Peppermint angel

[Allmost]

Hello,
so I hear from my friends that there were a couple of Peppermint angels attending MACNA this year !!! ???

anyone has pictures ?

I thought there were only 2 cought and they were at hawaii ! are these teh same 2 guys ? on rent?

Copps, would we ever see them in LFS ? maybe my kids would ? lol

 

[olemiss reb]

There was a tank with a couple of fake ones that looked fairly real. Also had fake volitan and jellies.

eta-- apparently it was Eshopps booth-- http://blog.aquanerd.com/2012/10/peppermint-angelfish-invade-macna.html

 

[jaa1456]

I really don't see anyone taking fish with that kind of price tag for a week long viewing. To much to go wrong and to much stress on the fish to risk it.

 

[copps]

Yeah there were a few peppermint angels... but none that were real. No one in their right mind would take a fish like that to a trade show.

We won't see peppermints any time soon... at least in the mainland US. I met up with good friends Koji Wada and Kevin Kohen for a good portion of MACNA, the two retailers that have/had the peppermints deepwater neighbor Centropyge narcosis... Koji got three... kept one and sold two... Kevin has one that will soon go in the DD... Koji told us he sold his for $18,000 each in Japan and I watched Kevin nearly fall off his seat! Needless to say the one here in the US will go for a relative bargain... I'll be with Koji for a week in Japan next month and will meet some of these face to face... So, any upcoming peppermints would go to Japan first!

Copps

 

[Allmost]

wow interesting, thanks everyone and Copps, one day I hope I can travel the world and meet my dream fish face to face too , untill then, I'll just live it through your experiences.

what were those angels in Eshopp then ? not real as of its plastic or not the real peppermint ?

 

[copps]

wow interesting, thanks everyone and Copps, one day I hope I can travel the world and meet my dream fish face to face too , untill then, I'll just live it through your experiences.

what were those angels in Eshopp then ? not real as of its plastic or not the real peppermint ?

Anyone can meet the peppermint now face to face at the Waikiki Aquarium for a $9 admission ticket!

And not real as in plastic fish floating in the tanks...

 

[jaa1456]

Or you could travel to NYC and hope the guy lets you in to see his.

 

[Allmost]

hmmm very interesting thanks again

I did about 40 hours of diving in the caribean, so going to palau this december ... lol hopefully can meet some nice fish there in their natural habitat and some land fish wont hurt lol

 

[copps]

Or you could travel to NYC and hope the guy lets you in to see his.

You've posted numerous times of this elusive and unsubstantiated peppermint with no proof or explanation and no response to the previous thread that the two known collectors and no one in the industry knew about. I'll add what I responded last time to last time on this... for someone who wants to keep their peppermint secret does he know how much you are talking about it?

"The two known Centropyge boylei in captivity are not known based on people saying "look at my fish". To understand how we KNOW there are only two in captivity you need to understand a bit about where we KNOW Centropyge boylei to exist. Before the recent exploration by Rich Pyle at Moorea, Centropyge boylei was known not just from one island... but from one DROPOFF at Rarotonga, Cook Islands. This location is right off where famed fish collector and original discoverer of the peppermint Chip Boyle lives. Chip and Rich are the only two people to have collected peppermints offered to the trade, and the one collected by Rich that went to Waikiki is the first in over ten years. Chip Boyle's fish collecting outfit in Rarotonga collected them VERY sparsely and tracked all the fish. It's been well known for years the specimen in Japan is the only to have survived... this one was collected small and was put on the cover of Angelfishes of the World now full grown in captivity.

It is impossible to prove the NONexistance of something of course, but this New York specimen you talk about would have to have originated somewhere... if so it would most likely have been the only place they were known in the world... Rarotonga... and not from Chip Boyle's station. Possible? Anything is... Probable? No way... Going to collect these fish there would be a MAJOR operation... there are VERY few diver collectors in the world that could successfully do it at that depth... ask freedive43... he's one of them. Add to that even if you had the gear you'd need a local source of oxygen... and Chip Boyle is the only source at Rarotonga... he supplies the hospital even!

