Fish ID

[APalm]

Saw this little guy at my lfs. He said someone brought it in for trade and didn't know what it was called.

 

[Greta1981]

I can't really see the picture well. Is that a hermit crab, by any chance?

 

[APalm]

No its some sort of dottyback.

 

[Andy Sager]

Can't see the fish too clearly but I believe it's a type of blenny not a dottyback. The ventral fins are not similar to dottyback fins and the mouth is too pointed for dottybacks as well.
Maybe with a closer, clearer pic we can identify which type of blenny

Hope this helps

 

[APalm]

I will try my best to get a better pic.

 

[APalm]

The owner said it was pretty rare

 

[Sniperhank]

Looks almost like a fairy wrasse or even a betta.

 

[bettaowner]

I'd say it's a wrasse or a dotty back too. I honestly don't think it looks like a blenny

 

[Andy Sager]

I'd say it's a wrasse or a dotty back too. I honestly don't think it looks like a blenny

I've gotten this fish before in some of my shipments so I know it's not a dottyback or Wrasse. I just can't find the proper name for the thing since so many fish have been reclassified. The tripodish looking ventrals will put it into a goby or blenny category for sure (or some new subclass that used to be in goby or blenny categories )

 

[APalm]

Thanks a bunch in helping me out!

 

[Tony Gill]

It's not a dottyback, but a member of the Plesiopidae (which also includes the longfins and marine betta). It's in the subfamily Acanthoclininae, usually called spiny basslets. Your fish is currently called Belonepterygion fasciolatum, but this "species" is probably a complex of a number of species. There is considerable variation in coloration and other features depending on locality, which is why I suspect it's a complex of similar species. If you do an image search on the species name you'll get some idea of this. The species is not rare in the wild, but is very crypic and rarely enters the aquarium trade. BTW, I recently described a new acanthoclinine species from the Red Sea. You can download the paper at http://www.mapress.com/zootaxa/2013/f/zt03750p222.pdf

Tony

 

[APalm]

Thank you for you help. This really helps a lot.

 

[Andy Sager]

I knew Tony would solve the mystery (Looks like my eyes have finally started to betray me. The mouth looks more rounded to me. Oh well. lol ) I have this fish before and with this coloration. I would never have guessed B. fasciolatum.

 

[Tony Gill]

Glad to help out. I've collected this species several times (e.g., Middleton and Elizabeth Reefs north of Lord Howe Island, off central Western Australia and in southeast Queensland and northern New South Wales), but have never kept one. They appear to be most common in very shallow water ... I mostly collected them from tide pools.

Tony

 

[Andy Sager]

Glad to help out. I've collected this species several times (e.g., Middleton and Elizabeth Reefs north of Lord Howe Island, off central Western Australia and in southeast Queensland and northern New South Wales), but have never kept one. They appear to be most common in very shallow water ... I mostly collected them from tide pools.

Tony

You're lucky Tony. You get all the GOOD STUFF down there. lol Caribbean fish have what seems to be a finite amount of desirable fish while the Pacific has an almost infinite selection. (But you can't beat my weather )

 

[Tony Gill]

I just remembered that I had published a paper in which my coauthor (Randy Mooi) and I had looked at x-rays of specimens of this species to look at gut contents. I checked the paper and apparently we looked at 43 specimens, but all of them had empty guts. That suggests it's a species that feeds infrequently on relatively large prey. According to the table in our paper, most other acanthoclinines feed almost exclusively on crustaceans, and one genus (the eel-like Notograptus) feeds only on alpheids (snapping shrimps).

Tony