We love to play the fish ID game at Reef Builders, and this week we got to play it with the dwarf angelfish from the genus Centropyge pictured here. Our first guess was that it is a hybrid, as there are so many naturally occurring dwarf angel hybrids from the popular C.flavissima X vrolikii, to C. ferrugata X loriculus, and more, and we’ve covered so many over the years.
Second guess, is an aberration of the popular, polymorphic Coral Beauty, Centropyge bispinosa, with its relatively deep, but short body, large eye, and rounded dorsal and anal fins. Third guess, is a xanthic form of the usually jet black Midnight angel, Centropyge nox, again the eye, snout, body shape, and fins all fitting.
We could have taken a few more guesses, but saltwater fish guru Kevin Kohen of Live Aquaria fame, now a Director at Quality Marine, put us out of our misery and told us that it is in fact an aberrant Herald’s angelfish from the Philippines, Centropyge heraldi, with this morph and similar being referred to as Panda Angelfish by some sources.
Jake Adams first wrote about Panda angelfish nearly 10 years ago, again referencing a fish from the Philippines and with rounded fins. Both that fish and this one also carry blotches on their anal fin, whereas heraldi have lines, so we would love to see some meristics and DNA sampling carried out on a preserved specimen to ascertain if this really is a round-finned, aberrant Herald’s angelfish, a hybrid, a fish from a reduced/restricted gene pool, or a new, different species altogether.
Either way, the Panda Angel is attractive enough to catch our eye, it certainly gets our species ID juices going, and would make a great conversation piece in the aquarium of any discerning aquarist. Picture credit, Quality Marine.
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