I could go on and on... but it's so technical in every way... the diving is technical... the collection is technical... the decompression is technical... the tanking of it is technical... the transport around the world it just doesn't make sense...

It would be entirely more possible, but still almost entirely improbable, for this to happen with a species like Genicanthus personatus... endemic to Hawaii where there are many fish collectors and it is not unheard of for this normally very deep species to be found shallow, like the one Matt Ross caught at 100 feet collecting on Oahu..."

Copps

 

[doosiec]

Wow, 18,000 for a fish is extreme. Never thought I'd see the day.
Must be quite a splendor to have such a huge market price.

There was a preview of it on rb earlier this year I believe, and it looked magnificent!

 

[copps]

Wow, 18,000 for a fish is extreme. Never thought I'd see the day.
Must be quite a splendor to have such a huge market price.

There was a preview of it on rb earlier this year I believe, and it looked magnificent!

That is nothing in a country where six figures are regularly paid for colored carp.

 

[myerst2]

The jury didn't need to deliberate. No boylei in NYC.

 

[auem]

That is nothing in a country where six figures are regularly paid for colored carp.

though you have to admit carp's longevity often makes it lifetime investment(often 40-50 years)..:debi:

 

[copps]

though you have to admit carp's longevity often makes it lifetime investment(often 40-50 years)..:debi:

Angels are documented over 40 years in captivity too though!

But koi are documented living over 200 years... so that beats us... :sad1::lol2:

 

[auem]

Angels are documented over 40 years in captivity too though!

But koi are documented living over 200 years... so that beats us... :sad1::lol2:

only one if i remember it right..in a monastery....

but in terms of paying all out,chinese are close to japanese with their arowana obsession...

 

[copps]

only one if i remember it right..in a monastery....
but in terms of paying all out,chinese are close to japanese with their arowana obsession....i think platinum arowana still has edge as the costliest aquarium fish...:fish1:

Yes Hanako... born in 1751 and died the month before I was born in July of 1977! Perhaps as amazing as that was the fact that she lived with five other koi in the same pond... the youngest of which were 139 years old in 1968!!

Interesting on the arowanas... I have not kept up with much freshwater in the last decade at least!

Copps

 

[auem]

though what they pay for kois in japan don't get much(if any) news info in the outside world,but a top quality platinum arowana expect to fetch $400000+....
i am estimating it by the highest amount offered(but refused)...

though i am not chinese,i know how religious often they are with arowana for the fact...

 

[Allmost]

FWIW .... I sold my golden Arowana and set up a 300G high end reef tank with the money ... lol

never seen a platinum one though.

 

[jaa1456]

You've posted numerous times of this elusive and unsubstantiated peppermint with no proof or explanation and no response to the previous thread that the two known collectors and no one in the industry knew about. I'll add what I responded last time to last time on this... for someone who wants to keep their peppermint secret does he know how much you are talking about it?

"The two known Centropyge boylei in captivity are not known based on people saying "look at my fish". To understand how we KNOW there are only two in captivity you need to understand a bit about where we KNOW Centropyge boylei to exist. Before the recent exploration by Rich Pyle at Moorea, Centropyge boylei was known not just from one island... but from one DROPOFF at Rarotonga, Cook Islands. This location is right off where famed fish collector and original discoverer of the peppermint Chip Boyle lives. Chip and Rich are the only two people to have collected peppermints offered to the trade, and the one collected by Rich that went to Waikiki is the first in over ten years. Chip Boyle's fish collecting outfit in Rarotonga collected them VERY sparsely and tracked all the fish. It's been well known for years the specimen in Japan is the only to have survived... this one was collected small and was put on the cover of Angelfishes of the World now full grown in captivity.

