Foxface: Lo/one spot/Magnificent - any size difference?

paal

New member
My "local" (10+ hour drive) fish store finally got some rabbitfish. I was hoping for the one spot since my tank is only 100g, but it is was a Lo and a Mag.

According to liveaquaria, one spot grows to max 7" and the two others to 9".
I cannot find the post, but I believe I read somewhere that the two yellow ones grow to about the same size, and the magnificent gets a bit larger(?)

Should I stay patient and hope for a one spot in the future, or could one of the other fit the tank?
(All other fish will be on the small side: chromis, perculas, gobies and flasher wrasses)
 
It is not clear if one spot is really a separate rabbitfish specie or a color morph of the regular foxface Lo. Therefore I am not sure if size would matter that much. It might be as subspecies can differ in size. However, keep in mind that those sizes are for the largest fish caught in wild. Smaller population and distribution of one spot might resulted in less specimens to be analyzed and those might not have been the large fish.
 
I have seen a Mag up close and personal and it was pushing about 8.5. It was in a 180 at my LFS and it looked too big for that tank. Foxfaces gets huge and they grow fast. There are stories they get sneaky aggressive around there mature size. Something to be aware of.
 
To my surprise, the store had all the above mentioned foxfaces. Thinking there could be some truth to the liveaquaria info, I purchased the one spot.

He has been in my tank for 9 days now.
In the beginning, he displayed the normal single spot, but the last few days the whole upper part has been solid black as shown in the video. It looks great and the fish looks healthy. I hope this coloring is not a bad sign(?)

 
Foxfaces do get nervous and change color. I just put a Magnificent into quarantine. My two previous Rabbitfish were One Spots and they both developed a taste for LPS corals in my tank. I sold them both after they began eating corals; this time around, I plan on keeping the Rabbitfish and putting any corals it tries to eat into another tank. I originally bought my new tank with the intention of it being a Softie tank with lots of fish, but my wife began to buy SPS and LPS corals for my tank and it morphed into a reef tank.
 
Foxfaces do get nervous and change color. I just put a Magnificent into quarantine. My two previous Rabbitfish were One Spots and they both developed a taste for LPS corals in my tank. I sold them both after they began eating corals; this time around, I plan on keeping the Rabbitfish and putting any corals it tries to eat into another tank. I originally bought my new tank with the intention of it being a Softie tank with lots of fish, but my wife began to buy SPS and LPS corals for my tank and it morphed into a reef tank.

125 is too small for a Mag Foxface.
 
I agree with others about the suspicion that the one-spot may just be a color variant of the foxface lo. My one-spot doesn't really have a spot....he has a vague darker patch where his spot should be, but even that comes and goes.
 
To my surprise, the store had all the above mentioned foxfaces. Thinking there could be some truth to the liveaquaria info, I purchased the one spot.

He has been in my tank for 9 days now.
In the beginning, he displayed the normal single spot, but the last few days the whole upper part has been solid black as shown in the video. It looks great and the fish looks healthy. I hope this coloring is not a bad sign(?)


Darkening of the upper half of the fish indicates that there is too much light for the fish's liking. It will probably adapt overtime. If you want you can try to turn the light down to see if it helps. Mine does that only when coming to the surface for feeding. As he gets closer to the lights, his upper side becomes darker. This is a type of camouflage known as countershading to hide from predators both below and above.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countershading
 
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