Harlequin Tuskfish

Care at a glance

Overview

Bold and confident rather than truly aggressive toward fish tankmates, it gets along with similarly sized, sturdy community fish but can be territorial with other tuskfish and is best kept one to a tank. It is not a coral eater and generally leaves sessile invertebrates alone, but it hunts down and eats crabs, hermit crabs, snails, and shrimp with its powerful teeth, so skip it if the plan includes a cleanup crew or ornamental shrimp. Offer a varied carnivore diet of shrimp, clams, krill, and other meaty foods several times a day; it is an intelligent, food driven fish that soon learns to recognize whoever feeds it.

In the wild

Native to lagoons and seaward reefs of the western Pacific, from the Philippines and Ryukyu Islands south to the Great Barrier Reef and New Caledonia, usually at 5–35 m. This is a big, bold showpiece wrasse that needs at least 473 litres (125 gallons) once grown, with a deep sand bed to forage through and enough open rock and rubble that it can rearrange the scenery, which it does constantly while hunting.

Good to know

The genus name Choerodon comes from the Greek for pig tooth, a reference to the prominent, forward pointing canine teeth that give this fish its tusks. Like other wrasses it is a protogynous hermaphrodite, starting out female and able to convert to male within a loose social group. Adults reach about 30 cm and use those blue tusk-like teeth to crush open shelled prey. In 2020 Bali Aquarich achieved the first documented captive breeding of the species, though nearly every harlequin tuskfish sold today is still wild caught.

Did you know

Those bright blue tusks are not just for show: a harlequin tuskfish uses them to pry snails and hermit crabs out of their shells and can even be heard grinding away at hard prey, a party trick that also explains how it earned its name.

Related species

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