The eponymous flasher wrasses are so named for their dazzling courtship displays, in which males flash iridescent neon colours to attract females and to ward off rival males. This behaviour is best appreciated about an hour before sunset, or as many home aquarists would agree, about thirty minutes before the lights on the home aquarium go off. Indeed, the flasher wrasses are a well-loved and well-known group of fishes popular as aquarium fishes. You’d think we’ve learnt all there is to about this group. Yet this apparently isn’t the case. 

The flasher wrasses are represented by about twenty or so species found throughout the Indo-Pacific. Distribution of the flasher wrasses is, however, not symmetrical, and the genus attains its greatest diversity in the Coral Triangle. Despite Australia’s northern half abutting the Coral Triangle, the distribution and occurrence of flasher wrasses in Australia and its remote territories are not well understood. A new study published today in Ichthyology & Herpetology revisits this popular group with fresh eyes. Just how many species of flasher wrasses occur down under? And to what extent are the identities correct? 

Based on previous checklists and surveys, three species of flasher wrasses have been reported as extant – they are: Paracheilinus filamentosus, the Filamented Flasher Wrasse; Paracheilinus flavianalis, the Yellowfin Flasher Wrasse, and Paracheilinus rubricaudalis, the Redtail Flasher Wrasse. Paracheilinus flavianalis was described from specimens collected off northwestern Australia but the status of the remaining two species in Australia has been doubtful.

An in-depth review of the literature and examination of specimens in all state museums in Australia revealed a surprising state of affairs – that we know very little about these incredible fishes living right under our noses! There were several issues that needed rectifying here, the first of which was the identity of P. rubricaudalis, the Redtail Flasher Wrasse. This species is known primarily from Melanesia, including Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Fiji, and Vanuatu. In Australia, it has been reported from the Coral Sea and the northern Great Barrier Reef. Examination of museum specimens and photographic records reveal that the Australian population represents a highly distinct and geographically isolated species different from the “true” P. rubricaudalis.

The Australian population is distinct from P. rubricaudalis and all other flasher wrasses on the basis of molecular and morphological data. Aside from differences in color pattern, the species is unique in possessing a dorsal filament consisting of three segmented rays bound by membrane (versus the usual one or two). To distinguish this species from P. rubricaudalis, it is described as the new species Paracheilinus amanda. The species is named after Amanda Hay, ichthyology collections manager at the Australian Museum.

Paracheilinus amanda belongs to the P. mccoskeri species complex of flasher wrasses, which includes P. carpenteri, P. flavianalis, P. mccoskeri, and P. rubricaudalis. The five species are united in sharing a unique combination of characters, including body with stripe pattern B, a rounded caudal fin with two concentric bands, and with the exception of P. carpenteri and P. flavianalis, dorsal fins with a single filament. The members of this group are among the smallest in the genus, with males rarely exceeding six centimetres. The newest species, Paracheilinus amanda, is found in the Great Barrier Reef off Australia’s northeastern coastline. It also occurs in the Coral Sea, reaching north to Papua New Guinea’s southern coast. The body stripe pattern of Paracheilinus can be broadly categorised into four patterns. Pattern A, A’, B, and C. Only a handful of species depart from the patterns above.

The third species of flasher wrasse reported from Australia is P. filamentosus, the Filamented Flasher Wrasse. Pull out any field guide of fishes of the Great Barrier Reef and this species is bound to be depicted. Yet, no verifiable Australian records of this species exist. Turns out, Australian records of this species are likely a result of unverified accounts perpetuated in the literature. A deep dive into museum collections revealed only a single specimen of the Filamented Flasher Wrasse collected from Lizard Island in 2001. There it sat for 22 years on the shelves of The Australian Museum untouched and unnoticed, until this year, where it serves as the only physical proof of this species’ existence in Australia.

While looking at flasher wrasse specimens across Australia, one specimen stood out as being different. The specimen, housed in the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory (MAGNT), did not agree with any of the known species of flasher wrasses in Australia. It was a specimen of Paracheilinus nursalim, Nursalim’s Flasher Wrasse, an exceptionally stunning species previously known only from the Bird’s Head Peninsula region of West Papua. But, West Papua is some 1,200 km away. Fortunately, the Australian Museum has two paratypes of P. nursalim for comparison. In addition to some underwater photographs taken by local divers, the identity of the Northern Territory specimen was confirmed to be P. nursalim, the fourth species of flasher wrasse extant in Australia.

