Harlequin Basslet

Byrns149

New member
interesting little fish i got a few weeks ago for only $10. Id say i got a good deal. Anyone else have any experience with these fish? more info would be greatly appreciated..

 
I've got 2 in separate aquariums-they're fine with coral banded shrimp, emerald crabs, hermit crabs, and snails. Don't know how they'd be with cleaner shrimp. I really like mine.
Myles
 
Fine when small but is naturally a predatory fish and maxes out at nearly a foot (11.5 inches) so be cautious with smaller fish and crustaceans as he gets bigger, not gunna lie good chance he'll chomp on alot of commonly kept inverts.
 
Fine when small but is naturally a predatory fish and maxes out at nearly a foot (11.5 inches) so be cautious with smaller fish and crustaceans as he gets bigger, not gunna lie good chance he'll chomp on alot of commonly kept inverts.

I had to check on this, because how can an 11.5 inch fish be considered a basslet. LA has them maxed at 4 inches.
 
I've had a few over the years and really like them. I've never had one get anywhere close to 11.5" but I've read somewhere that they are capable of that. Mine have topped out between 4-5" like cakeman said. I haven't had any issues with inverts including cleaner shrimp but the cleaner shrimp I've kept them with were larger. They have surprisingly large mouths and they are definitely predators so I wouldn't put it past them to try. Hermits/crabs/snails won't be an issue, just small fish and shrimp.

As far as tempermant is concerned they are normally relaxed and food centric however they can get a little fiesty when defending their territory. It normally just ammounts to fin/gill flaring and posturing. I can't think of any incidents where the harlequin basslet caused any of my other fish harm, really just that the basslet would "take offense" from the strangest fish. For example, my male lyretail anthias and harlequin basslet didn't like one another...sometimes. Occassionally the basslet would go towards the top of the water column to posture at the anthias (who postured right back) and vice versa, the anthias would go down towards the sandbed/rockwork and posture. Like I said though, it really only ammounted to posturing and it was pretty amusing, lol.

Anyway, I think this is an awesome little underappreciated fish. Good luck with it.
 
Book im looking at with picture has harlequin bass (serranus tigrinus) Listed as 11.5 inches at max size. i see thats also the scientific name used by LA. I dunno who's side the mix up is on, thought maybe id made a mistake and mixed it up with the info of the fish next to it Chalk bass(serranus Tortugarum.) but that is listed as 3 inches which is the same as LA's listing

Book was publised in 2009 so i maybe its outdated or something.


Sorry for the mixup maybe its not accounting for captivity like some have mentioned or maybe its just wrong, i apologise i didnt mean to spread misinformation
 
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Well if the book is outdated, then so is fishbase.org which has maximum length of the bass listed at 29cm.

Who knows, maybe it needs an exceptional amount of food to reach that size???

Good luck with your fish OP. It certainly looks very striking.

:wave:
 
Scott Michael lists them as 3.9 inches. I've had mine for about 3 years and they're about 4 inches.
 
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