Do wrasses have fluorescence pigments?

[Miami Reef]

Google pictures of wrasses and you won’t find a shortage of wrasses with bright, glowing fluorescence.

Are these fish real, or are they edited? I know there’s a wrasse called “Darwin’s glow wrasse” that actually glows, so I’m wondering if most of these wrasses also have these pigments.

 

[Miami Reef]

Here’s more photos!

 

[Miami Reef]

It seems like they do!

Reef fish get riled when intruders glow red

A male fairy wrasse gets feisty when he can see a rival’s colorful fluorescent patches.

www.sciencenews.org

 

[Mr Cypher]

yes for sure my pintail fairy wrasse does big time turn on the heavy blues and he glows in the tank its crazy

 

[i cant think]

Only some wrasses do this, we call it “Flashing” in the hobby. Paracheilinus and Cirrhilabrus are the well known ones to do this.
They will often flash when another male of similar species is in the tank. A lot of the time the aggressive wrasses in Cirrhilabrus stress out smaller peaceful wrasses when they flash so complexes are created for that.

The weirdest thing is how my wrasse gang (Made up of three aggressive wrasses and peaceful wrasses) get along. This shouldn’t happen as the complexes mine are from are:
C. melanomarginatus - Red
C. lubbocki “Indo” - Green
C. lubbocki “Cebu” - Green
C. naokoae - Orange
I have yet to add the naoko to the main tank but he is with 3 other wrasses in a small tank, all my wrasses that aren’t known for flashing are:
H. chloropterus - Aggressive
H. iridis - Peaceful
P’cheilinops ataenia - Peaceful
M. bipartitus - Peaceful

I see spasms of flashing from the Lubbock’s but nothing to the point of stressing eachother out. The Jade and iridis go at eachother but it’s not too bad. The rest are all peaceful with eachother.

The flashing “mechanism” is used for;
- Courting w/ a female
- Defending their territory
- Just about any reason they can find (This goes for Paracheilinus mainly).

 

[J1a]

They are not florescenting. Rather, those are iridophores on the scales, which reflect and refract light like tridacna clams.

 

[i cant think]

They are not florescenting. Rather, those are iridophores on the scales, which reflect and refract light like tridacna clams.

+1 to this, I was going to add this but didn’t know how to word it

 

[Fishfreak2009]

For what it's worth, a the black bars on a cebu lubbocki will glow hot pink under pure blue lights when you wear the kraken reef UV coral glasses.

 

[i cant think]

For what it's worth, a the black bars on a cebu lubbocki will glow hot pink under pure blue lights when you wear the kraken reef UV coral glasses.

I NEED to get myself some of these! That sounds beautiful and I wonder what my guy would look like with the blue, red, and pink body along with the deep blue bar.

 

[Fishfreak2009]

I NEED to get myself some of these! That sounds beautiful and I wonder what my guy would look like with the blue, red, and pink body along with the deep blue bar.

The rest of the fish looks the same. It's just the black bars that glow hot fluorescent pink. First time I saw it I couldn't believe it. I was just wearing the glasses to look at the corals.

 

[Miami Reef]

They are not florescenting. Rather, those are iridophores on the scales, which reflect and refract light like tridacna clams.

That’s really cool!

 

[Fishfreak2009]

Snapped a couple pics of the cebu lubbocks under blues with the kraken reef UV glasses in front of the phone camera