False Eye on lemon mimic tang?

[volivier]

I bought a lemon mimic tang from LFS, after a couple of days in my tank I noticed the false eye on its fin. I've googled but not found anything that says that is normal so now I'm wondering if I have another kind of tang?

Has anyone else seen the false eye on a mimic tang?

 

[mort]

It's cool but it's an aberrant marking rather than an eye spot. Mimic tangs seem to show quite a lot of this.

 

[volivier]

It's cool but it's an aberrant marking rather than an eye spot. Mimic tangs seem to show quite a lot of this.

Thanks for the reply, I've never had something happen like this buying a fish and having a marking like that show up after I bought it.

 

[mort]

I don't think anyone has ever found the reason why some tangs do it but it happens in the wild and they can revert back to normal colouration quite quickly, stay unchanged or even develop more aberrant colours all over.

There are a few more pictures of aberrant mimics here and some interesting thoughts from the author https://reefs.com/magazine/a-curious-case-of-aberrant-tangs/