Paracanthurus
Paracanthurus hepatus
— Where the name comes from
Paracanthurus means “beside Acanthurus”, and Acanthurus is “spine tail”, from ákantha and ourá: at the base of the tail these fish carry a sharp retractable blade, hence the common name surgeonfish. Hepatus, “of the liver”, alludes to a colour this animal does not have: it was the name of a different fish, recycled.
— Facts
- Group
- Fish · Actinopterygii · Chondrichthyes
- Order
- Perch-likes
- Habitat
- Current-swept coral reefs between 2 and 40 metres
- Range
- The tropical Indo-Pacific
- Size
- 20–30 cm, 300–600 g
- Diet
- Plankton, algae
- Lifespan
- 20 years, over 30 in an aquarium
— Characteristics
- 01
It has two sharp retractable blades at the sides of the tail.
- 02
Frightened, it wedges itself among coral branches and locks in place.
- 03
The young are yellow and turn blue as they grow.
— What sets it apart
After 2003 demand for it in aquariums exploded because of an animated film, and for thirteen years every single specimen sold in the world had been caught at sea, often with cyanide: nobody had ever managed to breed it in captivity. That was achieved only in 2016, in Florida, after years of work on the larvae, which are minute and survive only on live prey of particular sizes. Today part of the trade comes from captive breeding, but most reef fish sold in the world are still wild.
