Success with Tiger Angels, Apolemichthys kingi
The first captive-bred Apolemichthys kingi at Poma Labs Inc., in Florida.
Who doesn't love a good story? Here's one about a very special fish. Back in 2011, I was invited to South Africa by Anthony Calfo and Calvin Krog to give a talk about breeding marine aquarium fish at the International Marine Aquarium Conference of South Africa (IMACSA). During our stay there, my wife and I met some amazing people who we are blessed to still call friends. Among them was Mark Vera, a great guy and accomplished aquarist. While in South Africa, one of the highlights of our time in Durban was a trip to uShaka Marineworld. Here, I saw the coveted and super rare tiger angelfish (Apolemichthys kingi) in person for the first time. At the time, this fish was incredibly rare in the aquarium trade with virtually no specimens in private collections. I drooled over the fish on exhibit and joked about how cool it would be to breed them one day with Mark. Fast forward almost a decade later, when a population of tiger angels was discovered in the slightly warmer waters of Madagascar. Here, the fish were more easily collected with fewer restrictions for export. Although it took a few years before I felt comfortable securing broodstock, I finally took the plunge.
Matt Wittenrich, Mark Vera, Anthony Calfo 2011 at IMACSA
Calvin Krog and Mark Vera in Key West, 2023
Calvin Krog secured a couple of pairs of tiger angels for me in Africa, and Mark Vera imported them into the USA for me in 2019. The fish seemed to do ok upon arrival. After a lengthy quarantine, the smaller member of one of the pairs succumbed to a bacterial infection and died, leaving a pair and a single lone specimen. All fish ate well and gained weight, but did not show any interest in one another. Eric Cohen at Among the Reef tracked down a smaller specimen for me in 2021 that I paired with one of the original males. Over the course of two years, I tried various temperature and light cycles to initiate reproduction in the pairs, but they just seemed to have no interest in breeding. The fish had grown significantly and were in great shape. Finally, in the summer of 2023 I suspected one of the pairs had started spawning. I only collected a few good eggs at first. I had suspicions they were tigers, but I didn't want to get too excited just yet. I took this photo with my phone the first night as a way to compare the eggs each evening and with other known species in house.
A few weeks went by and the number of good eggs was slowly increasing to a level where I thought I stood a decent chance of raising a few. I stocked these eggs out in a big round black tank and prayed. The larvae responded well to our culture methods and grew more robust each day. We encountered a number of issues with raising these first tiger angels and will have only limited numbers available. We are excited about continuing to work with this species and hope to refine our techniques to have them more readily available in the near future. My daughter Allyson Wittenrich was instrumental in helping raise these fish, and continues to work with me on a daily basis in our facility. I am incredibly grateful to my friends Mark Vera and Calvin Krog - I couldn't have done it without their help. For me, one of the greatest things about this accomplishment is reflecting on my memories with great friends in South Africa when I saw tigers for the first time, and could only dream of working with this amazing species. It is a great story of a full circle. Stay tuned for more updates.
