Help identifying Tang

[Bill B]

I bought this fish and was told it was a surgeonfish. Of course, I later realized this is a very generic term. Unfortunately I cannot get a good in focus photo. The attached photo is of a brown tang, which mine is very similar to but with these differences: At times mine is very brown and very few features are visible. At others it turns an almost cream tan. Then you can see the 'freckles' around its face. However, rarely would I say it is the same tone as the picture. Mine also has a little cream band at the base of it's tail fin, it does not have a crescent shaped tail (even along the back) and when it is lite there is a series of vertical but bowed purple lines near the middle of it's body. It does have the purple outline around some of it's fin - but much more purple when it is dark brown and might fainter when it is cream tan. It is only about 3 inches long.

Any guesses?

Thanks

Bill Brister

[thedude]

Bill,

That tang looks a little red towards the back and is a lavender tang out of Hawaii.

John

[Entropy]

Sounds like a what you have pictured. There are a lot of variations. I almost got a brown tang (spotted cheek is the name I saw), but I settled on a powder brown instead. Both are cheap for tangs.

Edited October 1, 2008 by Entropy

[GKarshens]

What you describe sounds like a Tenneti tang.

[Bill B]

I bought this fish and was told it was a surgeonfish. Of course, I later realized this is a very generic term. Unfortunately I cannot get a good in focus photo. The attached photo is of a brown tang, which mine is very similar to but with these differences: At times mine is very brown and very few features are visible. At others it turns an almost cream tan. Then you can see the 'freckles' around its face. However, rarely would I say it is the same tone as the picture. Mine also has a little cream band at the base of it's tail fin, it does not have a crescent shaped tail (even along the back) and when it is lite there is a series of vertical but bowed purple lines near the middle of it's body. It does have the purple outline around some of it's fin - but much more purple when it is dark brown and might fainter when it is cream tan. It is only about 3 inches long.

Any guesses?

Thanks

Bill Brister

John you are right. The picture is a Lavendar Tang aka Brown Tang, aka... I think I am content to go ahead a call it a, oh I don't know, I like the spotted cheek tag 'variation'. It did find some on the net that were very cheap and a couple very exotic, and exotically priced, but again similar. It does seem very similar to the Tennenti but the tail is different and this has a bar rather than the big spot around the 'scaples'. I am attaching two more pics I got after maany tries. I still haven't figured out whether it gets light because it is excited, good or bad, or just cuz it feels like it. It is light much more often. Several of the Spotted Cheek pictures I found had the same cream bar on the tail but none have the stripes - just another variation I suppose. The light picture is a little more yellow than actual but it is not the soft powder tan. Anyways - thanks for all your help.

[Bill B]

I went to AquaDome today and low and behold they had my fish swimming around. It is an Atlantic Tang called the Doctorfish. The guy I bought it from had used this term once but he also advertised it as a "Tang -surgeon fish" so I thought he was just mixing up the terms. Whenever I googled Doctor Fish I just kept getting various surgeon fish. But, once I googled Doctorfish, without the space, there it was. Unfortunately it gets up to 15" and 11 lbs and is actually eaten in the Bahamas.

Thanks for all your guesses.

Bill

[John Maloney]

Those surgeonfish do get big! We see them all the time diving here in south florida. Nice looking fish though with curious behavior.

[tropheusmaster]

arent all tangs surgeonfish? is it possible he has a naso tang?