Popular Piscine - Powder Blue Tang

Posted by Quality Marine Staff on May 28, 2021

Popular Piscine - Powder Blue Tang thumbnail image

There aren't too many fish more iconic in aquarium keeping than the Powder Blue Tang (Acanthurus leucosternon), yet still, many people shy away from keeping them. This is a shame. When properly sourced and cared for, Powder Blue Tangs make excellent aquarium specimens and visually, very few other fish offer such beauty, activity and contrast.

A. leucosternon goes by more than two dozen common names, but all of the English ones are varying combinations of the three words “Powder” “Blue” and “Tang (or surgeonfish). Like all fish that share the tang / surgeon moniker, these fish are grazers in the wild, eating a variety of algae from the shallow coastal waters of the Indo-Pacific. This being said, a large percentage of their protein comes from “bycatch”; micro inverts and copepods on the algae. While feeding them algae based foods is required, a high quality protein source is also a must.

They are frequently found singly and we strongly recommend keeping them as the only tang in a tank, unless the tank is very large. They are occasionally found in large feeding aggregations, which is also when they are net harvested as food fish, which happens throughout their native range, even though they rarely get larger than 8 inches or so, even in the wild.

Easily the most under-appreciated aspect of success with keeping Powder Blue Tangs is where you get them. As a fish from the Indo-Pacific, they can frequently be subject to long travel times. We have excellent success with Powders in house; they are one of our best performing fish, and this is a direct result of focusing our sourcing "Short Supply Chain" fish. SSC fish are less stressed, healthier and retain a strong natural feeding response. All this results in a higher quality animal that is much more likely to thrive long term in the home aquarium. Always look for Quality Marine Powder Blues with the SSC label, you'll be happy you did.

Randall, J.E., 1956. A revision of the surgeonfish genus Acanthurus. Pac. Sci. 10(2):159-235. (Ref. 1920)

Bray, D.J. 2019, Acanthurus leucosternon in Fishes of Australia, accessed 06 May 2021, http://136.154.202.208/home/species/4959

https://www.fishbase.se/summary/1257

http://www.marinespecies.org/aphia.php?p=taxdetail...