The Volitans Lionfish has been in the news a lot recently, as this gluttonous Indo-Pacific fish has been slowly eating its way across the Caribbean, leaving ecological devastation in its wake. But it seems we may have gotten one important fact wrong about this...
The Toby Pufferfishes of the genus Canthigaster don’t get nearly enough appreciation from aquarists. The three-dozen species in this group offer a little bit of everything, occurring in nearly every sort of tropical marine habitat, from seagrass beds to surge zones,...
Despite their considerable popularity amongst aquarists, the Scooter Dragonets remain some of the most frequently misidentified and misunderstood of marine fishes. Even the group’s common name in the aquarium trade—“Scooter Blennies”—is a misnomer, as these fishes are...
Coral reef fishes are often masters of mimicry, capable of matching the appearance of other species with near perfect verisimilitude. Think of the uncanny similarities between some of the Meiacanthus and Plagiotremus fangblennies, or the well-known subterfuge of the...
The Bluestreak Cleaner Wrasse (Labroides dimidiatus) is one of the most well-known and well-studied species of Indo-Pacific reef fish, famed for its habit of ingesting the parasites found on other fishes. Countless scientific studies have examined the particulars of...
The Cobalt Slender Grouper (Epinephelus leucogrammicus) is an exceedingly rare and beautiful fish known only from the Red Sea. Rarely collected for the aquarium trade, specimens often fetch thousands of dollars when they are made available. Given how infrequently this...
Pseudogramma is a diverse genus of miniature soapfish (AKA “basslet” or “podge”) that doesn’t get much attention from the aquarium community. These small, drably colored fishes lead cryptic lives on tropical coral reefs, seldom venturing far from their rocky abodes in...
There have been some exciting discoveries lately in the world of yellow angelfishes. It was just a few weeks ago that the well-known yellow-breasted variant of the Regal Angelfish from the Indian Ocean was finally recognized as a distinct subspecies, and now RVS...
The ocean can be a wondrous place full of phantasmagorical creatures, and some of the strangest marine life can be seen in the highly modified juveniles of certain fishes—the paper-thin undulating ribbon of an eel larva; the tiny, spiky sphere of a sunfish; the dorsal...
The distinctive deepwater butterflyfishes of the genus Prognathodes have been in the news recently with the exciting rediscovery of the enigmatic P. guyotensis, but, in general, this is one group that doesn’t get much attention from the average aquarist. While these...