OldTownJoe

The part about this fish being from Indonesia is almost certainly incorrect. The genus is restricted to the Atlantic/East Pacific. Quality Marine has an identical specimen on their website listed as being collected from the "East America's" (=East Pacific). There are three species described form that region, none of which match this one. So this is likely Rypticus sp. nov.

I particularly like how they made up a binomial name for it... though they didn't form the epithet correctly. "Dilani" is apparently a common female name in Sri Lanka. If we must make up phony taxonomies, let's at least do it correctly. Centropyge delaniae!

Paraplotosus butleri... it's been posted here before

Lampris guttatus.

This fish comes courtesy of Deep Sea Challengers. It's in their recent https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpM9bX5CJCQ. Any idea what species this is?

I would say these are not ephippiata, Though it would be interesting to know exactly where these specimens came from. Could these be a hybrid of ephippiata/paccagnellae? Or are these even legitimate species? This whole group of dottybacks could use some extensive genetic testing. Here's a photo of ephippiata by Dr Randall, taken from Allen & Erdmann 2012. The yellow saddle is much reduced and more sharply defined. "Ephippium" is Greek for "saddle cloth".

Toshiyuki Suzuki, the lead author of the species description of P. winterbottomi, has posted this photo that he has identified as P. winterbottomi. Given the similar collection locality and coloration, this is almost certainly your fish.

This seems to be a juvenile. The yellow gets less intense with age.

Juvenile Plectorhinchus gibbosus

The first one looks to be P. multifasciata. The second photo, from what I can make out in a dorsal view, looks like P. schauinslandi. This species seems to display an unusual amount of color variation... but without better photos I can't even be sure that those two specimens are the same species.

Oops, I spoke too soon. Parapercis are extraordinarily difficult to ID, with there being dozens of species with very similar color patterns. A clearer photo of this specimen would make identification easier. This is P. randalli. Which looks a lot like P. katoi, but it has red dots in the dorsal fin and is lacking the dark spots on the lateral bars. A better match for our specimen, I think. There's also the recently described P. rubromaculata, which differs from P. randalli mostly in the coloration of the caudal fin. In randalli there are dark blotches, whereas rubromaculata has red spots. Looking at the photo of our specimen it seems there's a dark blotch in the middle of the caudal fin that would correspond to the dark blotches in P. randalli. http://rmbr.nus.edu.sg/rbz/biblio/60/60rbz163-172.pdf http://fishdb.sinica.edu.tw/pdf/809.pdf?PHPSESSID=d6d3bj7fattmm0170ji5c9huk4

Here's the holotype of P. katoi. There are some slight differences in the coloration of the dorsal fin and the red bars along it's side don't have the dark spots in them.. but it's pretty close. http://www.kahaku.go.jp/research/publication/zoology/s2/08Randall_et_al.pdf "Parapercis katoi seems to be more closely related to a new species from Taiwan and southern Japan (Randall, in press) collected from depths of 80 to perhaps 400 m. It has essentially the same dentition and pattern of scales, a smooth preopercular margin, and is closer in coloration (Masuda et al., 1984: pl. 261, fig. B, as P. somaliensis). It differs from P. katoi in having 52–53 lateral-line scales, usually 17 pectoral rays, lacking a prolonged upper lobe to the caudal fin (total caudal-fin length 19.0–22.8% SL, compared to 24.4–28.8% for P. katoi), and having a shorter snout (9.6–10.3% SL, compared to 11.0–12.5% for P. katoi)." And the lanceolatus is ridiculous.

Here are a couple of large, colorful jawfish that LiveAquaria and Old Town Aquarium both have received this week. I'm posting these to try and resolve the uncertainty regarding the correct species identification. I'm still waiting to hear back from our supplier regarding the collection locality on these specimens, as that should unequivocally clear this up. O. lonchurus is Atlantic, O. fenmutis is "an eastern Pacific endemic, distributed on the central portion of the Cocos plate." To the best of my knowledge there isn't much (if any) aquarium collecting done in the known range of O. fenmutis, whereas the large Atlantic range of O. lonchurus is a far more likely point of origin, with the species known from the heavily collected Florida waters. Aside from the locality, there are morphological differences in this specimen and O. fenmutis. The most obvious difference is the truncate caudal fin of O. fenmutis versus the rounded caudal fin seen in these specimens. In fact, the name lonchurus is from the Greek for "lance-shaped tail". Also note the obvious differences in coloration. The O. fenmutis specimen is the preserved holotype, which the authors describe as: "Preserved the male is very dark, especially in the head and back, very dark dorsal fin, three bluish lines on the sides that reach the tail and at least twice in the head. Females generally clearer than the male, with blue lines on the sides." The overall darker coloration (fish will usually lighten in preservation) and more vivid blue lines indicate this these new specimens are not O. fenmutis. I'm hesitant to disagree with a marine biologist when it comes to marine biology, but I'm pretty confident in this identification. Lemon, did Adeljean say why he thought this wasn't O. lonchurus? What's interesting about O. lonchurus is how little is written about it in the scientific literature. The holotype was described in 1882 from a specimen removed from the stomach of a snapper. Other specimens were subsequently collected with trawls in deep (80m+) water. Apparently our supplier has found a more accessible population somewhere.

