yikai

orange tail emperor appear everywhere yes, but christmas island emperors are mostly known for their orange tail. although everywhere else also can find. just like blood red flame angels can be found in marshalls, christmas and hawaii. but the hawaiian blood red ones are more well known. the one you've shown me from iwarna has a very impressive orange tail. the body of xmas island emperor is darker blue and v striking. i hope yours grows into a big majestic adult!

a v gorgeous terminal male earmuff wrasse! nahacky fairy wrasse and tiger blenny.

a STUNNING picture of a male pictilis anthias! reef builders article said that this anthias is easy to feed and easy to keep. i beg to differ. IMO, one of the toughest anthias to keep alive ever. requires de-worming. if it feeds.

orange tail emperor from the christmas islands. not marshalls. yes it was wrongly labelled as hawaiian emperors. the misconception is ubiquitous everywhere.

emperors are not found in hawaii.. occasionally 1 or 2 will be found there as waifs. the eggs or larvae float from nearby islands to the hawaiian archipelago by accident. this is extremely rare occurrence. the one that came was from christmas islands. christmas island and marshall island fishes are caught and then shipped to hawaii to transit. and then they are shipped to the rest of the world via "hawaii shipments". i think there's a big confusion here. doesn't mean the fish coming from a hawaii shipment means that the fish is found in hawaii. rhomboid wrasse is not found in hawaii. it's endemic to the marshall islands. emperor angel is not found in hawaii. ventralis anthias are caught from the marshall islands. helfrichi firefishes are caught from the marshalls. declivis butterflies are caught from the christmas islands. flame angels are super rare in hawaii! to find a flame angel in hawaii is like finding a 4 leaf clover. the tons of flame angels that we see are from the marshall and christmas islands. but these common hawaii fishes are all sent to hawaii to be exported out through hawaii shipments. so i hope that answers your question.

yellow tail i think.

your dussumieri is a beauty! 4 years from 3 inch to 12 inch! wow! what a beast.

after waiting so long for tinker's butterfly, i'm glad that iwarna brought them in. pity i couldn't make it and i don't want to snatch with others and i'm very happy that there's such hot demand for the butterfly. and the price was very good too! i'm very happy, very happy, to see that there are reefers so interested in butterflies now. and many of them in reef tanks.

to the reefers who bought the Christmas island emperor angelfish and tinker's butterflyfish from iwarna, congratulations. these 2 fishes are rare and extremely gorgeous. xmas island emperors, famed for their orange tails, and tinker's butterfly, the hardest to obtain of the obtainable Roaps butterflies. gorgeous and extremely elegant fish. i hope they last a long time with you!

very nice but it's locally abundant like house flies. there's just no collection.

thanks everyone

more pics of angular flasher wrasse.

Another gorgeous and rare import from the Mauritius! Rhinecanthus cinereus!

every week! anyway nvm lah. heck care! hehe!

thanks very much friend

tailless marine fish are not common, but not rare either. blue tangs seem to be quite prone to being born without a tail.

my entire sandbed is covered in cyano. not sure why. but since i came back from shanghai till now. sian. i hardly even feed..

thanks! maybe next week i'll take some pics of the SPS. most have grown quite abit since the last time

funny. when i went to shanghai, i saw the swaorvoski (however you spell it) crystal paucifasciatus butterfly and PBT. and i thought of you. you posted it here before right? haha

hybrid between flasher wrasses are very common. not rare at all. this is because flasher wrasses are very uncoordinated spawners. producing alot of hybrids between species. the most commonly found hybrid is between filamented (Paracheilinus filamentosus) and yellow fin flasher (Paracheilinus flavianalis) the tell tale sign is the tail. but it also depends on what the parent species are. in the above case, filamented flasher wrasse has a elongated swallow like tail. whereas yellow fin flasher wrasse has a rounded tail. the resulting hybrid will have both traits, a double emarginated tail. also filamented flasher wrasses can have as many as 6 filaments or more, whereas yellow fin typically have only 1-2. rarely 3. the resulting hybrid will give you a filament number of somewhere in between. and of course, the ana| fin colour will usually be a mix of yellow-orange with very irregular blue spotting. typical of hybrid traits. everything is halfway halfway. here's a picture of one of the many many hybrids i've found. other hybrids include P. filamentosus X P. angulatus P. angulatus X P. lineopunctatus of course, any hybrid containing blood from the Angulatus flasher will instantly show traits of angular upward and downward pointing dorsal and ana| fin respectively. you need to have a sharp eye and know your phenotypes for each species well to identify hybrids between very similar species in one genus. i don't want to go too much into genetics, so i'll leave it at that. perhaps other hybrids involving P. cyaneus? the above 3 are the most commonly known ones.

i'm glad that there's been a small increase and a small number of reefers now interested in keeping butterflies and angels in SPS tank. a good example will be Andy. he's not a member here. but his full SPS tank is extremely healthy and gorgeous. one of the most beautiful hidden dragon reefs in Singapore. and his tank is angel and butterfly dominated. i'm glad the mindset is starting to change now. it's year 2011, and it's time for Singapore to catch up with the other countries in reefing.

the one above is the same one i posted. it was taken by the same diver in Anilao, philippines. bottom is a normal lineopunctatus. u can see in the hybrid that the tail is double-emarginate. combining both crescent and rounded characteristics into one tail. the fins also bear the angulated feature with the filaments from lineopunctatus.

this is just a normal filamented flasher wrasse in it's ultimate flashing colours.

proper care and feeding would make the colours gone faster. the colour change is based on transition from juvenile to adult. and proper care and feeding would make them grow faster and thus, change faster. many damsels scattered across multiple genus show colour change from juv to adults. so best is to check before buying. i've made the mistake before and it's terribly hard to get them out once they are ugly and territorial! C. oxycephala is not that bad. the ones from the genus Neoglyphidodon is the worst.