Research efforts like this helps highlights the importance of museum collections and methodical sampling. Even specimens collected 22 years ago from reefs so heavily studied like Lizard Island can have their day in the sun, helping shed light on our understanding of Australia’s coral reefs. If the most colourful and iconic of coral reef fishes can go unnoticed, imagine the biodiversity crisis affecting some of the less noticeable species.

The publication is available here.

 

It feels like we are living in a Golden Age of Angelfish breeding as this week, Dr. Matt Wittenrich, Co-Founder & CEO of Poma Labs Inc, announced that his company has bred and raised the Tiger angel, Apolemichthys kingi, for the first time in captivity. 

The Tiger Angelfish, or “Kingi,” was the stuff of legend twenty years ago, with trade stories about turbid, “shark-infested” South African waters adding to the rarity of catch. We have been lucky to have seen their availability increase in the last ten years, however, working with one or two in aquarium stores as well as Jake Adams curating one for the Reef Builders Studio.

Tigers were thought to be restricted to subtropical waters off South Africa but the latest imports have all come from further East, in Madagascar. Tropical temperatures haven’t affected these fish so far, and we’ve enjoyed their widest availability and lowest (but still four-figure,) price tags to date. We’ve even seen a naturally occurring hybrid, but we didn’t think they’d be bred anytime soon. Until this weekend…

A brilliant fish breeder

Matt Wittenrich has been successfully breeding saltwater fish since he was a teenager, and the Poma Labs’ aim to make rare, difficult, elusive species easy to obtain, fat, healthy aquarium specimens has definitely been achieved with species such as the Conspic angel, Cheatodontoplus conspicillatus, and now we can’t wait to see captive bred Tiger angels come through. 

Matt has forewarned his customers that his team (that includes his daughter,) has encountered a number of issues with raising the first Tiger angels, limiting their numbers, but we are so pleased with their epic achievements so far and feel that if anyone could, Wittenrich could. We’ll expect some awesome pictures too, right from eggs to super cute eye-spot-baring juveniles. Someone get this guy some Peppermint angels! 

For more information on how the now 12-year Tiger Angel project came about, check out their website and Facebook page.  Main photo credit Poma Labs Inc.   

A Norwegian Aquaculture company has brought to market a very interesting product that could be the next revolution in the ornamental fish breeding industry.

Until now, prey culture has always been the bottleneck of marine fish aquaculture. But C-Feed has managed to produce copepods eggs, from the species Arcatia tonsa, kept in a dormant stage, and apparently in a clay case. The copepod eggs can be cold-stored at a hatchery until they are needed as food.

The eggs are then placed in seawater and within 24 hours, the fish farmer has a tank filled with vital 100-micrometers-in-length copepod nauplii ready to be fed to fish larvae. In some commercial fish hatcheries, this technology has already eliminated the need for lower nutritional value rotifer cultures.

Their product C-podz is quite a revolution in the aquaculture world. Each bottle of C-podz contains millions of high-quality farmed copepod eggs, that are ready and easy to use.

Larval prey production is one of the biggest investments in breeding marine fish. Being able to use third-party Phytoplankton, ready-to-hatch copepods and artemia eggs could be a real game changer. So now you just need to collect eggs and have a small hatchery at your disposal. It removes the need for major prey culture rooms that are critical to fish larvae. We could probably even imagine people breeding fish in their garages as they do for corals.

This product is such a revolution that the company is currently out of stock, and working on increasing production to supply the enormous demand.

An article published in Nature Ecology and Evolution has found that tropical islands infested with non-native rats have changed the ecology of the reefs around them. No surprise there then, and yet another story of how invasives can wreck native flora and fauna. But in this study, the researchers found that there was actually less nutrient runoff in islands infested with rats, and it’s all to do with the effect the rats have on birds.

In a previous paper, published in the Journal Nature in 2018, a study was carried out in the Chagos Archipelago, in which some islands are rat-infested and others are rat-free. In islands infested with the Black Rat, seabird populations had been decimated, and with fewer birds came less guano, a key nutrient that enhanced both terrestrial and aquatic flora. In islands with seabirds but no rats, nitrogen deposition rates were 251 times higher, building soils, and nurturing shrubs, while also running off the islands and feeding algae and filter-feeding sponges on adjacent coral reefs. 

