More and more, amazing species of tobies like this Canthigaster tyleri are coming to light giving us more reasons to love the colorful diversity of sharpnose puffers. Tyler’s toby is a deepwater reef fish from the Indian Ocean which clearly bears some close resemblance with the more commonly seen leopard toby, Canthigaster leoparda.
Like the recently described Canthigaster Criobe, C. tyleri is an explosion of eye candy. With it’s wild combination of color and pattern you could say that Tyler’s toby is the clown triggerfish of sharpnose puffers; even the relative distribution of the spots and the stripes is similar.
Rare fish magnet Russo’s Reef sourced just three specimens of Tyler’s toby from an Indian Ocean location, presumably the Maldives, although the species is known to occur over a pretty wide range including Mauritius and the Seychelles. With this trio of Canthigaster tyleri expected to go to LiveAquaria, there’s some modest possibility of pair formation but we won’t know any more until they pop up in the Diver’s Den.
