20141030 Species spotlight- Harlequin Tusk Wrasse

The Harlequin Tusk fish (Choerodon fasciatus) is one of the most beautiful fish in the aquarium trade. This is a robust, hardy, and colorful fish with lots of personality. The only catch is- they are "Not Reef Safe". Despite needing a large tank size to house this fish, I would consider this a beginner fish since they are hardy and robust.

Harlequen Tusk Wrasse

The Harlequin Tusk can get pretty big in the wild, but I have not seen any over 8" in private aquariums. They are very greedy eaters and would happily accept mysis, krill, small fish, feeder fish, you name it, they eat it! They are also quite disease tolerant, in the years I worked in the trade I have not seen one die from starving or illness. The only one we lost is- jumping out! Like all wrasses, this fish is a jumper. So you should have a good, heavy lid over the tank for them since they are very powerful.

To keep this fish, just make sure you have reef condition- water temperature no warmer than 82 no cooler than 76. Salinity should be Specific gravity range 1.022-27. They will grow big and need lots of swimming room, so I do not recommend keeping it in tanks smaller than 120G. Do not keep this fish with small, slow fish, any crustacean, or clams as the chance of them becoming food is high. The fish will do fine with coral and other larger, robust fish like tangs, angels, triggers, puffer, eel, etc.

20140719 Waikiki Aquarium 2

Part II of the Waikiki Aquarium tour today-
I've already said this was where I first fell in love with the hobby. But the true reason I fell in love with it was because of its clam display. The setting is a bit different now than before as they have moves some of the larger "small clams" to an outdoor display (to come later). But they still host a variety of beautiful "small" giant clams. Such as these three tridacna squamosa in a reef tank with some of the happiest soft and large polyp stony corals I've ever seen

 Here is another Long nose hawk, not as large as the display by the entrance but equally as adorable

 Another squamosa under the light. I also want to point out that almost ALL reef system aquariums here are exposed to actual natural sunlight with supplemented 1000W metal halide bulbs- you cannot beat this lighting environment.

With huge system capacity and space, you can clearly tell that you can break a lot of the "rules" on what's reef safe and what isn't. For example, normally people would not consider harlequin tusk wrasse nor copper-banded butterfly "reef safe". But you can see that they are not only thriving in this system, but so are the corals!

 An illustration of how "happy" corals should look like, look at the tissue extension on all of them! And the water seems really bubbly because of the unique "surge" tank system Waikiki Aquarium invented to provide natural, life-like surges for the best of corals' health and oxygenation.