yikai

A very beautiful butterlfyfish that never comes to our LFS. Chaetodon selene. the subtle yellow spots on the white body is very beautiful.

it WAS nicer

i mean seriously lah. clipperton, clarion, marjorie, all these exotic fishes from the extreme ends of the globe can be obtainable. but one *TOOT TOOT TOOT EXPLETIVE* RUSTY FLAME THAT IS RELATIVELY COMMON IN CEBU. AND WE CANNOT GET? i don't DON'T understand!!! i'm going to break down and cry liao. this is getting absolutely ridiculous and makes NO sense. i'm going to start breaking down soon like an unhealthy bandit angel.

the closest to hotumatua is joculator in term of appearance. not sure how close they are related taxonomically. colour wise, fisher is almost identical! colini's closest relative is narcosis. so i dun dare to say joculator is the most closely related to hotumatua.

except rusty flame the most ridiculous fish EVER!

hotumatua looks like joculator and fisher cross. very dirty brown looking but it's nice. burnt orange. very warm undertone and looks very beautiful.

agreed on the last statement. but i've never kept hotumatua so i cannot comment. but bandit, tinkeri, declivis all can adapt to standard reef temp.

very important. buy things that excite you! that's the most important thing about reefing. unless rare fishes excite you, then no point getting if you don't like hehe.

HAHAHA. the list above is god of reefing's unobtainable shopping list. none of us will even come anywhere near that list!! for us normal ordinary people to fulfill a mauritius biotope list, a mauritian coral beauty, gem tang and a mitratus butterfly will suffice.

According to John coppolino, Centropyge hotumatua from the Easter Islands is a very cold water fish that needs optimal temperature of 72-74F! That's like 22C! very cold. so anyone wanting to obtain the hotumatua (if it's even ever available), a cold water system is needed. RCT hawaii had tried with hotumatua breeding but failed and the pair was meant to go to john copps. but he did not have a cool enough system so he did not get it. now he does but no more hotumatua!

debelius and opercularis will indeed really make for a stunnign display. to make it even more awesome, throw in a sanguineus fairy wrasse and a Plectranthias pelicieri and you'll really reach legendary status. i'm so jealous of Dr. tanaka's sanguineus fairy wrasse pair! Attention people of SRC, the four fish you are about to see below are some of the RAREST OF THE RARE from Mauritius and obtaining all 4 will sky rocket you to legend status. Centropyge debelius Bodianus opercularis Plectranthias pelicieri and Cirrhilabrus sanguineus tanaka owns 2 sanguineus fairy and have seen and photograph debelius in real life. he's really fortunate! he has also seen smithi and G. semicinctus before!

haha well you can wait for it again if you really like the fish. and hopefully it will come. I did not go to AM and even if i did, i won't have gotten it as well because it's a peaceful and shy fish that will not survive in my big tank full of aggressive fairy wrasses like roseafascia. yes it's a kind of hogfish but from the genus terelabrus. only 2 members in this genus, one is called T. rubrovittatus and is red and yellow. the other is this un-ID one which is red and white.

Or the super blue potters with a bandit to make for an awesome show stopping legendary Hawaii biotope tank!

i going china next year lah! LOL.

Bodianus opercularis!??! oh this one u can dream!! Bodianus opercularis is from Mauritius so maybe you can hope one fine day it will suddenly appear but don't expect it to be anytime soon! However it is less rare than it's cousin, B. neopercularis which looks virtually almost identical. That one is from Palau and i think Japan. and super rare. Muaritius? Aim for Debelius and with ur opercularis, will make a super awesome pair like this.

haha. i just hope my tank doesnt crash when i come back from my 6 weeks china trip.......................

!?! you saw but did not buy? do you have any idea how rare this fish is!?!?!? and the price was so fantastic!!

good then digi. u've added another super rare fish to your already super impressive repertoire. always amaze me how u manage to obtain all the rarest of the rare. as for me, i must increase my rare fish collection. lately have not been in touch liao! marginalis, roseafascia, kwaZulu, hybrid filamentosus. must obtain the angulatus hybrid and cf lanceolatus!

maybe haha. so there are others now with the white terelabrus. wonder who got them. it's a very shy fish and will not survive in the hustle and bustle of normal reef tank conditions. haha good luck! so cheap anyway. die just go buy again!

wish fulfilled digiman luckily DA sms me and i sms u and u went down. otherwise it would have been unobtainable for until god knows when! maybe only one is white that's why they put in the display!

Kudos to those who managed to get the very rare WHITE unidentified Terelabrus sp from AM's maldive shipment. The white variant is only found from the islands of Maldives and it's I believe, it's debut appearance here. It is an undescribed and very very rare species. Digiman, time to post some photos. You really never sieze to amaze me with your ability to obtain the rarest of the rare! Any others who manage to get the white Terelabrus, please post pics and share too!

yes damn nice. nicer than both parents together. just look at it. omg. stunning! 1st pic by tanaka, 2nd pic in the wild.

paper? where got. it's just a casual description only. for those who want to find hybrids next time. the most obvious and most beautiful of ALL hybrid flashers that are commonly available is lineopunctatus X angulatus. i'm still in search of this and hopefully one day i will find it.

I found this fish at Ah beng on Friday. It's a hybrid between Paracheilinus filamentosus (Filamented flasher wrasse) and Paracheilinus flavianalis (Yellow fin flasher wrasse). How i know it's a hybrid? Hybrids between filamentosus and flavianalis are common but very hard to spot because the offspring are so variable and look very similar to both parent speices. So many people don't know and probably don't care that it's a hybrid! Except maybe me. I'm too much of a fish nerd to not care and such things excite me very easily. Based on characeristics.. Tail Filamented flasher wrasse have very long tail filaments which give them a lunated swallowtail look. Yellow fin flasher wrasses have blunt squar ended tails. The resulting hybrid from the picture has a double emarginated tail. Meaning it is a cross between a lunate tail and a blunt end tail. Dorsal Filaented flasher wrasses have very long dorsal filaments. They typically have 5-6 filaments. That's alot. Yellow fin flasher wrases have only 1-4 filaments. Most commonly they are only seen with 1 filaent. Occasionally 2, and super super rarely, 3-4. (i have personally never seen them with anything more than 2 filaments). The resulting hybrid has 3 filaments. Also, the 1st and 2nd filament in my hybrid are coloured red (characteristics of yellow fin flasher). Anal fin Filamented flasher wrases typically have red anal fins (Geographic variants may have other colours) Yellow fin flashers have well....yellow! My hybrid has a pure yellow anal fin which is inherited from the yellow fin flasher. Like i said, such tiny attention to details throw many people off but i find thrill in looking for unusual specimens... even though majority of the population can argue that it looks like any ordinary filament flasher! i paid the same price for it anyway

Bought a very nice big colony of Acropora desalwii yesterday. It was a gorgeous tabling fanning piece. but it was very big. Too big in fact, so i had no choice but to frag it into smaller, more managable pieces. It's not something i wanted to do and the nice beautiful shape was gone, but now at least i have many frags of them to plant around my tank. here's one of the larger frags....