The jumbo blue ring angelfish above is by far the largest specimen of Pomacanthus annularis  that we have ever seen, in person or in photos. Without another fish in the frame you may not be able to get a sense for how overgrown this annularis angelfish is, but without exaggeration the broad white tail of this fish is at least four inches across – if its body is 15 inches long then it is also probably every bit of 12 inches tall.

We first spotted this grand daddy annularis angelfish living at the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach California a couple years ago and this past weekend we had the good fortune of revisiting this one of a kind angelfish. Even then the annularis was so large that its body had basically ‘outgrown’ the conventional pattern of stripes typical of P. annularis and now the blue lines are slightly branched towards the head in a way that you never see in the wild.