What's this cute Galveston seaweed hitch-hiker baby?

[Betta132]

This is a baby fish found in Galveston, in a large clump of sargassum seaweed pulled out of the shallow water. I shook it off in my bucket, and this little fellow was swimming frantic circles all over the place. He's shaped kind of like maybe a batfish... Do batfish babies live in seaweed? He's maybe half the size of a penny... So CUTE.
Don't worry, I let him go in a nice safe spot. He probably grows into something big.

 

[João A M Gomes]

Looks like a tiny spadefish, Chaetodipterus faber, a batfish relative. And you're right, it can grow into something big
Very beautiful and easy to care for, but really needs a lot of space.

 

[zachfishman]

Very hard to tell. Definitely keep it and find out what it is! My first thought was Tripletail, but it's hard to even tell what family it is with that one pic.

 

[João A M Gomes]

Please compare to the picture on a short post by Matthew L. Wittenrich and Eric Cassiano at http://risingtideconservation.blogspot.pt/2012/02/discovery-coves-juvenile-spadefish.html

 

[Betta132]

Definitely those! So he's a little spadefish... He's got a lot of growing to do! Always amazes me how much some of those bigger saltwater fish grow between when they hatch and adult size.
I can't really keep anything other than maybe a sargassum blenny... My tank is only a 30g. I'm just hunting through the sargassum out of curiosity, really.

 

[ryan3]

Last time i was in Galveston too , same way you do and catch some pipe fish and a lot small shrimp

 

[Betta132]

In nearby Port Aransas, you can catch baby frogfish in the sargassum, as well as various small silvery things.
Last year in Port A, my brother found a 2' chunk of sargassum and brought it in, and there was a 3" filefish flopping around in there! That was cool. We also found a couple of cute baby files, a teeny seargent major, and a few little silver things I couldn't ID- probably babies from open-ocean fish. To add to that, I found a 3" triggerfish beached on the seaweed. He was kind of dry and I thought he was dead, but then he flipped at me. I put him in a bucket, and he seemed okay after a little while, so I let him go.
If you ever find a patch of water that's maybe a foot deep and still, and there's huge clumps of sargassum floating around, you go and look around in there! All kinds of stuff just swimming between places.
Yesterday I saw a seagull eat the biggest pipefish I've ever seen
I chased that darn gull all over the place, but he swallowed it in the air.
I may take a few of those sargassum shrimpies home with me... Pretty sure they aren't gonna be picky or anything. I have some macroalgae in my tank, quite a bit of it, so they should be okay even if seaweed is needed for their care.