You guys know how much we love our rare, bizarre and exotic aquarium fish but very few groups do it for us in the way that the Liopropoma basslets do. Normally coming from deepwater of both the Caribbean and the Pacific Ocean, the Liopropoma basslets are not your regular fish store encounter, but it’s their color, behavior and attitude that keeps us endeared to these fish.
The Caribbean wrasse bass, Liopropoma eukrines, was the first basslet from this group to really grab our attention. Between the cool body shape, race car stripe, and eyes that really look out of the aquarium and at people, these fish and their relatives are simply the best in every way except price.
You may remember a few years back when out of the blue, the wrasse bass’s geminate twin from the East Pacific Ocean suddenly became available and for surprisingly reasonable prices. This ‘West Coast’ version of the wrasse bass is very similar at first glance, but just has a little more going on in terms of coloration and patterns.
We did some nice features of Liopropoma fasciatum back in 2015 and while the species did have a four year absence in the aquarium hobby, it’s recently returned to being available from rare fish specialists. It’s always been an unusual goal of ours to not only have one of each of the ‘Gemini Twin’ basslets, but also to try and pair them up in the same tank.
Our initial half-hearted attempt to pair the wrasse bass with the rainbow basslet in a 10 gallon tank didn’t go as planned, although it wasn’t a train wreck either. The level of aggression that Liopropoma basslets display towards each other is nothing compared to what aggressive dottybacks and damselfish can do to each other, which gives us ample room to try again.
In this latest episode from the Reef Builders Studio we do our first video spotlight of this precious pair of exotic marine fish, experimenting with a different format from the usual freestyle, run & gun vlogging format. We’re planning on deep diving in other groups of fish, corals, and invertebrates in the future so if you don’t want to miss any future reef video spotlights, be sure and subscribe and better yet, let us know in the video comments what sea creatures you want to see up close like the Gemini twins Liopropoma basslets.
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