Boy, even after years of writing about all the rare, unusual, hybrid and aberrant reef fish, the natural reef always has something new and special that we’ve never seen before. This speckled flame angelfish from Pacific Island Aquatics is just the latest in a long line of novel flame angelfish variations that has come to light and grabbed our attention.
If you weren’t paying attention you’d be forgiven for thinking this fish is ordinary but there’s no question that those few and thin bars, coupled with irregular black speckles is not a run of the mill Centropyge loricula. If there’s hybrid genetics at play we hazard to guess at the pedigree because there’s no direct cross we know of which results in this pattern, and flame angelfish hybrids are very well documented.
The best part of this particular type of aberration is it appears to be of the permanent kind, and not the wildly colored pygmy angelfish whose color might revert back to normal after some time in captivity. Alas this very cool speckled flame angelfish is already sold so we hope its new keeper will take very good care of it.