In the case of the herbivorous damselfish, Plectroglyphidodon lacrymatus, the natural nutrient injection proved beneficial to them, fertilizing the algae on which they feed, enabling them to grow faster, while also supporting more individuals in a given area. 

Now going back to the latest paper, further studies carried out by scientists at Lancaster University, UK, Lakehead University, Canada, and led by Rachel L Gunn, placed GoPro underwater cameras in 60 locations to study the damselfish behavior around islands with and without Black Rats. Around the islands with rats, less lush algae grew for the damselfish to farm, causing them to have larger territories, with fewer individuals, and it was also less worth fighting for. The knock-on effect of the rats was making damselfish less aggressive, and negatively affecting fish populations and the marine ecosystem as a whole. 

The Chagos Islands are in the Indian Ocean and have been invaded by black rats since the 1700s. Rats can now be found on 34 of the 55 islands of the archipelago, according to The New Scientist, and populations of boobies, frigatebirds, noddies, and shearwaters have been decimated.

A video of one of the world’s deepest known species of damselfish has been shared by one of the three people who described it. Chromis abyssus was discovered in 2007 and described in 2008 by ichthyological legends Richard L. Pyle, John L. Earle, and Brian D. Greene, of the Bishop Museum, Honolulu, Hawaii. 

Specimens were collected at over 60m/197′ depths from a single locality in Palau when new techniques including mixed gas diving and rebreathers made discoveries in the mesophotic (50-150m/164′-492′) zone possible. 

86 species of Chromis

At the time of publication, there were some 86 species of Chromis and 34 of those inhabit depths over 50m/164′. Their zooplankton diets versus benthic algae make survival possible for them down there, with nine species being restricted to deep water, and five of those species only being found over 60m/197′ depth prior to the Chromis abyssus discovery. 

The Deep Blue Chromis, Chromis abyssus, was described along with four other new species, Chromis brevirostris, circumaurea, degruyi and earina, and apart from two specimens of C.brevirostris, all were found at depths over 85 meters/279 feet.     

As Brian Greene states in the video, the team at the Museum were not only deep-diving pioneers but pioneers in digital recording of science including digital photos, video, open-access scientific papers on the internet, and the embedding of hyperlinks.

Because of digital records like theirs, we get to report on new fish as and when they are described and also get a glimpse of them going about their daily lives in their natural habitat.   

If you’re in the market for a shop-stopping surgeonfish that won’t cost the earth, look no further than the Freckle Face Tang, Acanthurus maculiceps.

Also known as the Spot Face Surgeon or White Freckled Surgeonfish, A.maculiceps is native to the Indo West pacific and can be found off the Maldives to the Andaman Sea, Christmas Island, the Philipines, the Ryuku islands, and as far away as Samoa, and is usually found swimming at depths between three and fifteen meters.

When sold as juveniles, they often look washed out, with beige-colored bodies and pale yellow spots, but mature adults are eye-catching in large displays for their dark, graphite base coloration, much more prominent white and yellow head patterning along with yellow highlights to the pectoral fins. Look close up and yellow lines, dots and striations also graduate the graphite grey towards the dorsal fin. Top it off with a yellow band on the caudal peduncle, white scalpels, that super steep head, and sub-terminal mouth, and the Freckle Face’s patterning has something debonair about it that seems to soothe and compliment the visual color chaos of their more primary colored tank mates. 

Research their size and the 40cm/15” maximum will be offputting to many, although that’s very much a wild maximum and 25cm/10” is much more realistic long-term in captivity, even in a large tank. Zebrasoma desjardinii also is a potential 40cm/15”, yet most would feel comfortable housing them in a 680 liter/180-gallon tank as a minimum, and it’s the same for this species, though larger is obviously better. Give them the space they need and they will cruise majestically, flapping pectoral fin-powered as only a tang can.

Surgeonfish have a reputation for territorial aggression although the Freckle Face isn’t one of the worst offenders. To be on the safe side, avoid mixing with mature, similar-looking, closely related species like A. fowleri, tennentii, and nigricaudus, although most find that they are accepted by contrastingly colored A.leucosternon, and many mix them with Zebrasoma species like the Yellow Tang.

