via Quality Marine

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

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

Dean Kline and Renee Touse are the primary drivers behind this particular breakthrough here at QM Labs Aquaculture facility. Aquaculture of Zebrasoma species presented several obstacles that our team has been able to overcome. Despite these advancements, the process continues to be labor-intensive and costly. Our 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 our expertise and knowledge grows as we continue to supplement our 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 our ever-growing list of in-house aquacultured species. As we continue to refine and improve our culture techniques, we will have small batches available to augment the ongoing availability of our supply from the wild. 

Quality Marine strives to offer the broadest range and highest quality of marine organisms to the hobby. Even as we pursue breakthroughs in the breeding of various marine organisms, we 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^TM, a Quality Marine initiative dedicated to coral reef conservation, reef habitat restoration, and poverty alleviation. Among the initiatives that Reefhab^TM supports, we are 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.

In a conversation following up on this news, Quality Marine reports that “Several dozen Purple Tangs have just been released to our independent brick and mortar retail partners on Thursday afternoon, December 8th, 2022. From a pricing perspective, Quality Marine’s captive-bred Purple Tangs will be competitively priced, marginally over their wild-harvested counterparts at wholesale pricing. We do not set pricing for our retail store partners; a variety of factors influence retail price points.”

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Editors Note: Quality Marine is strictly wholesale to the aquarium trade. Retailers can visit https://www.qualitymarine.com/ to learn more.