One person's rare fish is another's common as dirt fish?

[jhemdal1]

I was stuck at work today so I thought I'd upload some images of a few of the "rarer" fish I've been working with....of course "rarity" is a relative thing. In Japan the pineconefish costs about $15, the Seibold's wrasse would be 400 yen (maybe $3.50?) the Sebastes would be a whopping $22.

Jay Hemdal

 

[Anonymous]

Jay, what is Seibold's wrasse? A Bodianus sp.? Google and fishbase searches are drawing a complete blank for me.

The rockfish looks sort of like a chalk basslet.

 

[jhemdal1]

Well, its prolly 'cause I spelt it wrong. The scientific name is Pseudolabrus sieboldi...... i before e except after c

There is a description of it in Rudy Kuiter's Wrasse book. Funny, for such an apparently common fish, there isn't much about it online. About identical in terms of husbandry with the Australian rosy wrasse - P. psittaculus.


Jay

 

[Anonymous]

Most rare fish in the trade are nice eye pleasing. Other then the pinecone, which is routinely imported, those fish are IMO pretty fugly

 

[jhemdal1]

Gresham,

Most of the pineconefish in the trade come from Australia, just recently have more been coming from Japan. Funny thing is that they are morphologically identical, but the ones from Japan are cheap (about a tenth the price) but can be extremely difficult to acclimate to captivity. I've even seen them on the Japanese lists split up as "local" and "Australian" pinecones, at different prices, so they must see a difference in hardiness also.
Now - why do rare fish have to be pretty also? That seems patently unfair.

Jay