A week ago we had the distinct privilege of kicking it at LiveAquaria and among all the treasures we discovered, we got to meet the wonderful pair of flathead perch living in one of the display aquariums in Kevin Kohen’s office. Notice we used the word ‘meet’ instead of ‘saw’ since the pair of Rainfordia opercularis were extremely inquisitive and personable acting more like curious, almost playful puppy dogs than the overgrown flat faced candy basslets that pictures make them out to be.

Nevermind that the price of the flathead perch is prohibitively expensive for all but the most loaded aquarium hobbyist, these large relatives of Liopropoma are very striking in person, much larger than you would think, and they really interact with passersby of their aquarium. Their behavior indicates that there’s ‘somebody home’ as they are constantly scanning their environment and don’t act like spooked little designer basslets at all. We’re still working on a video of this super interesting pair of flathead perch but in the meantime enjoy the series of pictures posted below.

One of the coolest thing about this pair of flathead perch is their difference in color - the larger specimen in mostly red with blue stripes and the other one is like a dirty yellow in the front fading to burnt orange towards the posterior

Hey big boy, you sure do have a pretty mouth

The larger of the two flathead perches is well over six inches long - look at that stud!

In this shot you can really see the difference in coloration between the smaller and larger Rainfordia

The flathead perches rarely showed signs of aggression towards each other and they often huddle really close to each other

You can get a sense for the unusual angle of attack that flathead perches use when stalking their prey, such as the ghost shrimp pictured in the top right