial batches and this alleviates that worry.
A few things I do want to mention from the posts above:
1.Initial photo of the tangs in OP's post of a purple tang was actually bred by Mr.Su in Bali and we received some of these and they've come in perfect to my facility (see attached photo of fish in my hand during acclimation). If next to a wild caught purple tang they are indistinguishable. In general the quality of Mr. Su's fish is amazing and I can't say enough great things about his process and high quality of his products.
2. The yellow tang photo above is from a UK store that specifically chose "The worst one they received" to post a photo of as they note on their website (
https://www.abyssaquatics.co.uk/product/yellow-tang-tank-bred/). To see what they actually look like in our customer's tanks or at our facility I highly suggest taking a look at our social media for actual depictions of these fish. I wouldn't say this is an accurate depiction of our hard work and quality but instead increases the notion that something must be wrong with them or our process thus attempting to put into doubt the quality of captive-breeding. This has been done tons of times for various reasons since the Hawaii ban but the products speak for themselves and we have an awesome customer base that debunks this often.
3. I do want to note many time these fish do suffer from HLLE when improperly handled along the chain of custody. We let all of our customers, vendors, and stores know they shouldn't be prophylactically treated with chemicals like Copper or it will cause scarring and paleness. These fish are young and still developing and copper can do some serious damage as they try to grow, we also see then when treating young wild caught fish especially hippo tangs. Many stores and wholesalers run a constant low level of copper in their fish systems because the wild stuff is coming in with all kinds of pests and parasites. I've suggested separate systems to all of our vendors and those that have dedicated captive-bred systems sell substantially more of our products. The vast majority of the times I've seen photos or spoken with customers that have these issues they've usually treated prophylactically or the fish entered a stressful environment (aggression from other fish, high ammonia levels, spiking parameters, ect.)
Hopefully this helps out with some of the misinformation out there. I also attached a photo we actually received today from one of our customers that purchased a small tang this past summer.
-Jake
