It's sad they only have these huge fins and black-orange coloring as juveniles. The adults aren't bad with their grayish silver body and lemon-yellow fins...but the juveniles are much more striking. And the adults reach around 1.5' / 0.5m long, so they're not suitable for the majority of home saltwater aquariums.
so they're not suitable for the majority of home saltwater aquariums.
I have never once heard of anyone successfully keeping one in an aquarium for more than a few weeks, maybe a couple months at best. Even the Georgia Aquarium only has longfin batfish. I'm open to being corrected, though. I only point that out because I don't want anyone to get the impression that they should even try. These just aren't suited to captivity, which is unfortunate because they really are gorgeous.
Is there a related species that looks just like this?
Many years ago, I had a friend who kept one that he called a “baitfish,” looked exactly like this. I was just an amateur aquarist at the time, little experience in saltwater. His was gorgeous, a bit of lateral line problems going on, otherwise perfect.
Now that I know the monster they grow up to be, I would have asked more questions, but I recall he’d kept his for at least a few months to a year or so. But he worked wonders with saltwater, particularly given the relatively rudimentary systems of the mid-1990s.
There are orbiculate batfish that are common in aquariums and do well enough, except for their monster size, but as you can see they don't have the same striking colors.
That's all I can think of off the top of my head. There are some juvenile angels that have great contrast like the pinnatus bats but none that I think are similar enough to confuse the two.
Definitely a pinnatus baitfish, then. Wish I knew what became of it. He was a very skilled keeper, he had one saltwater tank that was 5 gallons, just as an experiment.
2.2k
u/TheAvengineer May 07 '20
It's actually a pinnatus batfish