#forcipiger

[i-give-you-a-fish]

may i have a fish please?

You get a Forceps Butterflyfish

Forcipiger flavissimus

[alexcharmsyou]

Eddie's never really cared that the other Sirens looked down on him like an outcast his whole life. He didn't fancy them much either. Just because he wasn't inclined to kill casual doodlidads didn't mean he was any less than the rest. He had...hobbies.

Or at least that's what he was completely set on before the age 20- Adulthood was slowly seething into view, and Ed [after long an deep self evaluation] decided it was about time he give it a shot, what's the worst that can happen right?

Oh nothing--except the two dumbasses high from ass to tit right in front of you after you devastatingly fail at the one thing Sirens do best: Failed Siren Song.

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Eddie, who was already standing awkwardly from his newly shifted lower limbs, stood in disbelief, expression at a complete halt like a thief caught mid-job. This was NOT how the thing's supposed to go...

"rObIn lOok I cAughT a REaL sWoRdFIsH"

"nO DInGuS tHatS a FoRciPigeR LoNgiTrOsTris"

They stopped for a short moment, immediately followed with A burst of laughter.

"pFFt- wHAt tHe hELL iS a fOrCePiGer LoNG..aTrOciOuS"

They went on and on for hours, comment-giggle-comment-giggle. The entire time Eddie was just contemplating HIS escape, a complete backfire. But, every now and then he'd observe the two creatures. He had to admit it was fascinating how strong their connection was- must be nice. He also wondered how long it would take before the song wore off.

It didn't for a long, long time. So, he sat and watched them. Studied their expressions, their gestures, the way they wiggled around in the chairs Ed had them tied them to. It was captivating to say the least. He definitely wouldn't try this again for a while, but he had to admit- he chose the right pirates to start with.

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NOTES: heyo!! so i haven't really been on top of my game latley with writing so I wanted to make a teeny post about an idea i had with Stoddie to hopefully start off my accounts original content:D

The idea of Trippy(s3 sequel) Stobin getting lured in by Eddie only to have the killer move flunk and be the cause of the intoxicating was totally a blast to imagine, maybe ill write more on this sometime. I hope it could bring someone a giggle or two. Have a lovley night/day beans! ^^

[aquariuminfobureau]

Though it may not be the showiest of the butterflyfishes, the threadfin butterflyfish, Chaetodon auriga, is strikingly pretty and popular in its own right. Reportedly threadfins grow to a size up to 23 to 25 centimeters, or 9 to 10 inches. In reality, although specimens this size do exist, it is rare to find any that are this size, in either aquaria or wild environments, although they regularly reach a size comparable to an adult human hand. C. auriga has a vast range from the Red Sea and the eastern shores of Africa, across into the Central Pacific Ocean, including isolated archipelagos such as Hawaii. Across this range the species is of variable appearance, but these morphs seemingly cannot be correlated straightforwardly, to either geography or phylogeny. Although the absence of the spot upon the dorsal fin, among the nominate C. auriga populations that live in the Red Sea, does seem to be a localised, racial trait.

The great clade of chaetodontids or butterflyfishes is very diverse on the reef, and they are thought of as the primary clade of coral eating fishes. However not all of these animals consume corals obligately, or at all, and basal genera like Heniochus have faces that look and function rather normally for reef fishes. The Chaetodon subclade have derived facial anatomies favoring increased coral feeding, whilst certain other butterflyfishes such as Forcipiger and Chelmon have evolved in a very different direction, towards probing behaviors in foraging, so like some insectivorous mammals and worm eating birds, their snouts became elongated. C. auriga is a member of the Chaetodon clade, but it too shows evidence of natural selection towards a long faced, probing morphology. Not surprisingly C. auriga is sometimes described as what is called a 'faculative corallivore' or an adaptable animal that can either eat corals or do without them as a food source. Confusion surrounds it's corallivorous abilities, and it is sometimes alternatively classed as a 'non-corallivore'.

Threadfin butterflyfishes are restricted, when they are juveniles, to the sheltered environments of lagunal and near-shore patch reefs, before moving slightly further afield when larger. Juveniles of the species show little particular association with any live coral, and the species can be considered to be a habitat generalist. The adult fishes have even broader tolerances. C. auriga is found in weedy and other areas of low coral cover, as well as with lush coral growths, being considered associated with areas of natural coral rubble. Whereas in the aquarium C. auriga have proven easy to feed and resistant to diseases. They are reported to - only sometimes - consume Aiptasia sp. anemones, and definitely consume other species regarded as harmful to corals, such as certain nudibranches up to 3 centimeters.

