New Half-Black/Cocos Angelfish Hybrid produced by Bali Aquarich | Reef Builders

In our latest visit to Mr Su famous ornamental fish hatchery, we were greeted with many fish of different sizes and slightly different coloration all of them being hybrids of Centropyge cocosensis and C. vrolicki.

The very strange thing with this particular hybrid, is that all of them have different coloration. Some have very dark tail with dark orange anal, caudal and dorsal fin margin. Some of them even show stripes a bit like in a Tigerpyge. Others have very light dark tail, with a very smooth yellow coloration.

Most of them are a kind of greenish when they settle, and slowly the yellow takes over as they mature, and further down the line, some of them almost turn into bright orange.

Striped specimen:

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Striped specimen are probably the most interesting ones. We can’t figure what is the exact explanation.

They almost look like tigerpyge, but the line are never complete. As our friend Yi-Kai Tea, told us, the parents are probably not pure, and contain a bit of ‘hidden’ ‘Eibli’ lineage. These are all very closely related and also the hybrids are fertile. Another theory is that Centropyge cocosensis is a xanthic population of C. eibli, which would explain these stripes.

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Non-Striped specimen:

Some specimen have no stripes at all, with a nice bright yellow in the body center, getting darker as you move outward.

These mandarin colored fish, are very cute, and really have a unique look.

Pale Tail Specimen:

And finally some specimen almost have no black in the rear part of the body, which gives them a very interesting appearance. These new fish, are very interesting, and are just a stone’s throw away from the Tigerpyge. Hopefully in the near future we’ll see some proper captive bred specimens from Bali Aquarich.