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,…

RVS fishworld’s haul of fame: Pseudojuloides mesostigma

First of all can we get a chest bump peace sign for pencil wrasses? Apart from Cirrhilabrus, Pseudojuloides has got to be one of my all-time favorite genera of labrids. Sleek, svelte, elegant, the pencil wrasses are the perfect package of…

Aberrant Ctenochaetus binotatus shows up with patchy skin coloration

Another surgeonfish has been collected in the wild with the strange piebald coloration that seems to be pretty common in wild surgeonfish and now we’re really getting anxious to know what this condition is, or what causes it. The genus Ctenochaetus is…

Blackface Bicinctus clownfish is the freaky fish of the week

Sometimes it seems like every fish we enjoy in our aquariums is bound to have a turn at exhibiting aberrant coloration, and this week’s freaky fish is this odd blackface bicinctus clownfish. Amphiprion bicinctus also known as the two-banded clownfish is…

Golden grouper collected in the Philippines is extremely lucky to be alive

The fish pictured above is a super common Boenak grouper, Cephalopholis boeanak, with a one-two punch of extremely rare traits.The reason we are writing about this fish at all is that it exhibits and marked form of xanthism turning it a…