Karen Brittain has been quietly breeding some very exciting fish in Hawaii for the last few years. She brought us a big batch of captive bred personatus angelfish, a batch of bandit angelfish yielded some novel ‘ghost bandit’ angels, and most recently, here yellow anthias are all grown up and spreading to aquarium collectors.
While visiting the ICP Machine at Stone Aquatics, we got to see Stephen Visser’s personal collection of Karen Brittain Captive Bred Fish™ which includes a pair of her first Odontanthias fuscipinnis. This deepwater fish is only known from Hawaii and the deep habitats it inhabits makes them very hard to get, and therefore very expensive.
Unlike the yellow anthias raised by Frank Baensch from wild collected eggs, Karen’s specimens are from an aquarium spawning fish, therefore 100% cultured. What is striking about these fish is how beautiful and perfect they are, and much less shy than their wild counterparts.
The color and shape of these captive bred yellow anthias is absolutely perfect, and the abundant filaments emanating from nearly all the fins is truly stunning. The name yellow anthias doesn’t inspire much about this fish’s appearance but it really should be named for its brilliant purple markings.
The purple edges to all the fins is what ‘makes’ this fish really standout. The purple lines across the face and parts of the hobby enhance this fish to a lesser degree, but it’s really the purple edging of the fins that grabs the viewers’ attention. At six months old these captive bred yellow anthias are already a very respectable size so they should be a very practical species for anyone to breed in captivity, and hopefully this is the beginning of more progress in the breeding of various anthias species.
