Not only is the Coral Beauty angelfish widely diverse and varied, the hybrids it produces span the gamut in terms of appearance. C. bispinosa has been documented to hybridize with C. ferrugata, C. loricula, C. loricula x C. ferrugata, C. shepardi and C. multicolor in the wild. Of all the hybrids formed, the rarest and the most unusual one would be the ones with C. multicolor.
Centropyge bispinosa hybridizes with the multicolor angelfish in the Marshall Islands to produce a really unique one of a kind lovechild. While not nearly as spectacular as those formed with C. loricula or C. ferrugata, the uncommonness of this mix is probably due to the unrelated nature of both species.
Only a few specimens have ever been collected and one famous one resides in Koji Wada’s private tank. Koji from BlueHarbor is single handedly responsible for all the crazy out of this world species that pass through the doors of that illustrious Japanese fish store that almost every reefer could only dream of visiting. Just because he can obtain these holy grail fish doesn’t mean he has to sell them.
Koji has a private collection of rare fish in his office which includes the Coral beauty x Multicolor angelfish hybrid, amongst others. Here’s a picture of it before it entered his office tank, and in the collage above you can see a small inset of it swimming with a borbonius anthias.
Below is a video of Koji’s office tank showcasing all his rare fish. How many can you identify? This video doesn’t show the coral beauty hybrid but if you watch the link of his private collection above, you can see it swimming. The specimen is gargantuan!
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yzz9PImSYvc[/youtube]
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