Christmas wrasse

Care at a glance

Overview

The Christmas wrasse is one of the hardier, more adaptable Halichoeres wrasses, suited to a reef tank with open sand. It is easy to keep.

Caring for the Christmas wrasse

Give a Christmas wrasse at least 70 gal (265 L), with open sand at least 5 to 7.5 cm deep. It buries itself in the sand to sleep at night and to escape anything that startles it during the day. Fit a tight lid, since it can find any gap and jump.

Keep the water at 72 to 79°F (22 to 26°C) with a pH of 8.1 to 8.4. Feed a varied diet of mysis, brine shrimp and other small meaty foods a few times a day.

The Christmas wrasse is generally peaceful with other fish, but noticeably more assertive toward other wrasses than most of its relatives. If you mix wrasses, add the more timid species first. It is reef safe and hunts fireworms and pyramidellid snails that prey on corals and clams. It cannot tell a pest snail from an ornamental one, and it may pick off small hermit crabs and shrimp along the way.

Terminal phase males have a green body crossed with broken red stripes and a pale belly. They also carry a black spot in the middle of the dorsal fin. Females have red-edged green scales along the upper body and a green stripe from the eye to the base of the tail.

Good to know

Halichoeres ornatissimus is a protogynous hermaphrodite in the wrasse family Labridae. Juveniles are black with yellow stripes and two blue-centered eyespots on the dorsal fin. It also goes by ornate wrasse and ornamented wrasse.

In the wild

The Christmas wrasse lives on reef flats and slopes across much of the Indo-Pacific, typically at 10 to 40 m. Its range runs from the Cocos and Christmas Islands to Hawaii and the Tuamotu Islands. It reaches north to southern Japan and south to the Great Barrier Reef.

Common questions

Related species

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