C. auriga forages for benthic items on hard substrates, and its diet includes marine arthropods, annelids, and even macroalgae. Earlier works present C. auriga as even more omnivorous, explicitly labelling the species as a 'benthic omnivore' subsisting also on octocorals, actinarians, and scleractinians. Stable isotope study has suggested the very low importance of corals or anemones in the wild diet of C. auriga, but observations of such should not flippantly be dismissed. Small polyps are definitely grazed from the shells of live clams by this species. Observations of bites at corals might not necessarily demonstrate the deliberate ingestion of coral tissues, and gut content analyses can fail to identify the ingestion of anthozoan tissues. In any case C. auriga mostly bites at substrates other than growing coral colonies.

C. auriga forages prey mostly around coral rubble, and in and around holes and ledges, as is predictable by looking at its face. Its method of feeding has been categorized as a 'grabber-tearer'. Although the labial teeth of C. auriga are spatulate, they are not especially robust as they are in the true coral feeding grazers. With that said, the butterflyfish tooth morphology remains surprisingly stable given their various dietary specializations. But similarities of specialization within the group have been noticed, between the craniodental morphology of C. auriga, and those of the probing butterflyfish genera, Forcipiger and Coradion. Coral feeding in butterflyfishes leads in a different direction, towards the evolution of increasingly short faces with stronger jaws, which are more suited to the tearing of polyp flesh.

The reputation of C. auriga as feeding on corals makes it a questionable species for the reef aquarium. But it is not open for debate that C. auriga also controls organisms more harmful to coral, in the manner of certain wrasse species. More often than reports of this species feeding on corals in the aquarium, they are alleged to bite tridacnid clam mantles, and the crowns of large tubeworms. Similar behaviors are noted in other species of butterflyfishes that are classified as members of the same feeding guild. Conversely they are proven to harmlessly browse epibionts from the shells of pteriid clams, and similarly from the surfaces of holothurians - behaviors that are easily misobserved.

Interestingly it is observed that in the wild, C. auriga do not attack diseased colonies of Acropora corals, although these became a feeding magnet even for ordinarily non-coalrallivorous fishes, such as damselfishes, wrasse, and gobies. So it might seem that C. auriga is a species harmless to Acropora colonies, which belong to the genus perhaps most celebrated in reef aquariums. Perhaps they create some incidental damage by biting them, but only to take prey from their surfaces. Also no butterflyfish species appears to attack the stinging Euphyllia corals, which possess a potent venom and are thus highly protected against most coral feeding fishes.

As foragers of benthic food sources, butterflyfishes are broadly ecologically comparable to fish such as grazing acanthurids. Fishes belonging to such benthopelagic guilds require decent swimming space in the aquarium, but also an aquascape sufficiently complicated that they might comfortably dart into its nooks, should they feel alarmed or intimidated. In the wild this butterflyfish readily takes refuge among live corals. Feeding of C. auriga in the aquarium is easy with the meaty, defrosted items that are available. In my experience they will even accept such preparations as floating flakes. Towards other fishes they are passive, although they can be victimized by boisterous or nippy species, so tankmates must not have such demeanors.

[boudhabar]

paul starosta-forcipiger longirostris

[lamaskot]

Pez mariposa de pico largo amarillo (pez fórceps)

Pez mariposa de pico largo amarillo (pez fórceps)

La mariposa de pico largo amarillo es un muy común mariposa . Él y su pariente bastante poco común, el hocico grande (Forcipiger longirostris) tienen uno de los nombres de peces más largos de Hawai, lau-wiliwili-nukunuku-‘oi-‘oi. Su significado es “hoja del árbol wili-wili con una nariz afilada”. El tono del pez es similar al color de las hojas grandes y onduladas del árbol wili-wili hawaiano.…

[ulan-bator]

Mah Jongg Tile Set Description

Tile Set Name:  FISHES.TIL Subject:  Tropical Fishes of the world Created by:  Ron Gemeinhardt

Description:

As any aquarium hobbyist or occasional pet-shop browser knows, there is no shortage of color among the denizens of the world's oceans, rivers and other bodies of water.  This tile set is composed of common (and not so common) aquarium dwellers--both freshwater and marine; vertebrates and invertebrates.

