Lyretail Anthias Changing Color

[steamman]

I couple months ago I got three young Lyretail Anthias. The most dominant fish grew a large first spine on his dorsal fin. Yesterday I noticed his fins changing color. His dorsal fin, pelvic fin, pectoral fin and a spot near his tail fin but still on his body is turning black. This is not appear to be a disease. Seems to be a morphing into super male. Has anyone ever seen this before? The picture does not do the coloration justice but you can see most of the black color.

 

[Reeferdood]

I have never seen black but yes the dominant male will display an array of differences until one of the other males takes charge.
Be sure to feed them cyclops, every anthias I have had loves it.
@Humblefish might be able to chime in about the black coloring though.

 

[Osidedude]

I have 3 as well and the dominant male colored as yours is doing now...He is much darker now!

 

[davocean]

It's changing into a male, they will change colors pretty dramatically, dorsal spike grows, usually tail forms streamers.
Yours is red sea, it will become red w/ various highlight colors.

 

[steamman]

I have never seen black but yes the dominant male will display an array of differences until one of the other males takes charge.
Be sure to feed them cyclops, every anthias I have had loves it.
@Humblefish might be able to chime in about the black coloring though.

I have never seen black either. There will be no other dominant male. When I got the three of them two had a small dorsal spike growing. The larger fishes spike kept growing and the smaller fishes spike disappeared. They eat small Mysis, BBS and Cyclopeeze. I have never tried Cyclops.

 

[steamman]

It's changing into a male, they will change colors pretty dramatically, dorsal spike grows, usually tail forms streamers.
Yours is red sea, it will become red w/ various highlight colors.

These are supposed to be Indian Ocean Lyretail Anthias.

 

[davocean]

These are supposed to be Indian Ocean Lyretail Anthias.

Well it's not fiji variety that turn purple, yours will turn red instead and those usually have a black outline when they shift to male, and the females will have that blue stripe under eye as opposed to fiji's that do not.
I have some pics of mine making that transition somewhere, they are really pretty when fully transitioned.

 

[davocean]

This is a fiji male I had, very purple, was orange as a female, then transitioned to this.



And this is one of my males sold to me as African(liveaquaria usually defines the two color varieties as either Red Sea for the red males, and fiji for the purple, and while the purple's I've always seen simply labeled fiji, the reds may be collected in more than one region)
This is what yours will most likely end up looking like.





This is that very same male as it began the transition.
Note the purple/blue line under the eye, fiji females do not have that, they are all orange.

 

[mamgm2]

I have one morphing right now and has the exact dark coloration going on. I started out with a trio(1 male 2 female). Within 3 weeks , the male died. I then bought another trio and the same thing happened, male dead within 3 weeks. So I decided to let the 4 females figure it out, I hope the new male lasts a lot longer this time. Good luck with yours!

 

[steamman]

This is a fiji male I had, very purple, was orange as a female, then transitioned to this.



And this is one of my males sold to me as African(liveaquaria usually defines the two color varieties as either Red Sea for the red males, and fiji for the purple, and while the purple's I've always seen simply labeled fiji, the reds may be collected in more than one region)
This is what yours will most likely end up looking like.





This is that very same male as it began the transition.
Note the purple/blue line under the eye, fiji females do not have that, they are all orange.

Both the other smaller fish have the purple line. The three get along well. They know who is boss. The male is still changing. His scales are becoming more pronounced.

 

[davocean]

Probably takes about a couple weeks for full transition and color, take pics along the way so you can document the change.
It's pretty neat to watch them change.

 

[mamgm2]

Mine is going on three full weeks and has a long way to go for full color change