Pomacanthus asfur “Asfur Angelfish”, Captive Bred

You know, the reality is that most of the marine fishes I offer at MiniWaters.fish are captive-bred, but when it comes to something like being able to purchase a captive-bred Asfur Angelfish, Pomacanthus asfur, I feel compelled to explicitly call that out. I mean, the bulk of the offerings of this species are a) adults and b) wild-caught, so having captive-bred specimens, particularly juveniles, available for you to buy, is really something extraordinary.

To the best of my knowledge, all captive-bred Asfur Angelfishes are produced in Taiwan; the company EZ-Marines at first glance seems involved, although friendly sources have pointed me to Taikong Corp. as the probably producer of these fish.

Pomacanthus asfur is never cheap, being a Red Sea fish. This species has a somewhat confusing reputation. On the one hand many sources report it as shy, but then it’s also described as rather belligerent as it matures.  Regarding it’s “reef safe” nature, well, reports are all over the map on this species. It seems the only thing that is reasonably safe is SPS corals.

I’ve noted that Asfur Angelfish tend to transition into adult coloration quite small (consider that this fish, maybe only 1.25″, is already showing the bright yellow vertical bar).  Having seen nothing but adults for the past 10 years, it kinda gave me this false impression that the Asfur Angelfish is a “small” species. In fact, this one could get rather big…the maximum sizes reported go up to 16″. Be sure to check out Bob Fenner’s Asfur Angelfish color-development photo series over on Wet Web Media.  This video from Youtube user TangTank17 shows off a stunning adult Asfur in quarantine:

I hope that captive-bred saltwater / marine Angelfishes might be something I’ll be able to offer with somewhat routine regularity, but at the moment, I got this one Asfur, and it was the only one left (and it had been listed mistakenly as a White-Bar Maculosus). Word on the street is that more Asfurs won’t come around again for a little while (breeding seasons…). So for this very first offering, effectively you can treat this as a WYSIWYG, because I only got the one fish pictured here.