This set uses a direct-replacement scheme of tile substitution.  Each suit in the traditional Mah Jongg tile set has been replaced by a new suit, as follows:

Freshwater fishes of Asia (replaces suit of dots; *=brackish water species):

   1)  Clown loach                (Botia macracantha)    2)  Red-tailed shark           (Labeo bicolor)    3)  Tiger barb                 (Capoeta tetrazona)    4)  Black ruby barb            (Puntius nigrofasciatus)    5)  Archer fish                (Toxotes jaculator)       *    6)  Mono (or Malayan angel)    (Monodactylus argenteus)  *    7)  Pearl gourami              (Trichogaster leeri)    8)  Dwarf gourami              (Colisa lalia)    9)  Siamese fighting fish      (Betta splendens)

Freshwater fishes of the Americas (replaces suit of bamboo):

   11)  Fancy guppy               (Poecilia reticulata)    12)  Angelfish                 (Pterophyllum scalare)    13)  Firemouth                 (Cichlasoma meeki)    14)  Tiger oscar               (Astronotus ocellatus)    15)  Neon tetra                (Paracheirodon innesi)    16)  Marbled hatchetfish       (Carnegiella strigata)    17)  Heckel discus             (Symphysodon discus discus)    18)  Green severum             (Cichlasoma severum)    19)  Dwarf gold ram            (Microgeophagus ramerizi)

Coral reef fishes (replaces suit of characters):

   21)  Common clown              (Amphiprion ocellaris)    22)  Yellow tang               (Zebrasoma flavescens)    23)  Long-nosed butterflyfish  (Forcipiger flavissimus)    24)  Oriole angel              (Centropyge bicolor)    25)  Flame angel               (Centropyge loriculus)    26)  Blue devil                (Pomacentrus coeruleus)    27)  Regal tang                (Paracanthurus hepatus)    28)  Royal gramma              (Gramma loreto)    29)  Picasso triggerfish       (Rhinecanthus aculeatus)

Miscellaneous aquarium dwellers (replace dragons):

   10)  Mystery snail             (???)    20)  Water flea                (Daphnia sp.)    30)  Florida seahorse          (Hippocampus hudsonius)

Tropical invertebrates (higher orders; replace winds):

   31)  Hermit crab               (Dardanus megistos)    32)  Starfish                  (???)    33)  Chambered nautilus        (Nautilus pompilius)    34)  Lobster                   (Enoplometopus occidentalis)

Tropical invertebrates (lower orders; replace seasons):

   35)  Nudibranch                (Glossodoris sp.)    36)  Sea fan (gorgon)          (Gorgonarie acanthomuricea)    37)  Featherduster worm        (Sabella sp.)    38)  Pipe organ coral          (Tubipora musica)

Freshwater tropical plants (replace flowers):

   39)  Amazon sword              (Echinodorus sp.)    40)  Madagascar lace           (Aponogeton madagascariensis)    41)  Jungle val                (Vallisneria americana)    42)  Cryptocoryne              (Cryptocoryne sp.)

Important note:  To help you identify which tiles belong to these last two suits, each has a common "ocean/river floor" color for all four tiles.  The plants are on a muddy brown bottom; the invertebrates rest on a dark gray "coral sand" floor.

The notation ??? means no particular genus is represented.  As for the chambered nautilus--OK, so you'll NEVER see one in an aquarium, but it is a pretty little beastie, isn't it?

(Incidentally, if you look carefully, you'll notice only the dwarf gourami, pearl gourami and betta are blowing bubbles.  These three fishes are able to obtain oxygen from air as well as water--hence the bubbles.)

Some notes on legibility: These tiles use cyan as the base color, rather than light gray, which may make the default mouse cursor a bit hard to see.  A bright cyan mouse cursor (color number 11) works very well, and a black background (color 0) also improves the display's appearance quite a bit.  Also, since some of the fishes have rather long names, the lettering on the tile faces is designed to minimize fatigue and eyestrain, at the expense of a uniform character set.

