Mitratus Butterflyfish In The Shape of a Burgess, Or The Other Way Around?

But man, what a brilliant yellow specimen it is! Burgess butterflyfish usually have a mostly black back, black crown and black eyestripe but the Aqua Gift Burgess Butterflyfish is throwing out extra yellow all over the place. Not only is the…

California Academy of Sciences dive team is scoring big in the depths of the Philippines

After what has been a lengthy period of preparation, scouting and diving, the California Academy of Sciences’ expedition to the Philippines is beginning to yield a nice catch of truly exotic deep reef fish. The first notable catch of the…

Keeping butterflyfish in reefs: What to look out for and what to avoid

Butterflyfish are the quintessential reef inhabitant. Take a look at any coral reef picture, video, documentary, poster, you name it. There’s a high chance a colourful butterfly is flitting around there somewhere. The same is not to be said in…

Tinkeri x Burgess butterflyfish are popping up more and more

If you are a fan of Tinker’s butterflyfish but not too hot about the less colorful Burgess butterflyfish, increased imports of supposed hybrids of the two are becoming increasingly frequent. Roaps butterflyfish are unique looking and truly striking in the eyes…

Inter-subgeneric hybrids of Roaps butterflies are rare and amazing

Roaps butterflyfishes can form hybrids with other unrelated members of the butterflyfish group although very rarely, to form inter-subgeneric hybrids. Fishes and other animals generally hybridize with other species that are highly similar, usually in the same genus, or within the…

Chaetodon tinkeri shows why the roaps butterflyfishes are fearless and hardy

Hybrids aside, Chaetodon tinkeri is the least common and arguably the coolest obtainable member of the five roaps butterflyfish – with emphasis on the word obtainable. As far as butterflyfishes go, all five species within this subgenus Roaps are hardy…

Garibaldi lemonpeel angelfish and Flavocoronatus butterflyfish hybrid headlining Father’s Day sale at Greenwich Aquaria

If a Garibaldi and a lemonpeel had a lovechild we imagine it would look a lot like the beautiful specimen at right. This stunning Centropyge flavissima was captured in the Marshall Islands and it features a strong orange body coloration…

Gold Crown Butterflyfish variant shows up in Japan

Following up on the story we posted several days ago regarding the gold crown butterflyfish, Chaetodon (Roaps) flavocoronatus,  as we expected at least one of these specimens has shown up for sale in Japan. However, in contrast to the nearly…

Rare Butterflyfish Parade: Roa excelsa, Roaps flavocoronatus and a new Roaps tinkeri hybrid

Not sure what is in the air lately but have we got the goods on a nice handful of uber rare butterflyfish fish for you. Hot on the heels of the orange margin butterflyfish, Prognathodes basabei, we have an odd-phase…

Dirty Burgess butterflyfish officially reclassified as a Heniochus

The Chaetodon butterflyfish of the subgenus Roa are amongst the most beautiful, striking and highly sought after marine fish by rare fish collectors. All except the one which goes by the name of “Dirty Burgess”. The dirty burgess butterflyfish is…