Naso vlamingii is a tropical fish with common names Vlamingii tang and bignose unicornfish.

Appearance

They are relatively large fish in comparison to other fish in the Acanthuridae family easily reaching 60.0 cm. As a juvenile the fish's coloration is a dingy green with blue spots and lips later changing to a bluer fish with purple markings. However while the fish sleeps, or is frightened, it turns a muddy brown as camouflage.

Diet

The Vlamingii tang is mostly herbivorous but will eat small crustacean

Crustacean

Crustaceans form a very large group of arthropods, usually treated as a subphylum, which includes such familiar animals as crabs, lobsters, crayfish, shrimp, krill and barnacles. The 50,000 described species range in size from Stygotantulus stocki at , to the Japanese spider crab with a leg span...

s such as copepods, brine shrimp

Brine shrimp

Artemia is a genus of aquatic crustaceans known as brine shrimp. Artemia, the only genus in the family Artemiidae, has changed little externally since the Triassic period...

 and mysis shrimp. Most of their natural diet is algae

Algae

Algae are a large and diverse group of simple, typically autotrophic organisms, ranging from unicellular to multicellular forms, such as the giant kelps that grow to 65 meters in length. They are photosynthetic like plants, and "simple" because their tissues are not organized into the many...

.

Range

The Vlamingii tang is found in the Indo-Pacific

Indo-Pacific

The Indo-Pacific is a biogeographic region of the Earth's seas, comprising the tropical waters of the Indian Ocean, the western and central Pacific Ocean, and the seas connecting the two in the general area of Indonesia...

 oceans off the coasts of East Africa

East Africa

East Africa or Eastern Africa is the easterly region of the African continent, variably defined by geography or geopolitics. In the UN scheme of geographic regions, 19 territories constitute Eastern Africa:...

, on the islands of Marquesas and Tuamotu, southern Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

 and southern areas of the Great Barrier Reef

Great Barrier Reef

The Great Barrier Reef is the world'slargest reef system composed of over 2,900 individual reefs and 900 islands stretching for over 2,600 kilometres over an area of approximately...

. The Vlamingii tang is most often found in association with reef

Reef

In nautical terminology, a reef is a rock, sandbar, or other feature lying beneath the surface of the water ....

s and coastal lagoon

Lagoon

A lagoon is a body of shallow sea water or brackish water separated from the sea by some form of barrier. The EU's habitat directive defines lagoons as "expanses of shallow coastal salt water, of varying salinity or water volume, wholly or partially separated from the sea by sand banks or shingle,...

s sometimes in small schools.

Economic value

The Naso vlamingii has little to no value to commercial fishers but is occasionally available in the marine aquarium

Marine aquarium

A marine aquarium is an aquarium that keeps marine plants and animals in a contained environment. Marine aquaria are further subdivided by hobbyists into fish only , fish only with live rock , and reef aquaria. Fish only tanks often showcase large or aggressive marine fish species and generally...

industry as a higher priced, rarer fish than most tangs available to aquarists.