Any idea what anthias this is?

Navigobius dewa?

Dejong's facebook calls these Eviota fasciola. But this fish is very differently colored. E. fasciola is grey to greenish with around 15 orangish vertical bars. Here's the only photo of one I can find online. None of my field guides have a photo of a living specimen, so it seems less likely this species will make it into the aquarium industry anytime soon. The species in this photo appears to be Eviota queenslandica. The only photo of a living specimen I could find is a misidentified specimen from Dejong's website. This is an apparently common species throughout the Western & Central Pacific. "Semi-translucent grey or greenish with intense dark spots on head, narrow brown to reddish scale margins, about six internal brown bars, and pair of dark brown spots on pectoral fin base."

After consulting in Reef Fishes of the East Indies I'm going to say that this is Cryptocentrus albidorsus. The main difference seems to be the extent of the white dorsal stripe... which is a stripe in C. albidorsus and a series of white saddles in C. leucostictus. C. albidorsus also has 113-130 lateral line scales, to just 90 in leucostictus. A more typical C. leucostictus can be seen in this video. Nice article on the "basabei" butterfly, Lemon. I never did hear back from Dr Pyle. I guess it'll remain a mystery. Cheers.

Great information; I forgot they were in this video. My suspicion is that P. guezei, and the Palauan & Hawaiian P. cf. guezei "bababei" are conspecific. There have been species available for study for 15 years now and they haven't described anything from them. So it seems that unless they are taking an unusually long time with this group, they must have determined there wasn't anything to describe. I just emailed Dr Pyle to get a more definitive answer.

Also, I think it's worth pointing out that "Prognathodes basabei" is essentially a trade name for this scientifically undescribed species. It's referred to as Prognathodes cf. guezei in Pyle's paper, as they apparently failed to collect specimens with which to officially describe it. Does anyone know where this name originates from? I've never seen it mentioned in the aquarium literature.

From Pyle's description of P basabei: "The Hawaiian Prognathodes seems to differ slightly from the description of P. guezei in the color of the pelvic fin. Mauge and Bauchot (1976) described the pelvic fin color of P. guezei as white proximally and black distally. The pelvic fins of the Prognathodes from Hawai'i appear to be orangish distally. Because the original color description of P. guezei may be based on nonfresh material, we cannot be certain that this represents a real difference between the two populations. Except for pelvic-fin color, we are unable to identify any other characters of the Hawaiian Prognathodes that distinguish it from P. guezei." And here's a photo of Prognathodes guezei taken from that same paper, none seem to exist on Google. Also, there is P. guyotensis, which the ICUN lists as: "This species has been recorded from Palau (video observation) northwards along the Palau-Kyushu Ridge, and in the Maldive Islands in the central Indian Ocean. This species has been recorded between 125-332 m in depth (G.R. Allen pers. comm. 2006). It likely occurs in areas between the known distribution records (R. Pyle pers. comm. 2009)." There are photos of the holotype online which show it to resemble the Scythe Butterflyfishes of the Eastern Pacific, P. falcifer & P. carlhubbsi."

This is Bodianus tanyokidus. I noticed there aren't any photos of this species easily available on the internet. This is taken from Gomon's revision of the genus. Specimens are known from the Comoros Islands and Mauritius in the Western Indian Ocean and Okinawa in the Pacific. I can't find any depth records, but Gamon states it occurs deeper than B. opercularis (42-61 meters)... but hopefully not too deep for aquarium collection someday.

From Dr Randall: "In my opinion, it is an undescribed species. Dr. Benjamin C. Victor is expecting to receive specimens and will describe the fish if new."

I did a little research into this specimen. The species descriptions for P. severnsi and erythrops can both be found online. I'm inclined to believe this is a specimen of P. erythrops that is transitioning into its terminal phase and has yet to fully develop the dark anterior coloration. You can see hints of it developing. This specimen also has the ventral pinkish reticulations of the holotype P. erythrops, as well as the whitish (as opposed to yellowish) ventral abdominal coloration. This would be an extension of the reported range of erythrops from Mauritius to neighboring Kenya. I've sent a photo of this fish to Dr Randall; we'll see what he has to say. Description of P. erythrops. Description of P. severnsi (top link).

Dr Gill responded regarding the dottyback: "I am confident this is P. dilectus. The late Roger Lubbock mentioned similar variation in the original description of the species. He checked gonads of specimens showing different colour forms, but was unable to associate the colour patterns with sex of specimen. I've never been able to address this in my own studies, as the coloration differences aren't apparent in preserved museum specimens. In any case, I suspect that this species (like other pseudochromids) is most likely hermaphroditic. Although some studies have suggested that pseudochromids change sex, I feel it is more likely that they are able to allocate to one sex of the other (and adopt secondary characters such as coloration), depending on social or other cues." The other fish is Stathmonotus hemphilii, a chaenopsid blennioid. One of my favorite families of fish.

This blurry photo is of a fish that was collected in Florida by Dynasty Marine. They had never seen one before, so they asked for our help in IDing it. It took me a night of searching the internets before I came up with the identification. I'll let you guys take some guesses at it before I tell you what it is. There's a revision of this genus online containing the only other photos I know of.