Beautiful, Boisterous, Brilliant Bananas
The Banana Wrasse (Thalassoma lutescens) is a stunning fish that can grow to almost a foot long! Banana wrasse (like many members of the family Labridae, aka the “Wrasses”) are sequential protogynous hermaphrodites. This means that they start life as females, and over time will grow into male fish. The juveniles are a bright yellow color, and as they mature they will change considerably. The adult males have a greenish-yellow face and body with orange stripes on the face and fins there are blue hues as well, most notably on their pectoral fins.
Banana Wrasse are widespread throughout the Indo-Pacific, from Hawaii to well inside the Western Indian ocean. They are usually found on seaward reef crests, associated with areas of coral growth. While they can be considered “reef-safe” in the sense that they will not eat coral, they are voracious predators of motile (moving) invertebrates such as crabs, snails, clams, urchins and shrimp! They also can get big enough to move some rubble rock around in search of food!
Coming from the reef crest means that these fish are used to living in areas of lots of strong turbulent flow with plenty of other fish moving around, under bright sunlight! As such, they are quite adaptable to aquarium life, if given a large enough home! A tank such as a 120 gallon would be a good starting size, but a large tank like 220 or even 300 would be a more appropriate minimum tank size at grow out and obviously, more would never hurt as they swim almost incessantly and at high speed. Avoid stocking them with fish that cannot compete for food or could be scared by an over exuberant fish. These are the Labrador Retrievers of the fish world!
As mentioned earlier, in the wild Banana Wrasse cruise the reef searching for snails, clams, shrimp, urchins or any other invertebrates they can get their jaws on. This wild feeding behavior carries over strongly into the home aquarium, making them difficult in a reef tank as any clean up crew in an aquarium will be protein for the Banana over time. They will greedily accept almost any aquarium food, and are almost always strong feeders in captive aquaria from day one! High quality pellets, frozen food, and meaty treats such as clams on the half shell, mussels, pieces of shrimp or anything else will likely be relished!
The Banana Wrasse has not been bred in captivity as of yet. But in the wild, a larger, older “terminal phase male” fish will look over a group of smaller, younger fish that will still be female. They will breed pelagicly, meaning that they will fertilize eggs in the water column and that currents will disperse their fertilized eggs. This explains why they, like many other smaller reef fish, can be found throughout the tropics around the world!
Few things in aquaria or indeed nature compare to the color of a mature Banana Wrasse. Get a young fish and enjoy watching it transform and change its coloration overtime. Their high level of activity will mean that you will always have a showpiece fish moving around your tank. They are extraordinarily hardy and accept a wide range of foods – they can act as almost a cleanup crew for larger predators that are messy eaters, picking up all the scraps that get missed! Ask your local fish store to call Quality Marine today about a sustainably collected Banana Wrasse!