Quality Marine Labs Successfully Breeds and Rears Zebrasoma xanthurum
Sustainability
is a fundamental value of Quality Marine. Continued advancements in aquaculture
to augment sustainable wild collection is 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 they 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 ReefhabTM, a Quality Marine initiative dedicated to coral reef conservation, reef habitat restoration, and poverty alleviation. Among the initiatives that ReefhabTM 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.