We don’t often blog about art but there is no denying the presence of wildly talented artists right here in our hobby. Karen Talbot is well known for her meticulous and incredible paintings, while Christ Turnier for his whimsical wood carvings. The…
Survival on the reef part 3: Distractions and decoys
Continuing with our mini series on reef fish survival techniques, we stray away from mimicry and take a look at how some fishes use the art of distraction to fool their predators. Not everyone has the ability to conceal their body…
Will the real Terelabrus rubrovittatus please swim up
Terelabrus is at the moment a monotypic genus first erected in 1998 based on an unknown labrid caught at 100m in Bulari Pass, New Caledonia. Since then, the genus has not expanded despite the appearance of two potentially new species, one…
Awesome Fish Spotlight: The Armitagei hybrid love child
Apolemichthys is one of seven angelfish genera that are ever popular in the aquarium trade. The genus encompasses some of the age old aquarium favourites such as the flag fin angelfish (A. trimaculatus), bandit angelfish (A. arcuatus) as well as…
Black tailed Centropyge heraldi is just another one of numerous confusing variations
Centropyge heraldi is an unassuming yellow dwarf angelfish with a huge can of worms just waiting to be opened. When you do, you’ll probably want to break down and cry in confusion. Apart from the standard yellow dwarf angelfish, C.…
Survival on the reef part 2: Cover and concealment
In our previous installation of reef creatures and their survival techniques, we talked about mimicry and how certain mimics have evolved to copy their models for protection. In this second part, we take a look at animals who display protective…
Navigobius cf. dewa collected from the Maldives for the first time
Not too long ago we pointed out that the genus Navigobius could hold two more species apart from the original japanese endemic N dewa. In this article we mentioned that certain individuals of “pink dart gobies” coming out of Japan were…
Sugoi Sakana Supottoraito: Chaetodon nippon
No, your screen isn’t displaying random alphabets in a series of unpronounceable words. Our atrocious attempt at translating today’s title post into Japanese was intentional. We’re going international on today’s Awesome Fish Spotlight (literally), and we’re featuring a butterflyfish that could…
Symphysanodon katayamai is a beautiful slopefish that is almost unknown in the trade
Many deepwater reef fish don’t get enough air time simply because they live so deep and are hard to find. One such fish is Symphysanodon katayamai, or the yellow striped slopefish. Symphysanodon is a genus comprising of about a dozen…
Awesome Fish Spotlight: Roa modestus, the poor man’s excelsa
Roa is one of our favourite genus of deepwater butterflyfish and although it contains at least four members, only Roa excelsa is frequently covered. All Roa species are patterned in the same template of brown and white vertical bands, and are deepwater fish…