Quality Marine Labs Successfully Breeds, Rears Purple Tangs

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Press release: Quality Marine

Sustainability is a core value of Quality Marine. Continued advancements in aquaculture to augment sustainable wild collection is an integral part of the future of the aquarium trade and to the health of our oceans. Quality Marine has been an ardent supporter of aquaculture and mariculture efforts around the globe, a practice it intends to continue even while pushing the boundaries of aquaculture science on site in its QM Labs Aquaculture facility.

Quality Marine is proud to announce that it has successfully aquacultured Purple Tangs. These fish were bred and reared in its state-of-the-art aquaculture hatchery in Los Angeles. These young Zebrasoma xanthurum have reached marketable size, are vigorously eating Nutramar foods and they will soon be available to Quality Marine’s retail store partners.

Dean Kline and Renee Touse are the primary drivers behind this particular breakthrough at QM Labs Aquaculture facility. Aquaculture of Zebrasoma species presented several obstacles that the team has been able to overcome. Despite these advancements, the process continues to be labor intensive and costly. A dedicated staff of biologists, hatchery construction team members and husbandry technicians work diligently to nurture, care for and maintain the growing number of captive bred fish in the QM Labs program.

This momentous achievement is not the first success for QM Labs; we have been busy breeding and raising dozens of both demersal and pelagic fish varieties over the last several years. Other in-house successes include our now famous Neon Blue Cleaner Gobies and both F1 Darwin and Darwin Misbar Ocellaris Clowns to name a few. Every day Quality Marine’s expertise and knowledge grows as it continues to supplement its wild harvested livestock with even more in-house aquacultured species.

Quality Marine is very proud to now offer QM Labs Captive Bred Purple Tang to its ever-growing list of in-house aquacultured species. As the company continues to refine and improve its culture techniques, it will have small batches available to augment the ongoing availability of its supply from the wild. Quality Marine strives to offer the broadest range and highest quality of marine organisms to the hobby. Even as Quality Marine pursues breakthroughs in the breeding of various marine organisms, it will continue to promote the merits of responsible wild-harvest and offer species from the wild where collection is sustainable and non-threatening to global populations. The sale of these and other aquacultured species by Quality Marine, helps to fund Reefhab, a Quality Marine initiative dedicated to coral reef conservation, reef habitat restoration and poverty alleviation. Among the initiatives that Reefhab supports, Quality Marine is very proud to support Rising Tide Conservation’s efforts to promote aquaculture of marine ornamental species. As such, a portion of the proceeds from sale of these Aquacultured Purple Tangs will go directly to Rising Tide Conservation.