It is impossible to prove the NONexistance of something of course, but this New York specimen you talk about would have to have originated somewhere... if so it would most likely have been the only place they were known in the world... Rarotonga... and not from Chip Boyle's station. Possible? Anything is... Probable? No way... Going to collect these fish there would be a MAJOR operation... there are VERY few diver collectors in the world that could successfully do it at that depth... ask freedive43... he's one of them. Add to that even if you had the gear you'd need a local source of oxygen... and Chip Boyle is the only source at Rarotonga... he supplies the hospital even!

I could go on and on... but it's so technical in every way... the diving is technical... the collection is technical... the decompression is technical... the tanking of it is technical... the transport around the world it just doesn't make sense...

It would be entirely more possible, but still almost entirely improbable, for this to happen with a species like Genicanthus personatus... endemic to Hawaii where there are many fish collectors and it is not unheard of for this normally very deep species to be found shallow, like the one Matt Ross caught at 100 feet collecting on Oahu..."

Copps

there is a reason there is no name tagged along. And I'm pretty sure the person I'm talking about has no care that I mention there is one in NYC. You have to remember when people have that kind of money for a fish then there will always be more than just 2 divers or 2 ways to obtain something. Cash is king and not to mention this certain peppermint is also around 12 years in captivity. So the guys you know might not even have been doing this at that point in time. This is a large world with many people, I do know at one point in the early 90's there were at least 5 of these fish in the US.

 

[copps]

You have to remember when people have that kind of money for a fish then there will always be more than just 2 divers or 2 ways to obtain something. Cash is king and not to mention this certain peppermint is also around 12 years in captivity. So the guys you know might not even have been doing this at that point in time.

These "guys" are Chip Boyle and Rich Pyle. Chip Boyle to this day runs a collection station at Rarotonga and discovered this fish in October of 1989 on a reef directly in front of his station there... thus the peppermint's name Centropyge boylei. Rich Pyle at the time was a graduate student on Oahu and the man to contact when you saw an angel you'd never seen before. He is now a world renowned ichthyologist and the worldwide expert on Pomacanthids... his PhD thesis was on the reclassification of the Pomacanthid family. The two of them were the sole collectors of this species until this year and still the only two to have successfully collected this species to put on display. Chip discovered the species and had it named after him and Rich authored the paper that described them. Of the two in captivity in the world each collected one.

On top of that before a year ago this species was known from that ONE REEF at Rarotonga... at hundreds of feet of depth.

So you are suggesting that someone in New York funded an independant expedition without the help of these two, or the necessary oxygen they'd need from Chip Boyle at Rarotonga, to collect one peppermint angel? The money for this is not the issue... it's the logistics.

there is a reason there is no name tagged along. And I'm pretty sure the person I'm talking about has no care that I mention there is one in NYC. QUOTE]

We don't need names... you keep using this in your arguments... provide proof... not names... less than two weeks ago you posted this about black tangs and then were rebutted by an importer in Hawaii who has imported for decades from Christmas Island...

"I know for a fact you can buy direct from the divers, don't ask me how I know, but I do."

"Well, I know I'm 100% correct on buying from a diver, sorry no names will be given. Obviously you know for the reasons why. And yes once you hit 100' it is normally considered a deep water fish. The black is thought to help them camoflage in the deeper darker water. You might get adults spawning in the shawollw water which would explain mostly adult black tangs being imported. "

Anyone who knows the industry in Hawaii and Christmas Island knows that ALL Christmas Island fish go through and need to be cleared in Hawaii... there is no way someone in the lower 48 can buy direct from a diver at Christmas. And to say that black tangs are deep water fish and black to camoflauge them in deep dark water is more unsubstantiated information you are propogating... you are either sorely misinformed or purposefully stirring the pot on these issues. Here in the reef fishes forum we are from all over the world and many different cultures, but we all share the same passion and respect eachother and the information we provide.

Copps