It’s been a busy year for the reef aquarium hobby and especially for reef fish discoveries in the Philippines. The Philippines is the largest single exporter of ornamental fish for the aquarium trade. With a population of nearly 100 milion people,…
Philippines
Nature likes to design wild clownfish too!
Nearly all Picasso and designer breeds of clownfish in captivity today are influenced by genes from just a handful of exceptional wild clownfish. The Joker clownfish pictured here is one such example of a “natural” Picasso clownfish that was collected…
Chevron tang also turns up in the Philippines
The chevron tang, Ctenochaetus hawaiiensis, has long been a popular aquarium tang, and for good reason. Juveniles are brilliantly colored and, like many tangs, does an admiral job of eating nuisance algae. Nearly all chevron tangs make their way to…
Sensational new ‘Mandarin’ cat shark collected in Philippines (updated)
The Mandarin Cat Shark is an exciting new species of shark which has just been discovered collected in the northern Philippines. The incredible pattern of the ‘cat shark’ has an uncanny resemblance to the beloved Mandarin goby, and we’ve never seen a shark…
Helfrich’s firefish discovered in the Philippines
The Helfrich’s firefish, Nemateleotris helfrichi has been discovered in the Philippines, extending the species range by more than 1000 km, or 600 miles. The recent finding is important not only from a fish ecology perspective but it also puts this fish within…
RVS Fishworld spearheads Filipino net training and licensing program
In late August of this year, RVS Fishworld together with the Philippine national fisheries department spearheaded the first ever net training program in Santa Ana in the North of the country. The net-training program was financed primarily by RVS with…
Wild caught aberrant clownfish is not your average misbar ocellaris
Clownfish aberrations are now so common with basically all captive bred fish being an amplification of these mutations, that we don’t bat an eye when we see a solid white clownfish anymore. However when the aberrant clownfish is wild caught,…
Shallow water Acropora globiceps looks like living crystals
We have held a soft spot for Acropora globiceps ever since the beginning of our adventures in reef and stony coral keeping. Acropora globiceps was one of the first acro frags that we ever got and grew, yet this species is…
Is Japan really home to any endemic Fairy Wrasses? Cirrhilabrus katoi disagrees
The reefs of Japan are known to harbour unique fauna found nowhere else on this earth. Rife with endemics, species such as Centropyge interrupta, Chaetodon daedalma, Genicanthus takeuchii, Chromis mirationis and a whole hodgepodge of other reef fish call this…
Massive migrating school of surgeonfish discovered in the Philippines
Two weeks ago, we were in the Philippines scouting for new and exciting corals to grow at the RVS 4-star Mariculture facility. While diving certain areas which have perhaps never been seen by humans using SCUBA equipment, we stumbled upon…