Deepwater/Remotely Located Butterfly and Angelfish Thread

The C. hotumatua comes from Easter Island, there are regular flights to Tahiti and Santiago de Chile. There are even some diveshops, so you can easily get airfills. I was there a few years back and the fish isn't too abundant, I also found it pretty difficult to get close to them, so catching them would require some experience. Chaetodon smithi apparently only lives around Pitcairn, the most remote inhabitat island on Earth. There is no airport and even larger boats have to anchor off shore. Unless you organize your own expedition to Pitcairn you won't get this fish.

So it is possible to get C. Hotumatua but is there anyone collecting it?
 
it will be a dream to have a small group of chaetodon smithi in my tank. think of it as a bunch of pyramids, only 1000000000x classier and more beautiful.

pitcairn....hopefully one day i will be able to travel there. and collect my own. what's the total cost i wonder..
 
The C. hotumatua comes from Easter Island, there are regular flights to Tahiti and Santiago de Chile. There are even some diveshops, so you can easily get airfills. I was there a few years back and the fish isn't too abundant, I also found it pretty difficult to get close to them, so catching them would require some experience. Chaetodon smithi apparently only lives around Pitcairn, the most remote inhabitat island on Earth. There is no airport and even larger boats have to anchor off shore. Unless you organize your own expedition to Pitcairn you won't get this fish.

Hi Jens,

Are you sure about this? I was under the impression that the C. smithi at Waikiki came from Easter Island.
 
No they didn't come from easter island. They were caught by a collector who traveled by sailboat southwest of Tahiti.

Quote from article "This species has only been found at the Rapa, Pitcairn and Marotiri Islands, located southwest of Tahiti. In 2002, the Waikiki Aquarium was fortunate to receive a specimen from collector who had traveled there by sailboat from Tahiti and collected 8 individuals. The remaining animals were sold to distributors in Japan, where their fate is unknown."
 
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