Once in a great while we’ll see a swallowtail angelfish of the Genicanthus genus with slightly odd stripes or off coloration and we wonder what kind of pedigree may have caused the aberration. In the case of the swallowtail angelfish that recently arrived at Blue Harbor in Japan, there is little doubt that this guy is a probably a nice 50/50 hybrid.
The suspected parents of this particular hybrid angelfish are thought to be Genicanthus lamarcki and G. melanospilos; the lamarck angelfish has that general shape and greyish body color and G. melanospilos has that telltale long lyretail edged in deep black stripes on top and bottom. This hybrid angelfish is neat because it’s spots represent the cross between the vertical adn horizontal stripes of it’s supposed parent species.
Blue Harbor also scored an unusual hybrid Hemitaurichthys butterflyfish which you can see on the Blue Harbor website. What is most exciting about a hybrid Genicanthus specimen is not how it appears now, but how it may look if it switches to a male form and coloration, in which case all expectations about what it might look like can be thrown out the window.
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