Bananatastic

What is brilliant yellow, about five inches long, often seen in groups and tropical? You guessed it, Banana Wrasses (Thalassoma lutescens)! Though to be fair, they're often collected singly as well. The females are a stunning sunbeam yellow. Males will gain some orange / green stripes to their faces, while the fins will start to have a blue tinge and a brilliant orange stripe!

Bananas come from all over the Indian and Pacific oceans; they have also been infrequently seen on the west coast of the Americas, though it isn't clear if these fish are native or not. Their distribution is primarily tropical, though they have also been confirmed in subtropical locations. Thalassoma lutescens are generally found in fairly shallow water near rock and corals reefs. One large male will guard over several smaller juveniles / females. When the male is removed from the group, the largest, most dominant female will turn into a male and take his place (a process called sequential protogynous hermaphrodism).

Thalassoma lutescens is an all-star on our list of “Highly Underrated Fish.” In addition to being gorgeous, this fish is amazingly hardy and resistant to most common aquarium maladies. As a result, the aquarium parameters they require are easy to achieve. They aren't picky to temperature and will be comfortable in a range anywhere from the mid 60s to the upper 70s Fahrenheit. The pH and specific gravity you shoot for should be tuned to your other aquarium inhabitants, an SG range between 1.021 and 1.026 with a pH anywhere between 7.8 to 8.4 will not adversely affect these fish, though all fish will do better in a stable environment that hovers in the low eights.

Banana Wrasses get large, with a record size of almost a foot long, with a much more common adult size of around seven or eight inches. They are also very active fish, and between these two variables, it should be clear that they are going to need a large tank at grow out. We recommend a long format (six feet long or better) tank of 150 gallons or more, obviously, for those of you with the budget and the space, this would make for a breathtaking fish in a 300-gallon aquarium! Smaller specimens will be quite happy in 90-gallon tanks, but they will outgrow it. The aquarium should feature a lot of flow, and good filtration as Bananas are big eaters and a bit messy.

Rocks should be very stable; all Thalassoma genus fish like to push things around while they hunt for invertebrates to munch on. The rocks should also be very open allowing the wrasse to swim through and around freely. Thalassoma genus fish also like to hide and rest under the sand. While this isn't a requisite for keeping them healthy, they are much less stressed when given an inch or two of substrate to bury themselves in. This substrate should be relatively fine, you don't want sugar sand, or it will always be stirred up, but coarse grains like crushed aragonite will irritate the Banana Wrasse's skin.

Banana Wrasses are incredibly easy to feed, and this is one of the reasons you don't see them in reef style aquariums very often. It isn't that they are a risk to the corals, in fact, they are extremely unlikely to bother them, they are however, single minded hunters that relish eating crabs, hermit crabs, snails, urchins, worms and clams. This means it can be difficult to keep a large tank stocked with enough cleaners in a standard reef setup. The flip side is that these fish usually take to pellet foods very easily, and in house they greedily eat both the shots and the sinking pellets from Nutramar. We also feed them a mix of thawed meaty foods like krill, mysis, chopped prawn and mussel from Gamma Foods and we do this twice a day.

In regard to tank mates, Thalassoma lutescens can be kept with large aggressive fish and hold their own. They can also be kept with smaller fish, without much risk as long as those fish are bold enough to not get scared into hiding (especially during feeding time). As such, we would avoid fish like gobies, firefish, and flasher wrasses etc. As we discussed previously, you should not attempt to keep them with clams or mussels that you intend to keep alive. While they are often seen in groups in the wild, this would be difficult to replicate in the home aquarium unless your aquarium was huge (in excess of 300 gallons) and you were able to source seven or eight small juvenile specimens together and add them at the same time. If you are trying to add multiple Thalassoma genus wrasses, you should follow this same-time-addition protocol, or aggression between them is likely to be an issue.

There are very few critters in the animal kingdom as brilliantly colored as a Banana Wrasse, and they get better as they age! They are active and engaging, bringing color and movement like almost nothing else! They are extraordinarily hardy and accept a wide range of foods and will certainly clean up any scraps left behind by even messier eaters! Ask your local fish store to call Quality Marine today about a sustainably collected Banana Wrasse!