The Indian Ocean is one of the least explored ecoregions of the world, and madagascar in particular is nearly a black hole of information when it comes to ornamental aquarium fish. Thankfully in recent years RVS Fishworld‘s sister operation in Madagascar has been uncovering some very exciting reef fish and giving us a closer look at the unique fish in this area.
It was this particular collecting station which extended the range of the illustrious tiger angelfish by thousands of miles, whereas Apolemichthys kingi has only previously been known from South Africa. Same thing with gem tangs, which were known to occur further south and east to Reunion but seem to be in greater numbers around Madagascar than anywhere else.
These two species as well as a very unique clownfish and a very rare flasher wrasse have been slowly trickling out of this Madagascar station for the past couple of years. But recently RVS Fishworld shared a ‘family photo’ of sorts showing the four fish in glorious detail. People have talked about doing marine aquarium biotopes before but man, these four fish alone would make for a killer display.
Since it’s still early days in the exploration of marine fish around madagascar who knows what other jaw-dropping reef fish lurk around these Indian Ocean reefs, we’re still holding out hope for some unique species or specimens of pygmy angelfish to come from this region, looking at you Centropyge debelius, but the clownfish, gem tang, flasher wrasse and tiger angelfish are already a very, very good start.
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