[lifeunderthewaves]

Pair of long nose butterfly fish by alanbessette Forcipiger longirostris, commonly known as the longnose butterflyfish or big longnose butterflyfish, is a species of butterflyfish found on coral reefs throughout the tropical waters of the Indo-Pacific

[davidben]

Catch of the day! A longnose butterflyfish (Forcipiger flavissimus) #illustrations #illustration #painting #digitalart #digitalpainting #fish #aquarium #character #instagramart #characterdesign #doodle #sketch_daily #sketch #adobephotoshop #childrensbookillustration #dailydoodle #dailysketch #ocean #sealife #gouache #drawing #catchoftheday #wacomcintiq #wacom #saltwateraquarium #davidben #childrenbookart #art #animal #conservation (at Portland, Oregon) https://www.instagram.com/p/CAdBGvbjeQT/?igshid=7dlw4jxxdu5

[marineexplorer]

Never believe this fish - Longnose butterflyfish - Forcipiger flavissimus #marineexplorer by John Turnbull Via Flickr: Pinocchio comes to Jervis Bay

[aquariuminfobureau]

If you were British in the 1990s, and entering the world of marine aquariums, the chances are you had read something by Nick Dakin. And especially The Book of the Marine Aquarium, from 1992. Nowadays this formerly iconic tome, as well as it's author, are denigrated, but is the book that bad? If it was, we will need to explain why Julian Sprung, no less, wrote a foreword for Dakin. To take a look inside is to see a piece of aquarist history, for this was written in quite a transitional era, between the old and new views of the tropical marine aquarium.

This once veritable tome starts off with an introduction to the animals kept in reef aquariums, to water chemistry, and to the technology allowing the aquarium itself. Diagrams illustrate to the novice, the basic principles involved, including this introduction to the reverse flow form of undergravel filtration. Nowadays it seems strange that any book on saltwater tanks, would mention undergravel filtration any deeper than in passing.

Blennies are an iconic clade of saltwater fishes, and naturally enough they are popular in coral tanks. The author thoughtlessly refers to all blennies as 'ideal' regarding 'invertebrate compatibility'. Excepting in an appendix page, where he rightly warns against buying Exallias brevis, a species known to be an obligate coralivore.

Knowing that at least one blenny eats corals, might have cautioned the author against such a hasty generalization that blennies are 'ideal' in coral tanks. Very few blenny species are strictly algivorous to detrivorous, and many of them will nip at sessile animals as well. Worse still, some individuals seem to show this habit more than others, and some individuals of the same species may not bite polyps or mantles at all.

The bicolor blenny, Ecsenius bicolor, actually is a grazer that preferentially eats microalgae, but can also eat coral tissues, however infrequently and faculatively. I have seen such behaviors in the grazing Ecsenius sp. and I can only conclude it is natural behavior for them. Whereas there are zooplanktivorous blennies classes in the same genus, such as the accompanying E. midas, that do not graze microalgae at all, and will never nip corals.

For that reason E. midas is of course useless as an algae control agent, the promise of which is one reason why the benthic blennies are so often purchased and placed in coral tanks. Generally though, it should be assumed that blennies have this instinct, not least because even blennies such as E. bicolor, that are ecologically quite strict algivores or detrivores, are observed to do so.

The pages about blennies also feature one species each of Salarias and Atrosalarias, genera of benthic, detrivorous blennies, that do not faculatively bite coral flesh. Retrospectively, a curious omission is the nowadays ubiquitous genus Meiacanthus, which does not consume sessile organisms at all. In this the book shows it's age, because they were not often seen in British home aquariums in the 1990s.

As one might expect, all of the great clade of butterflyfishes are painted as unsafe with corals, and with other sessile animals. Yet this evolutionary group are not all such grazers. The Chelmon and Forcipiger genera are marked by long, jointed faces, evolved through natural selection for probing into crevices for small, benthic prey.

Butterflyfishes adapted to eating corals have short faces and stronger bite forces, to tackle firmly attached coral flesh. Long faced butterflyfishes cannot even bite coral polyps, and are thus appropriate for coral tanks. For the same reason, C. forcipiger cannot possibly eat Aiptasia polyps that are too large to fit in its maw. Of course, this book is older than that piece of folklore.

Wrasse are a successful group of fishes and especially so in tropical seas. Yet they vary in their ecological niches, with implications for their suitability in home aquariums. A hogfish is described as becoming incompatible with non-vertebrates with age. In fact even small hogfishes will consume ornamental arthropods, and yet as adults they will not bother coral colonies, for example.