If anything it’s the Freckle Face that would need protection from aggressive, more territorial species and long-term keepers like Aquaforest owner Seweryn Lukasiewicz (who provided these pictures here of his beauty,) describe them as peaceful. He kept one for many years in his home aquarium and it now resides, pride of place, in the Aquaforest 3168 liter/837-gallon show tank. 

Feeding is straightforward, with quarantined specimens accepting everything from Krill, Mysis, and Artemia to flakes, dry pellets, gels, pastes, and dry sheets of Nori. Plenty of rockwork is advised for extra grazing, although not at the expense of swimming room and suitable glide space. Treat newly imported individuals (in a separate quarantine tank,) for Flukes and Worms, before finishing with copper. 

Every time we see a mature Freckle face tang we want one, and it remains high on our list of large, dream reef tank inhabitants. And unlike some other desirable tangs, owning one doesn’t come at a price. All of the above attributes make Acanthurus maculiceps well worthy of our Awesome Fish Spotlight. Expect to pay sub-£100/€116/£122 for a 3-4” juvenile.  

The saltwater aquarium industry has won a small victory in the battle to reopen Hawaiian fish exports. The Board of Land and Natural Resources – the agency that protects Hawaii’s natural resources – approved an Environmental Impact Statement on October 8 allowing the harvesting of saltwater fish for aquariums, despite ongoing legal proceedings which seek to prevent it.

According to a report in the Hawaii Tribune-Herald, the Environmental Impact Statement was approved by default after the Land Board failed to make a decision within the legally allowed 30-day period. The right to take wild fish from Hawaiian waters is being contested by the Pet Industry Joint Advisory Council on one side, and Earth Justice, an environmental law organization acting on behalf of a coalition of conservation groups, Native Hawaiian fishermen, and cultural practitioners, on the other. Earth Justice subsequently filed a lawsuit challenging the acceptance of the EIS, which was previously deadlocked at 3-3 last year. 

The latest Environmental Impact Statement contained revisions on the number of fishing permits issued and the number of species allowed to be caught. Commercial Fishing Permits would shrink from 10 to seven in the West Hawaii Regional Fishery Management Area and the number of fish species allowed would shrink by four-fifths from 40 to just eight species. Only Yellow tangs, Kole tangs, Orangespine unicornfish, Potter’s angelfish, Brown surgeonfish, Thompson’s surgeonfish, Black surgeonfish, and Bird wrasse would be allowed to be collected, under the new plan. That means no Bandit angels, no Hawaiian Flame angels, Jordan’s wrasses, Hawaiian Achilles tangs, or many other popular Hawaiian endemics.

The costly ongoing legal battle is being funded by aquatic companies and organizations on behalf of the whole aquarium industry. We have been praying for the Hawaii fishery to reopen for aquarium fish and although the species offering will be greatly reduced, if the decision is upheld, we cannot wait to see wild Hawaiian Yellow tangs again. We are holding our breath however as Earth Justice continues to rebut the evidence and the ruling and states “The denial of our (motion for summary judgment) did not lift the injunction which remains in place until further order from the court.” 

The collection of Hawaiian fish for aquariums has been completely shut down since January 2021. We await further information on exactly when (and from whom,) wild Yellow tangs will be available for the hobby again.

The ‘Yurple’ tang is a hybrid Zebrasoma the likes of which has only been made possible through captive breeding efforts. This unique fish was produced by Bali Aquarich in Indonesia by cross breeding the yellow tang, Z. flavescens, from Hawaii and the purple tang, Z. xanthurum, from the Red Sea.

Being naturally separated by a distance of more than 9,000 miles prevents these two colorful fish species from ever meeting in the wild so it’s fascinating to see this experiment play out in the aquarium & aquaculture world. Surgeonfish are not nearly as ‘promiscuous’ as other high bodied marine fish such as butterflyfish and angelfish but we do see a few species getting jiggy with their cousins from time to time, most notably the hybrid powder blue x powder brown tang which is regularly collected from a melting pot of marine fish bybridization.

The yurple tang has been turning heads for being one of the first of its kind with a very limited number of specimens being produced by Bali Aquarich, as well as the boujie price tag for the privilege of owning such a unique fish. We were personally entrusted with one example of the yurple tang by Bali Aquarich so that we could document and chronicle this fish as it grows up and develops into an adult fish, the likes of which no one really knows how it will turn out.

