help ID my clownfish

[raleej337]

I bought these clownfish at Petco at seperate times. The female was tagged as Ocellaris and the male as percula. I have the female about three months now and the male for almost three weeks.

The Female:

<a href="http://s165.photobucket.com/albums/u49/raleej337/?action=view&current=isda5.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i165.photobucket.com/albums/u49/raleej337/isda5.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket"></a>

The Male:

<a href="http://s165.photobucket.com/albums/u49/raleej337/?action=view&current=fish1.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i165.photobucket.com/albums/u49/raleej337/fish1.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket"></a>

Together:

<a href="http://s165.photobucket.com/albums/u49/raleej337/?action=view&current=2isda-1.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i165.photobucket.com/albums/u49/raleej337/2isda-1.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket"></a>

Thank you!

 

[brian762]

They both look like percs to me.

 

[slosht]

Yes, the eyes on both say Percula to me also.

 

[phender]

You guys need to work on your skills a little. Those are both ocellaris. You are right that the eyes help on the ID, but the muddy orange with brown overtones says ocellaris.

 

[elegance coral]

Sorry Phil, but I have to strongly disagree with you on this one. Those are 100% percula. Color is a very poor tool for distinguishing between ocellaris and percula. These fish have 9 spines in the hard dorsal, and the dorsal is way to short to be ocellaris. Beyond that, they simply look like percula to me.

 

[phender]

You may be right. I apologize to the first two posters. You are right about the dorsal spines, but the eyes looked so un-percula to me I didn't go any further. The first one looks like a SA Fancy ocellaris to me and the pic is a little too blurry to get a definite dorsal spine count. I have to confess it is hard for me to go on body shape with captive raised fish because most of them don't look quite right to me regardless of the species.

 

[raleej337]

Thank you guys! I'll take another pic tomorrow see if I can get a better shot.

 

[elegance coral]

I have to confess it is hard for me to go on body shape with captive raised fish because most of them don't look quite right to me regardless of the species.

I have to agree with you on that. It's hard to find a CB fish that has the perfect body of a WC fish.
I don't go by the eyes at all, after owning the fish below. She was a wild caught ocellaris. I had her for many years. Most people would call her a percula if they were judging by eyes alone.

 

[phender]

I would have called her a percula based on a lot of things other than her eyes. That shade of orange is very percula-ish. The almost total lack of black around the white is also very common among percs. The shape of her head and eye position also looks more like a perc to me. Did she have more than 10 dorsal spines?

 

[elegance coral]

LOL. I was afraid of that. You're not the first to call her a percula. Her, and a little male, arrived together in a shipment from Jakarta. I can't pretend to know what the shipping procedure was in that area way back then, but I don't know why they would ship a percula all the way over to Jakarta before shipping it to the states. I guess it's possible though???? If you still have your copy of Anemonefishes and Their Host Sea Anemones, and all the pages haven't fallen out like mine, look at the ocellaris at the top of page 95. It has the same markings, and the same orange eyes as my fish. My fish did have 11 spines. I only know this because I counted them the last time I was in this same conversation with someone else here on RC a few years back. I guess this really just goes to show how closely related these fish really are.
Here's some more food for thought.

 

[phender]

In those pics the eyes don't look percula at all, at least to me. The body in those pics don't look very percula-like either. Just goes to show that sometimes pictures aren't worth a thousand words.
I was actually on the other side of this discussion a few years ago when someone was saying that the eyes tell it all. I posted just the head of this fish and asked people to ID it just based on the eye. No one got it right and I had some ****ed off folks when I posted the whole picture.

FWIW: IMO there is no doubt that your (EC's that is) fish an ocellaris. However, we have a wholesaler/importer out here that routinely brought/brings in percs from Bali. I am sure they were not captured anywhere near Bali, but that is where they were being shipped from. I have always meant to ask them about that.