A big thanks to you EC, for help with this video identification! (and EC, the nice email telling us about your post here to help id it.) Another big thanks to all of you who took the time to watch it and help to id it as well. The consensus... it's not A. clarkii but rather A. chrysopterus. So we are pulling it to correct the title name and text... so watch for the replacement of "Orange-fin Anemonefish Amphiprion chrysopterus sp."
Here's a little background...
When EC wrote to us previously, we did re-researched this fish trying to determine if it was in fact an A. clarkii or A. chrysopterus, or what. However we were still in the dark.
In the book "Field Guide to Anemonefishes and their Host Sea Anemones", by Dr. Daphne G. Fautin and Gerald R. Allen, it describes the A. chrysopterus as "Brown to nearly black with two white or bluish-whie bars and a whitish caudal fin... all other fins are yellow-orange, but fish from Melanesia have black pelvic and anal fins." They describe A. chrysopterus and A. allardi both as having white tails. Only two species described, with the type of patterning seen in the video, have yellow tails, the A. clarkii and A. bicinctus. We had eliminated A. bicinctus since it doesn't have an expanded headbar characteristic of that species.
Recently EC suggested that tail color might not be a good identifier. So based on his recommendation and all of your input here, we're off and running to adjust that very cool clown video! (We are also emailing Dr. Fautin with pics and link to the vid to see if she thinks it's a color morph, a subspecies, or what... We'll let you know if and what she says!)
I do think it's a very cool clownfish video and hope you all enjoy it too!
