Digiman

Two cheap and uncommon fishes: 1) coradion altivelis A beautiful and easy and inexpensive butterfly from australia and can occasionally be found in LCK aussie shipment 2) pseudoplesiops rosae Cheap and beautiful and best of all peaceful dottyback from cebu philippines. Perfect fish for a nano tank. Can be found in CF shipment.

No la they dun eat the auripes. They jux use the auripes to "beautify" their food fish tanks. The auripes will most likely die of starvation. Poor auripes, they are so abundant in taiwan waters that i can see them quite often when i visit harbours and markets.

Red sea aurigas are rare in singapore becos singapore LFS dun bring butterfly in their Redsea shipment. U've seen so many red sea mesoleucos butterfly in HK LFS and u should know that red sea butterfly are actually not tat rare to obtain, jux tat we dun get them in singapore red sea shipment but in other countries, v much more obtainable.

This is a fish tat i'll always look out for when i go CF since it is from PNG and CF occasionally carries PNG clowns. I'll scan thru all the singapore angelfish and carefully check their tails, but disappointingly all are yellow all the time. The left one will look super gorgeous when the black comes out! But still like u said, far from lightning patterns. Wow v special aberrations on a v common fish!

Gorgeous mesoleucos butterfly, from the pic looks like a nice size too. Elongatus is a rare anthias from japan. Taiwan may be catching these anthias but they dun sell cos most likely those caught are by the local fishermen and the fish cannot be eaten so will be thrown back to the sea. The only rare fish i saw in Taiwan is C.Auripes. And i can see them everywhere in restaurants and fish markets. But not in LFS! The local fishermen catch groupers and other food fish and will accidentally catch some auripes and will jux dump them all into their tanks or tubs. They dunno auripes are rare in other parts of the world! Even the marine LFS in Taiwan dunno, and their shops only sell cheap indo fishes cos taiwan reefing community is v small, much smaller than singapore according to the LFS owner.

Nice and clear pic of a chagos clown. Extremely rare clownfish although not too impressive looking, not available in the trade. A telephone card featuring chagos clown. Wonder wat other rare reef fishes made it onto the tele card or even stamp!

Yes the white line sponge / spider sponge is 150 before GST.

Anyone good with camera can tell me why when i took pic slightly more top down the result appears bluer compared to the one above taken from front of the tank?

Adding one more dracula if they are both males will they not fight? The draculas at AM are running out already, hard to get cheap ones next time. Thanks for the suggestions, i'm slowly trying to cover the bottom sandbed with corals too. Jux added an open brain and a cynarina to the right hand side. Scolymia and acans are nice but too ex for me.

Thank you. The easier way for me instead of changing the scape is to cover the rockscape with corals. The best thing about LPS is they are so colourful and can fill up the tank v fast and make it v colourful in the shortest time, like a candy store.

Below are my opinions: 1. Your tank is very small, there's no need for skimmer! Jux do water change one pail a week. My tank is 25gal and i go skimmerless with one to two pails water change once a week and the tank is gg strong. 2. Water change is important. Use good salt mix like Tropic Marin and other brands. Salinity i recommend lower as u not using a chiller and since u are only keeping softies, at 1.020~1.021 should suffice, no need to high. 3. If u are using tap water, pls dechlorinate the water. Use good anti-chlorine tat removes chloramine as well. I recommend Seachem Prime. Add salt mix and aerate for at least two days for complete dissolve of the salt. 4. Dun use coral chips. Try to get live sand for your sandbed and keep iit shallow about 2inches for easy maintenance. Try to get some liverocks for your tank too. 5. 15 gal with two clownfishes and your few other fishes is not overstocked! The fishes die becos there's some problem with your tank. Add live sand and live rocks to your tank and let the tank cycle for two weeks, if u are more patient, cycle for a month. After cycling, add fishes and corals slowly, one to two livestocks a week. 6. Running extra chemical filtration (like good activated carbon) is optional if u do weekly water change. All in all nano tank should be simple and fun. Hope u solve your problem soon.

Among these four, the most stand out one is personatus. The rest of the three look more alike in patterns and colours. Personatus is also the most obtainable (if u can wait and willing to pay) and most suitable for captivity in terms of size and temp requirement. If i become rich enough one day and when the opportunity arise again to get a personatus, i'll setup up a Hawaii biotope!

Dracula can hide for a week. Be patient, it'll suddenly appear and once it appears it'll be less likely to hide again. Thank U. Cool fishes i agree, but tank i feel can be improved. My scape is terrible now, i hate it!

Ya, even personatus angel ranked 4th in the website! If we jux talked about the rarest genicanthus ever in the trade, Semicinctus will always be number one, den followed by Takeuchii angel, den finally personatus. Den 4th will be a drastic drop in price, semifasciatus.

I cant remember the price cos the website is no longer around. The japanese website (now closed) ranked the most expensive marine fishes found in Japan, and number one was Semicintus angel, 2nd was boylei angelfish, 3rd was lord howe butterfly, 4th was personatus angelfish. Debelius, resplenden, clarion, small conspic and small fuscipinnis anthias were the next few but i forgot the order. Then further down they have carmabi, guyanensis butterfly, sanguineus hog etc. It was probably outdated by now but i believe the semicinctus still remains the top because to date no fish can surpass the price of boylei angel, so semicinctus being one position higher should still remain as the top most expensive!

The one and only ever Genicanthus Semicinctus collected was sent to Japan and put up for sale at a price tat was never to be surpassed after tat. It remains the most highly priced fish in Japan history ever. But like lemon said the fish din eat and probably died in the LFS and never was sold. As for Chaetodontoplus Ballinae, it was rumoured to be the same case but worse. Only one was ever collected, of course illegally, and sent to Japan but arrived DOA! But there is a public aquarium in australia planning to do a lord howe biotope, so if it is realised, visitors can in future see many rare lord howe fishes like semicinctus angel, ballina angel, lord howe butterfly, tricinctus butterfly, mccullochi clowns, latezonatus clowns to name a few.

Thanks, u're right, i should jux get a semi-pro. A DSLR in my hand is as good as a throw-away.

This is huge! If come this size i doubt u'll get also. EZmarine dun do retail, so they hav no LFS for me to visit. Our white bar Maculosus are gotten from them anyway. And also captive bred juvi maculosus. Ezmarine also harvests their own chrysocephalus angels, from taiwan waters.

Isn't the pic of chagosensis a bicinctus clown? I remember Marinecenter website use the pic for a bicinctus.

Like lemon say, slightly below 4 red notes. Cheapest dracula u can ever get!

I saw the steenei jux now at Ah Beng, but only saw one and it was quite big. Look like it will kill any fishes its size and below!

LCK and CF both no dracula. Maybe AM still has some left from their maldives. They brought in a huge batch so may have some leftovers. Call them to check.

The conspic x meredithi is indeed ugly. Tat's why steven din bring in, cos at 5k+ how to sell the fish? Who willing to buy when they dun even know wat the fish is!

My new year resolution!

Do u see wat i see in the pic below? Such small size (1.5 inches only) and a pair is one of the rarest thing u can obtain in a Hawaii shipment!