So far all of the photographs of the Bali Aquarich yurple tang shows a pretty small fish with tall fins and a very pale overall coloration but this is mostly because none of these freshly shipped specimens have had a chance to settle down yet. We’ve been keeping our ‘review sample’ of the yurple tang in a private, quiet corner of the Studio where it has been learning to become an aquarium fish, deepening its color and pattern and growing in confidence.

It was pure coincidence that we just so happened to be keeping a small, well-patterned scopas tang in the section next to it which has been encouraging the yurple tang to spend more time out in the open since they frequently display to each other across the glass. We’ve verified with Mr. Su that yurple tang came from one of his pools containing only purple and yellow tangs but we can’t help but notice the striking resemblance to our scopas tang pictured above under the same lighting and camera settings.

Anubis Tang is Probably the Rarest Surgeonfish Ever

We don’t yet have any grown out example of the yurple tang but so far it does seem to be on track to closely resemble the single Anubis tang that Vincent Chalias started documenting several years ago and which was believed to be a hybrid of the scopas tang and purple tang. Perhaps this resemblance is an artifact of juvenile coloration of the purple tangs and Zebrasoma in general but it’s important to point out that all of these photos of the yurple tang, ours included, are taken with flash and the fish is not nearly as yellow in person as the flash photographs make it appear.

Thankfully, small fish grow quickly so we won’t have to wait too long to see the yurple tang a little bit larger than its current two inch size and we are very eager to discover how its coloration and pattern develops over time. It would really be something if the body of the yurple tang became more purple and the fins just got brighter yellow so we’ll be sure to schedule another photoshoot in a couple months and let you know.

Zebrasoma scopas, or midnight sailfin tang as they are known in Australia, are a fairly abundant reef dwelling fish that is found on the Great Barrier Reef and Coral Sea as well as much of the greater Indian and Pacific Oceans. This fish is commonly collected for the aquarium trade as they make a fantastic algae eater which isn’t too aggressive and is the smallest species of surgeonfish, so they won’t outgrow most home aquariums.

Cairns Marine’s elite fish collector Bondy was certainly surprised when he found this extremely rare xanthic individual in 15 meters in the Coral Sea on a typical fish collection trip.
Scopas tangs are typically a tan to brown shade with small white spots all over their body. The juveniles can feature some small lines throughout the body, but they do not exhibit the bright yellow colouration found on this individual.

This must be the first known record of a xanthic scopas tang from Australia displaying this level of yellow colouration, looking almost entirely like a bright yellow tang save for the small patch of normal color on its face which is different on either side. Compared to the Yellow tang (Zebrasoma flavescens) this individual has a much higher first dorsal ray and a different sail structure.

This Australian xanthic scopas tang certainly has a very different appearance than more common yellow scopas tangs from the Philippines, more akin to the xanthic piebald scopas varieties that occasionally become available. The oddball Z. scopas is certainly a very unique specimen for the Coral Sea and we can’t wait to see how this individual matures in his own special aquarium.

If you’ve been wondering where all the big, vivid yellow tangs have gone the answer is that they’re still in the wild, most of us simply can’t get them since Hawaii shut down collection and exports from their waters. But despite popular belief Zebrasoma flavescens is not endemic to Hawaii and the yellow tang has a much larger natural distribution ranging across much of the central Pacific Ocean all the way to the northern Philippines.

The Ogasawara Islands fall within the natural range of the yellow tang and while they may not be nearly as common as they are in Hawaii there’s at least enough Z. flavescens for collectors to find a few large adult specimens. Aqua Gift is a saltwater aquarium store in Japan that has graced the webpages of Reef Builders many times over the years and they showed us a trio of large adult yellow tangs which are the first fresh specimens of this species we’ve seen collected in nearly two years.

While captive bred yellow tangs from Biota have leveled off at a very reasonable ~$165 these large show specimens of Ogasawara yellow tangs are not all that expensive by comparison, selling for 44,000¥ or around $330. We didn’t even know that it was legal to collect in the protected waters of Ogasawara but we hear that there are some exceptions for collecting shallow water fish such as wrought iron butterflyfish and the occasional yellow tang, but the holy grail Takeuchi angelfish which lives much deeper is off limits.