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Bluelined hulafish

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The Bluelined hulafish, or Braun’s hulafish, is a little known species found in the subtropical waters of Australia. It is a small fish reaching a length of three inches with a bright blue stripe running horizontally from head to tail. It is a schooling fish and can be found in large numbers feeding on zooplankton. A nesting species, males of this species are believed to protect the eggs until hatching.

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Yellowhead hulafish

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The Yellowhead hulafish, or Yellow-headed pretty fin as it is also known, is a small schooling fish often found under jetties or on rocky reefs. It is endemic to the temperate waters of Southern and Western Australia. This relatively small species reaches a length of only four inches and can be found in large schools. The Yellowhead hulafish is named for the yellow coloring on its head and its dancing like movements in the water.

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Longspine snipefish

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The Longspine snipefish, a Syngnathiform fish is a distant relative of the seahorses, pipefish and seadragons. It is also known as a Bellows fish for the way its fused jaws draw in water through its long, slender snout. It is found around the world in subtropical or temperate seas. It feeds on small zooplankton and worms, and usually swims vertically, head down. It is reddish pink in color and it is reported to grow to more than seven inches in length.

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Threadfin snapper

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Like many wrasses, this relative of the popular red snapper undergoes remarkable changes in colors and fin shape as it reaches adulthood, but it remains quite striking throughout this process. While the long-finned youngsters have a simple but attractive geometric pattern, the short-fined adults, which can reach two feet, are festooned in electric blue stripes that have earned them the name of Chinese gown fish in Australia. This fish has a wide distribution in the Indo-Pacific.

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Dragon wrasse

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While juvenile and adult Harlequin tusk fish look very similar to each other, many other wrasses undergo astounding transformations as they reach maturity. As a juvenile, this Indo-Pacific species presents a dainty appearance, with a lacy-looking pattern and fins. The formidable adults are powerful fish that work in teams, taking turns lifting rocks and coral and grabbing the animals they find.

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Harlequin tuskfish

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This wrasse stands out in a family well known for garish patterns and colors. Its blue teeth accent the startling combination of red, white, and yellow. It can be found from Japan to Australia, where it is sometimes called a Macaw fish. Until the 1970s it was very rare in aquariums. For a large wrasse, it is rather well behaved in community displays.

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Clown triggerfish

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When this species first appeared in captivity more than 50 years ago, it created a sensation, and for years was known as “the most expensive aquarium fish”. Since the 1980s, it has been more frequently imported, but remains very popular. Unlike the Red-toothed triggerfish, it is an antisocial species that is never found in large numbers anywhere in its Indian Ocean and Indo-Pacific range. Triggerfish are named for the complicated structure of part of the dorsal fin, which “locks into place” so the fish can secure itself in crevices.

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Red-toothed triggerfish

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One has to look closely at this elegant fish to see that its tiny but needle-sharp teeth are indeed a shade of dull pinkish red. This species does not have teeth as massive as most other triggerfishes, since it feeds primarily on plankton, often assembling in large schools to feast on it. It also eats sponges. Found from the Red Sea far into the Pacific, for many years it has been popular in aquariums, where it does very well.

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Unicorn tang

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While many surgeonfish draw attention with brilliant colors, this gray fish stands out for its bizarre shape, appearing as if it had a “nose”. Feeding on algae and plankton in the wild, it enjoys lettuce and other leafy greens in aquariums. It can be found in schools from the Red Sea to many islands in the Pacific, including Hawaii, where it is a traditional food fish. Like other surgeonfish, it has defensive “scalpels” on its tail, but they are especially noticeable with this species because they are blue.

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Blind cavefish

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When first discovered in the 1930s, these eyeless, pigmentless fish were assigned their own genus, Anoptichthys. Since then, ichthyologists have determined they are at least 30 genetically isolated populations of the Mexican tetra, which is normally a silvery fish with well-developed eyes that is found north to the Rio Grande Valley in Texas. Fish collected in one cave, la Cueva Chica, in San Luis Potosi in the 1940s, are the ancestors of the fishes made available by commercial breeders to home aquarists, public aquariums and zoos.

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