FishProfiles.com Message Forums

After my recent visit to the rebuilt public galleries at Liverpool Museum, I can now ofer these images of the various inmates of their marine aquaria. Some of these I'd like identifying conclusively, as I am uncertain as to species. Most notably, I'm puzzled about the Anthias - most of them were orange, and easy to identify as Pseudanthias squamipinnis, but there were half a dozen magenta-coloured ones in there (which showed up as orange in the photographs for some odd reason!) with flowing lyre tails that didn't look like squamipinnis to me. So if someone can tell me what the 'pink' Anthias are (even though they don't look pink in these shots, they were very definitely lipstick coloured to the naked eye!) and tell me which species of Dendrochirus Lionfish I've photographed, I'd appreciate it. Here's the photos:

Pink Anthias from Liverpool Museum

Regal Tangs, Copper Band Butterfly & Nemateleotris magnifica

Dendrochirus Lionfish

Regal Tang & Copper Band Butterfly Again

Chaetodon falcula and friends

swarm of Yellow Tangs, Anthias and Electric Blue Damsels

Enjoy!


Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002

Your mysterious pink anthias looks likes a male P. squamipinnis. Anthias are sexually dimorphic and live in harems. Anthias are also protogynous hermaphrodites; all those males were once females. (Forgive me if you already knew that stuff! ).

The Lionfish looks like a Dendrochirus zebra.

Fun stuff, maybe not a bad place to visit someday.

--------------------------------------------
The aquarist is one who must learn the ways of the biologist, the chemist, and the veterinarian.

I knew about the sex changing, but I didn't think squamipinnis males turned pink ... sadly the true colour as seen by the eye doesn't show up well at all on these shots, but some of the 'pink' specimens look as if they've been painted with lip gloss! And in a Barbie shade at that!

Oh there's plenty of the orange ones in there too - I think there's 20-plus Anthias in there, but counting them ... well I tried, but gave up after 15 minutes because they were giving me a facial tic!

Plus, I thought if you had more than one male Anthias in an aquarium, it was big trouble time. There's six of those lipstick pink ones in there, and although they do chase each other now and again, they're not fighting to the death. Mind you, they do have 2,000 gallons to swim in (and that's 2,000 UK gallons to boot) and the tank's connected to a 2,000 gallon sump/refugium that dumps amphipods/copepods into the main setup at a fairly regular rate.

Oh, there's three species of butterfly fish in there too - Chaetodon falcula, along with a Chaetodon collare which seems to be thriving, and a Forcipiger flavissimus that also appears in the massed Tangs & Damsels shot. Plus five species of Angel Fish - Bluefaced Angel, Euxiphipops xanthometapon, Flame Angel, Centropyge loriculus, Coral Beauty Angel, Centropyge bispinosus, Koran Angel, Pomacanthus semicirculatus and somewhere in there allegedly (though I never saw it) there's also supposed to be a Centropyge ferrugatus. Don't know what happened to that though.

By the way, in the aquarium with the Achilles Tangs and the three different Hawkfishes (there's Neocirrhites armatus, Paracirrhites forsteri and Oxycirrhites typus sharing another 2,000 gallon setup with half a dozen Achilles Tangs and numerous very feisty Humbug Damsels) there's a blenny. Only saw it the once. Impossible to photograph against the coral and sponge background (sigh). Dark coloured, almost black at the head end, grading to a grainy dark grey toward the tail, almost as if coloured using the PhotoShop gradient filter from front to back, and with two inconspicuous but medium sized ocelli on the body at the rear, partially intruding upon the soft dorsal. Any idea what that blenny could be?

EDIT : just found this page and the pic of the male on that site looks almost as lipstick pink as mine! However, there was no visible yellow on the fins unlike the ones on the web page.

This one is fairly close too ...

However, I've viewed nearly 100 other photos of male squamipinnis and these are the only 'lipstick pink' ones I can find. Geographical variants perchance?






Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002

I love the one of the lionfish

That lion fish certainly has very strong vibrant colours. I have photographed the large one at the Melbourne Auqarium and they never stay still and can be difficult to photograph some times.

Another thing that make aquariums dificult to photograph are all the reflections and most of all dirty glass.

Have a look in [link=My Profile] http://www.fishprofiles.com/forums/member.aspx?id=1935[/link] for my tank info

Look here for my
Betta 11Gal Desktop & Placidity 5ft Community Tank Photos

Keith

Near enough is not good enough, therefore good enough is not near enough, and only your best will do.
I VOTE DO YOU if not WHY NOT?
VOTE NOW VOTE NOW

The big problem with photographing the fishes at Liverpool Museum is that they have LOTS of space to move around in and take full advantage of this! Plus, it helps if you can point the camera at areas that don't result in the 'nuclear bomb flare' flash effect, which in the case of the reef aquaria is usully, though not always possible.

At some point I'm going to have to get a Cokin filter adapter for my Fuji FinePix, and slot in a circular polarising filter. That's a VERY effective way of reducing reflections.


Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002

UPDATE:

Blue Faced Angel Shot No 1

Blue Faced Angel Shot No 2

Enjoy!

Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002