White Tail Tang without yellow around the eye

[cshouston]

In rudie kuiters book on tangs he seems to believe there is a population of the striatus that retains their juvenile colouration into adult hood and had photos of them. But idk they were maybe just large juveniles. Do you know if theres any truth to that?

Nope I have had C. striatus all the way down to half and inch including my current one, which is a mean *******, never looked like that most the juveniles I have seen look like this,

AFAIK, the Marshall Islands juveniles are the ones in the middle. I posted a link earlier in the thread to a diver’s photographs. They show the juveniles with that coloration, one transitioning, and adults without the coloration. I don’t know about any adult populations with that color, but imagine that if there were any, they’d be highly sought after by the local collectors and we’d have seen at least one in the hobby.

 

[Adamantium]

I believe there is a population of striatus that has a white tail into adult hood, that "species" probably has at least 3 distinct species currently all lumped together. All three of these are identified as either striatus or cf. striatus and ya I want some of the middle ones too though I have never seen them.

The bottom photo looks nearly identical to mine. This has got to be it. What a confusing answer, though haha

Like, we know what it is, but we also don’t really know haha