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The Phantom Clownfish is a new strain of Amphiprion ocellaris from Sea & Reef Aquaculture, with a unique pattern of dark black and bright white. The Phantom Clownfish is the offspring of Premium Snowflake Ocellaris Clownfish, Black Ice Clownfish and super black Darwin Ocellaris Clownfish creating a gorgeous balance of obsidian black and snow white markings. It’s really cool that Sea & Reef Aquaculture is not only safeguarding unusual clownfish strains like the Wyoming White and the Maine Blizards, but also trailblazing new varieties of Anemonefish using known existing genetics of designer clownfish while still managing to create something really unique looking.

Up until now this splotchy barred marking looked really cool and unique and has been called a “snowflake” pattern. However with the advent of the stark black and white pattern of the Phantom clownfish we think it looks a lot like a good looking cow-print, although ‘snowflake’ is probably a lot easier to market. Like its Darwin black ocellaris parents, the black coloration of the Phantom clownfish develops in a similarly delayed fashion – early juvenile fish are dark brown, but turns jet black when they reach a size of 1 ¼  to 1 ½ inches.

Sea and Reef just released a few Phantom clownfish to their retail customers so these may be already be spreading across the country. Additionally, Sea & Reef let us know that they’ve donated a pair of each of the maine blizzard, wyoming white and Phantom clownfish to the MACNA raffle so we’ll get a fair crack at winning some at the end of the month.