Bali Aquarich Creates Two New hybrid Angelfish!

In our recent visit to Bali aquarich, we were greeted again with two new hybrid varieties of pygmy Angelfish. It looks like this place is an hybrid factory, every month comes with its share of new fish.

Mr Su classic signature fish, the Pinnate Batfish, Platax pinnatus.

Since Mr Su purposefully mixes all kind of Angelfish in his huge spawning pools, it’s always a lottery to try to find out what hybrid crosses we’re going to get. We are always speculating when it comes to half inch juvenile hybrid angelfish. It’s only when they reach adulthood that we can finally give an almost truthfully answer as to what possible mix are in these fish. As for now, it’s only speculation.

Centropyge vroliki x Centropyge flavissimus?

A nice yellow base color developed over time.

A couple of weeks ago, Mr Su sent us a picture when the fish was barely 1/4 inch, and the yellow hadn’t come out yet. It really looked like a classic Half Black Centropyge vroliki. But since we first saw it, a nice yellow tint developed all over its body.

On these very small juvenile fish it’s often very difficult to actually distinguish some traits. And it takes a massively zoomed in photograph to really be able to see the smallest details. We quickly noticed on the picture a nice blue ring around the eye. These two features led us to thing that the possible other parent is the Lemon Peel, Centropyge flavissimus. This hybrid is found very rarely in the wild, especially in the west Pacific area, and the few specimen have already been collected. But it’s been a while since we heard of one coming up.

Lemonpeel halfblack angelfish hybrid from LiveAquaria kicks it up a notch

We are very eager to find out what these fish are going to grow into. And if the whole batch will be similar, or if we will have a full range of different fish.

Centropyge bicolor/ C.joculator x Centropyge multicolor?

This new Hybrid has a very good potential.

The other nice treat we were greeted with was another very weird hybrid angel. At the moment the best possible assumption would be a mix of Bicolor Angel (Centropyge bicolor) or Joculator Angelfish and Multicolor Angelfish, Centropyge multicolor. The only hybrids of Bicolor Angels we ever heard of was with herald’s yellow Angelfish.

Note the Blue marking on top of the eye characteristic of both species.

Since the distribution of bicolor and multicolor angelfish is quite different – It’s only possible to find these two species together in Fiji and Samoa – we have never heard of any natural hybrid of these two species. We’re quite familiar with a lot of aberrant Bicolor Angelfish, but Multicolor are a lot harder to come by. Both fish belong to distant lineages within the family. So the best possibility would probably be C. joculator x C. multicolor

Note the slightly white upper sides characteristic of the Multicolor Angelfish

The resulting joculator x multicolor looks very similar to a joculator, especially the blue ring around the eye, but the faded, bleached sides are pointing to the Multicolor. These two new hybrid fish are soon reaching market size, and will be offered on some few very specialized boutiques. Stay tune, and let us know if you acquire one of them, so we can monitor their adult coloration.

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Vincent Chalias

Vincent is a coral passionate aquarist with extensive experience in the industry, travelling the world to learn about corals. His background is a master degree in Marine Aquaculture. He set up the first Indonesian Coral mariculture farms at the beginning of the century and spent over 20 years in Indonesia running them. He's been extensively diving and documenting corals all over the Indo-Pacific.