yikai

of course. these are legendary fishes that only appear once in a life time due to certain conditions such as depth, difficulty of collection etc etc.. there's always someone out there hardcore enough to purchase them.

rock beauty almost impossible to keep regardless of feeding. sure to waste away in time to come. however, i've never seen 1 inch rock beauties before and this is perhaps the smallest that you can find them in the trade. perhaps the tiny size could make a difference. but there have been success stories. in fact, reefcentral now has a thread of a 2 year old rock beauty and a 1 year old one. a varied diet with regular feeding and offering of sponge supplemented food would be best. it is in no way, an easy fish

Koji Wada, the owner of bluehabour, owns almost all the rare fishes available in the trade. they have the neck for obtaining the rarest of the rare!

singapore never fails to disappoint again. plagiarism seems to be the norm amongst some other LFS here. sigh.

M3 - yes thanks so much again for the lovely pair. Will be awaiting my blackburnii in future Amby - if it's still around. :z

you've received much more replies in RC and i've replied your thread and your PM already. based on all the replies, the consensus are more or less the same. i believe, as well as many others, that a combination of many factors played apart. but most importantly i think that a bacterial infection was the most serious ailment affecting your fishes. velvet and flukes could be present also since you said that the fishes were coated in a fine dusting of spots.

a trio of pictillis anthias on LADD. a terribly difficult anthias to keep. extremely difficult. these 3 have been on diver's den conditioned for 6 weeks and are feeding very well. so they say,

the "yellow priolepis complex" is so confusing. here's another species from Cebu that LADD had for sale! it's Priolepis aureoviridis, and it's so similar to P. borea and P. cinctus?

joe joe the colouration of Lipogramma klayi is similar to that of Royal gramma, but the price and depth at which it is found is different. royal gramma cost about $20, but a klayi cost about 2k++! and klayi are found very deep which makes collection difficult.

the colour might come back. but not 100%. sometimes under different condition, the colours will return. but that tinkeri looks very old and established. may not come back. beautiful fish nonetheless

omg so the guy selling the tinkeri on the forum was real?! wow i thought it was a hoax! since it's so cheap. yes that's a C. tinkeri, but with a black eyeband instead of yellow. if kept too long, the eye stripe can fade and turn a dirty black. even in bright lights it can fade to dark colours. this is same for some reef fishes like fairy wrasses, where they develop a blackish colouration after awhile.

studly male! LOL. a nice description!

chromis vanderbilt is common. just beautiful and seldom kept L. klayi is v rare and beautiful!

chromis vanderbilt is common. just beautiful and seldom kept L. klayi is v rare and beautiful!

terry. all regal angel juveniles are bright yellow in colour. even the grey bellied ones. it will grow into a grey belly one. i've never seen a yellow belly one collected as juveniles before and i don't think they ever will. yellow belly one now only can get from Medan. Since red sea regals are almost extinct in the trade like my paucifasciatus butterflies.

two v interesting fishes today on LADD. red pearly razor wrasse and earmuff wrasse

Evansi anthias are very difficult. Like the purple queen anthias. They need tons of feeding many times a day that most people cannot sustain. and even then many times they still just die. Evansi anthias can be found from Indian ocean shipments like Sri Lanka and Maldive shipments.

this is the false personifer angelfish. Chaetodontoplus meredithi.

thanks

my paucifasciatus butterflyfish pair.

where are you from? In singapore, this fish retails for $20-30 usually. not expensive. there's no geographical variation as far as i'm aware like Pygoplites diacanthus (regal angel). however, those from vanuatu seem to have more white with thinner black bars based on specimens i've seen from the net and in real life. there's no scientific proof that this variation occurs, just my own personal observation. best bet to know where it came from would be to see other fishes that arrive with it. if it's from indonesia/philippines, expect to see many fishes from that area. if it's from marshall islands, it would come in via Hawaiian shipments as all marshall island fishes transit there first. it will come in with flame angels, yellow tangs, and other hawaiian/marshall/christmas island fish. if from vanuatu, expect it to arrive with many vanuatuan fishes like scott's fairy wrasses, Cirrhilabrus bathyphilus and other vanuatuan caught fishes.

the parma mcculochi is nice and was sold on LADD today. also for sale is this marcell's butterfly and a trio of vanderbilt chromises.

difficult to adapt to captive life. most are caught with cyanide and do not do well. refuse to feed, and even if they do feed, they usually perish soon after. your best bet will be to obtain this fish from Vanuatu or Marshall Islands. They rarely come in from this location and are very expensive. personally i've only seen them arrive from such places once or twice. they are however, very commonly found from Philippines and Indonesian shipments. the rule of thumb would be to obtain smaller specimens. the smaller the better. I've kept one which was 1 inch before and it did well for awhile before dying eventually. I've given up with this species. You can try though, but it's not going to be easy.

Paracheilinus rubricaudalis is a gorgeous flasher wrasse from Fiji and Vanuatu. liveaquaria has been getting many of them in recently! there's a slight variation between fiji ones and vanuatuan ones. the difference is in a tiny line on the tail.

the nigriocella is a new one or the same old one? i thought it has already been sold?