Toad Fish?

[Mackey256]

Hello all, this is my first post on this forum so please be nice to the newb.

Yesterday my girlfriend and I received a saltwater aquarium from her brother who is moving to Arizona in the next few weeks. In the aquarium we have one porcupine puffer fish, two lion fish, and two toad fish.

What I'm curious to know is what the real name for the toad fish is?

I know a bit about the fish I just don't know what the actual name is of the fish.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance,
Brad

[roka64]

WELCOME TO AA!!!

I have never heard of a toad fish. This is what I found, Tetractenos hamiltoni. The Common Toadfish is very toxic and should not be eaten. Human deaths have resulted from the consumption of toadfishes.
If you update "my info" with your tank size/equipment/critters, we should be able to help a lot more.

[Fluff]

I don't know much about them other than they are venomous much like the lionfish. Yours is probably a juvenile and may be deceiving in it's colors and that could make ID'ing it more difficult, but you might be able to find something at fishbase.org. Great site for ID'ing. Just type in toadfish under common name, it will bring up several possibilities. HTH

http://fishbase.org/

[Mackey256]

Well first off, thanks to both of you for the reply.

I have been doing a ton of research on the internet today and I also stumbled upon what roka64 stumbled upon for information but I couldn’t find more than that. I’ll have to update my tank information so you guys can see what I have in the aquarium.

What I do know is that the fish is venomous and dwells mostly under rocks and in the sand. I snapped the above picture after waiting for the lights to go out so I could catch this little guy out of his hiding place. According to my girlfriends brother (who we got the fish from and who called them toadfish) they are supposed to only eat live fish but he had been feeding them frozen shrimp for months with no problems.

I hit up http://fishbase.org/ as fluff had suggested and found about 100+ matches for the name “toadfish� and zero matches for “toad fish� with the space. I’ll go through those results and report back with my findings.

Thanks again everyone,
Brad

[roka64]

Cool! Definitely keep us posted. As far as I could tell, it is possibly some sort of puffer species. If you could get a pic of him with his fins out, that may help more.

[Mackey256]

Well I have been all over this little thing called the internet last night and early this morning. I have found tons of information about toad fish on the http://fishbase.org/ website. (http://fishbase.org/ is an excellent source for identifying fish species if you haven’t visited it before I suggest you do)

I’m sad to report that I have yet to identify my mystery toad fish.

What I do know is that it is most likely a member of the Batrachoidiformes order and is a type of “Toad Fish.� However after looking at countless pictures of these guys online I have yet to find an example of any type that matches the colors of the specimens in my aquarium. I believe that fluff was correct in his earlier statement that these are probably “…a juvenile and may be deceiving in its colors…�

I was going to try and take some more pictures of these fish last night but they were both buried under the sand. I will try to get some better pictures over the next few days. Hopefully I can snap one with the fins extended.

As for now my search continues and I will keep you all posted as to what I find out about these neat little swimmers.

Thanks again for the help,
Brad

[Mackey256]

Here are two more pictures that I snapped last night. Unfortunately neither of these are very good and I'll try to get a better picture as the week goes on.

Again, BIG THANKS!
Brad

[Fluff]

Wow, these photos are much better. They are much more ornate than the first pictures shows. I still can't help you with an ID but they are very nice looking fish. I hope they continue to do well for you.

[Hara]

Try a search for "Adventor elongatus"...I am going for a scorpionfish "leaf fish" variant in my search

Isn't this fun?

[Mackey256]

Yes these fish are quite beautiful but they hide under the coral and sand almost exclusively. I really only see them if I turn on the light at night and at feeding time.

These pictures don’t really do them justice either. I’ll try to snap some better ones over the weekend.

"Adventor elongatus" will be the next thing I do a search for. As of right now I’m at work and shouldn’t even be online. I’ll check it out over the weekend. Thanks for the tip Hara.

You guys are really helpful to a newb like me, thanks for that.
Brad

[roka64]

As soon as I saw the 2nd pics, I thought of scorpion/leaf fish, as did Hara.

[reneeanneb]

Originally Posted by Mackey256

Hello all, this is my first post on this forum so please be nice to the newb.

Yesterday my girlfriend and I received a saltwater aquarium from her brother who is moving to Arizona in the next few weeks. In the aquarium we have one porcupine puffer fish, two lion fish, and two toad fish.

What I'm curious to know is what the real name for the toad fish is?

I know a bit about the fish I just don't know what the actual name is of the fish.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance,
Brad

My LFS had one of these a long time ago in his tank with a Lion Fish. He called it a Rockfish/ Rock fish.

[Mackey256]

Well I have looked into toad fish, leaf fish, scorpion fish and now rock fish.

I have yet to have any luck identifying this dang fish. The more research I do I’m almost certain that this is a member of the Batrachoididae family of the Batrachoidiformes order. Now all I have do is to narrow that down from the 69 know species and 19 known genera.



I have done so much research on fish and salt water aquariums over the past few days that I actually had dreams about aquariums last night. Seriously every time I closed my eyes I saw fish and aquarium equipment. I think I’ll take the day off from doing research and pick it up again tomorrow.

Thanks for all the help I don’t think I could have even gotten this far without you guys.

Brad

[karlseith]

I believe your fish may be a Opsanus tau, if not very closely related. I worked in a fish store for a while and we used to get these guys in all the time. They came in as "Atlantic Toad fish" or "Yellow Toad fish". There very cool looking fish but very seclusive.

[roka64]

Stonefish are the most venomous fish in the ocean, if I recall correctly, and I doubt they would be legal to sell.

[karlseith]

Stonefish are the most venomous fish in the world. That being said they are rarely fatal, they are readily available to the aquarist, and pretty cool to watch in the tank. When I worked at a fish store I was cleaning a tank and bumped my hand into what I thought was live rock and turned out to be a stonefish. It didn't sting me, actually it didn't even move. The fish was very calm and more concerned with tyring to camouflage itself than bother with me.

[roka64]

Cool, Karl, I didn't know they were actually sold in a LFS. I might have to check it out. They don't use the poison as an active offense, it's all about defense. If you were to step on one, in the sand, and got stung, I doubt you would make it out of the water.

[Mackey256]

Yeah the Opsanus tau is one of the fish I was thinking it was. The only thing holding me back is that I can't find pictures that match the two I currently have. Perhaps they are just too young. I have become quite content just calling them Toad fish.

Thanks for the help guys,
Brad

[Amitas]

It is a coloration of the gulf toad fish, known as the orange toad fish. The scientific name is Opsanus beta. I am currently setting up a tank for a toad fish with the natural coloration.