Click on the Image to be Taken to the Video

The super rare Peppermint Angelfish (Paracentropyge boylei) is an amazing fish to say the least. Up until March of this year, only one was known to exist in captivity and the aquarium community almost never got to see images or videos of the fish. Fortunately, the Waikiki Aquarium got hold of one thanks to renowned explorer, Richard Pyle, and recently put it on display. This move didn’t just allowing the Hawaiian locals and tourists to see this fish’s unmatched beauty first hand, but it also means we, the online aquarium communtity get to see plenty more digital media of the angelfish. The latest video comes to us from KITV, a Hawaiian news channel who does a great story on the fish along with some words from Richard Pyle himself.

In the brief clip, Richard explains that he caught the fish at a depth of 100m (a little more than 330ft) and actually had to extend his dive time in order to capture the elusive female angel. Interestingly, this is probably not the only P. boylei hauled up during a string of dives, as Richard states “this is one of the females”. So, we’re assuming he means there were more taken, and quite possible a male to go with it. A disembodied voice of a Waikiki Aquarium staffer in that last video clip we posted said they were supposed to be getting another of the peppermint angels, so maybe multiple fish were caught. We could only hope. Delving a little further into the clip, it is revealed that the fish was actually sought out by the Smithsonian Institute for study, but that the fish would have been killed and preserved. Luckily, Pyle realized the value a live specimen would have and arranged for it to be sent to the Waikiki Aquarium.

Despite its rarity, the Peppermint Angelfish isn’t the rarest fish in the tank, though. It shares its new digs with a fish that’s labeled as the rarest in the world, the Ballina Angelfish (Chaetodontoplus ballinae). Apparently, only two of these Ballina Angelfish have ever been seen, with the first being trawled up in the late 1950s and the second being this one.

Remember all of those articles we published on rare deepwater fish from Curacao and other exotic places? Well, those deepwater collecting techniques and the resulting super rare fish happen to be one of the focuses of the second episode of Fish Tank Kings, and we couldn’t be more excited. We were privileged enough to get a special private airing of the new episode a couple of days ago, which doesn’t officially air until this Saturday, and without spoiling it for the rest of you, we wanted to share a little bit of what’s viewers are going to see. Hands down, this is going to be an amazing episode that many of you will enjoy. Besides the deepwater collecting, the second episode of Fish Tank Kings also features a huge shark tank build that takes place within an extremely narrow time frame. Will the guys from Living Color Aquariums get the tank built in time? Will they collect some amazingly rare deepwater fish? Obviously you’ll have to tune in on Saturday to find out all of the details, but we can share a few of those with you.

The owner of Living Color Aquariums, Matt, gets a unique request from Allan Marshall of the Florida Aquarium to help spruce up an unpopular exhibit at the aquarium. The tank gets the deepwater treatment, and in order to make the attraction really unique, Allan asks Matt to tag along with him on a trip to Curacao. There, they hook up with Dutch Shrier, the founder of the Curacao Sea Aquarium and the owner of a very unique and expensive submarine. During their stay, Matt, Allan, and Dutch hop in the $2 million submarine and hit depths greater than 800 feet in their hunt for rare fish. So, what did the guys catch? In total, over 20 specimen were collected, which include the Pugnose Bass (Bullisichthys caribbaeus) and the very rare Sabre Goby (Antilligobius nikkiae). We even get a brief appearance by the Spanish Flag (Gonioplectrus hispanus), which wasn’t actually collected during the trip but it did get some air time.

Besides getting to see the very awesome deepwater collecting via submersible, we also get a peak at how those fish are brought to the surface. Because fish are affected by decompression issues just like humans, they can’t be brought straight to the surface after being collected in deep waters. Usually, when collectors dawn SCUBA gear and net these fish, they have to make decompression stops along the way, often puncturing the swim bladder of the fish to prevent it from expanding too much. But for collecting fish at 800 feet, a different technique has to be employed. When the fish is sucked into the sub, they are sent to individual collecting containers. As the submersible ascends, the operators actually drop the canisters of fish off at predetermined depths, where they stay overnight. The next day, divers come in and move the fish to a shallower depth, and continue to do this over the period of a couple of days until the fish has been successfully brought to the water’s surface. For the deepwater collecting led by Dutch Shrier, this method has proven to be very successful time and time again.

Like we mentioned above, we’re very excited about this episode of Fish Tank Kings and we strongly encourage you to tune. Interestingly enough, the series premiere of the show, which featured the huge aquariums at the Miami Marlins ballpark, wasn’t the episode that the guys from Living Color Aquariums wanted to show off first, and this second episode more than makes up for that. Additionally, we’re told that the rest of the episodes will be more exciting like the second episode, and the guys at Living Color encourage everyone to stick around for those much better shows.

We also wanted to thank Francis Yupangco, the “Fish Nerd” at Living Color, for sending us the footage from the second episode and keeping us informed about this exciting television show.