20+ year old tangs

[Timfish]

Happy to say the purple tang is still going strong!

Sadly I have to report the death of the 15+ year old Yellow Tang and the 15+ year old Flame Hawk in this video in my previous post. Fortunately the Purple Tang is still going strong. Power was lost for about 4 days during the recent freeze resulting in the loss of most of the animals. Also lost was brown finger Sinularia which had been in this system since the early 90s (92-94). The Sinularia foliata (Ofwegen 2008) which had been in this system since '97 was also lost.

 

[BeanAnimal]

Sorry to hear. I have an (easily) 10+ year old scopas and coral beauty that have lived for the past 6 years off of the tank with (at best) a sprinkle of food a few times a year. And some ugly leather that has been with me unfortunately since day 1...

 

[OhsCC]

Sorry to hear you lost your old tang and flame hawk. I lost my 15 year old yellow tang two years ago. I highly recommend Biota's captive bred fish that Biota sells directly on their website. I got my new 3 year old yellow tang and my 3 month old blue tang from Biota. Great peace of mind with the reduced risk of introducing disease or illness in your system.

 

[Timfish]

Purple Tang is 30+ now!

 

[Urka]

They look awesome!

 

[T Diddy]

That’s amazing! Great job and a beautiful tang!

 

[Paul B]

That is freekin fantastic. He's almost as old as me and he looks better than me.

 

[Timfish]

Stumbled across this paper. Pretty fascinating info on the life expectancies of tangs:

Recent research uncovered a surprising split-phase or biphasic pattern in life expectancies in Surgeon fish. Instead of having the expected "catch at age" gradual decline in numbers as fish age, they found a faster than expected dieoff initially then a slower than expected dieoff past a certain age. This gave turnover rates twoto four times faster than previously believed. Researechers noted "grow fast - die young" only partially explains the why this is happening.


So it seems, as aquarists some of the unexpected deaths we see as our tangs age might be due to variables out of our control. We may have individuals that can live decades but 10-15 years is a more realistic expectation for most.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/faf.12853