What is an 'invertebrate' in this context? There are countless, dissimilar animals in that historical, defunct category. What exactly is 'reef safe' when a coral reef is a food web? The author does not use that word, doubtless because he was writing in the early 1990s, but its the same, basic concept that he calls 'invertebrate compatibility'. Whatever it is called, the concept is useless and conveys nothing

Come the turn of the crabs, the author is writing before 2000, so he doesn't make mention of Clibanarius, Paguristes, or Calcinus, all of them small and harmless scavengers or algivores. Especially in the UK, the modern reef keeping hobby had not yet emerged, and invertebrates thus had to be showier to be of interest. Here a page features a large hermit crab of the genus Pagurus, carrying a symbiotic sea anemone, alongside a spider crab from the Western Atlantic including the Caribbean, the intriguing Stenorhynchus seticornis.

The text surrounding S. seticornis is interesting for regarding bristleworms as pests. In fact they are helpful for their scavenging behaviors, and it feels strange that anyone was ever paranoid about them. The reason why is made explicit - all bristleworms were assumed dangerous because of a coralivorous species, Hermodice carunculata.

S. seticornis is a benthivorous foragers, equipped only with very small 'claws' and can scarcely harm fishes as some people falsely claim. They may be a danger to small snails and hermit crabs, as well as sometimes probing into polyps to steal their food. Oddly despite sharing the page with a crab and anemone pair, no mention is made of S. seticornis as a fellow symbiote of sea anemones. Nor of the charming habit this species has, of setting up friendly 'cleaning stations', as do certain fish and shrimp, to access the skins of visiting fishes, and forage their ectoparasites as food.

Though the author features a few species of snail, the popular top snails, ceriths, and scavenging whelks of today are not among them. He tells us that whelks, wholesale, have no place in the reef aquarium, despite the helpfulness and harmlessness of the charming Nassarius sp. in countless reef tanks.

Conches are represented by two large species, instead of the smaller relatives now commonplace. An adjacent page features a tiger cowrie, an animal not traded very often today, though they used to be a common sight. Nowhere else, than in its treatment of the gastropods molluscs, does the book feel so dated in retrospect. There are no Turbo, no Trochus, and no 'Astraea'.

The pages on echinoderms feature some obscure taxa, in this case the motile crinoids or sea-lilies of the genus Heterometra. These are fragile animals to touch, and the aquarist must be very careful with them during transportation and acclimatization.

However the problem is they arrive starved of food, with little chance of recovering. Incidentally these are zooplanktivores, trapping particles up to 0.4 millimeters in size. We can certainly provide them appropriate food particles in the aquarium, but almost always, they still starve.

The pages on echinoderms predictably lean toward eye-catching species, like the red-knobbed starfish, the sea apple, and a long-spined sea urchin. The same focus of course, exists among the pages dedicated to the fishes, though compared to most earlier books, there is more emphasis on fishes smaller than 10 centimeters, or 4 inches, such as a good variety of the dottybacks.

As is not uncommon with pre-2000 British texts, the book makes some mention of native, British marine fish and invertebrates. Although the scope of this section is limited, it is a whole section, tucked away towards the back of the book. Nonetheless it feels almost an afterthought tacked on, these small sections are about the only information that is available, to those wishing to combine the aquarium hobby with rockpooling.

Although it is curiously presented as an appendix rather than a chapter, unlike the pages on coldwater marines, there is a section of the book dedicated to macroalgae. A topic most books do not pay much attention to, although planted tanks are so mainstream in the freshwater side of our hobby. 'Macro' possess a good diversity of growth forms and might be grown in certain aquariums, where corals can't. They also metabolise wastes produced by animals, and from scraps of uneaten food. That and a tank of live seaweed is stunningly beautiful and alien in its own right.

This appendix is not the only interesting thing about this book, which shouldn't be disregarded today, as often as it nowadays is. But there's no question its of limited informational use to the modern reefkeeper, not least for the limited information about the corals. Some of what are nowadays ubiquitous species in the trade, can also feel conspicuously absent from these pages. But little of the content is questionable or incorrect, that isn't repeated ad nauseum even today.

[arnaudtetelin]

Poisson pincettes jaune; Forcipiger flavissimus.

[princejrlz]

New Corals: Burrowing Sea Cucumber and Pink Cauliflower Coral New Specie: Big Longnose Butterflyfish

[reefscom]

The Long-nosed butterflies part 2: Forcipiger - https://www.reefs.com/blog/2015/12/31/long-nosed-butterflies-part-2-forcipiger/