The conspicuous angelfish, Chaetodontoplus conspicillatus, is and has been the holy grail of saltwater angelfish for home aquariums for a generation of collectors. Sure there’s more exotic species like the Debelius and Tiger angelfish but that doesn’t detract from the high profile of this fish, and especially its even more exotic hybrid forms.
Such an exceptional specimen landed at TSM Corals this week and boy does it look interesting and unusual with an even blend of both its parent species. The only known naturally occurring hybrid of the conspicuous angelfish is with the queensland yellowtail angelfish, formerly known as the personifer angelfish.
The only place these two species naturally overlap in distribution is the Queensland coast of Australia, which is where we presume this specimen was collected. However we’ve very recently been treated to just a few captive bred hybrids of the Conspicuous angelfish with the blueline angelfish from prolific breeder Poma Labs.
While we have yet to see how the conspicuous x blueline cross will turn out, these fresh photos from TSM Corals show the natural hybrid in great detail.The body is black overall with a bright yellow tail and an enlarged yellow area of the face. This yellow background serves as a perfect color to highlight the conspicuous blue markings around the eyes and gills of the conspic angelfish.
If you think conspicuous angelfish are expensive already at $5000 and up, then you’d better be able to afford a decent mid-sized car to score the meridithi x conspicuous hybrid, with NO financing! No matter how you look at it, this is one of the rarest known angelfish hybrids and it’s great to see one finally make it to the states.
