🐠 Doctorfish Tang (Acanthurus chirurgus)
Marine Reef-Safe Large Grazing Tang • Muted Grey-Olive Body With Narrow Vertical Bars • Genuine Atlantic Species • Advanced Marine Fish
 
⚠️ Important Information — Please Read First
We want to be genuinely upfront on this one. This species is genuinely documented as prone to significant transport stress, and may arrive looking washed out, hide, breathe rapidly, or refuse food for the first several days. Please offer dim lighting, strong oxygenation, and stable water parameters during this settling-in period, and avoid overhandling — healthy individuals usually become active grazers and regain full colouration once properly settled.
 
📋 The Doctorfish Tang , also known simply as the Doctorfish, has a genuinely deep, laterally compressed body in muted grey-to-olive-brown tones, marked with a series of narrow vertical bars along the sides. Its scientific name genuinely derives from the Latin for "surgeon," referencing the sharp, scalpel-like spine on the caudal peduncle.
Native to the Western Atlantic, from Massachusetts to Brazil, including the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean, this species genuinely represents a real geographic outlier compared to most of our Indo-Pacific stock, and is documented to school in the wild alongside the closely related Ocean Surgeonfish.
It's fully reef safe and spends much of the day grazing benthic algae in the wild. We want to be honest that it can be territorial toward other tangs and surgeonfish, and genuinely needs a very spacious tank with long open swimming lanes — it does poorly in cramped systems even when the gallon count is technically sufficient.
 
⚪🩶 Highlights
🎨 Muted Grey-Olive With Vertical Bars: A genuinely understated, classic Atlantic tang
🌍 Genuine Atlantic Species: A real geographic outlier from our typical Indo-Pacific stock
⚠️ Genuine Transport Stress Risk: Please read our disclosure above on settling-in care
🌿 Fully Reef Safe: A valuable, constant algae grazer
🏊 Genuinely Needs Long Open Swim Lanes: Does poorly in cramped tanks regardless of volume