Lamarck's Angelfish

Care at a glance

Overview

Lamarck's angelfish are genuinely peaceful and, as a planktivore, they leave corals, clams, and other invertebrates alone entirely, making this one reef safe. Keep a single fish, a bonded pair, or one male with a harem of females, but never two males together. Feed small meals of mysis, marine algae, and angelfish preparations several times a day in a spacious tank with open water above the rock.

In the wild

Lamarck's angelfish live on Indo-West Pacific reef crests and deep reef slopes, from about 10 to 50 meters, forming harems of three to seven fish that hover together in midwater to feed on plankton. Unlike the large Pomacanthus angels, this is not a fish that hugs the rock looking for food; it wants open swimming room over live rock and a sandy bottom, more like a mid-water reef fish than a grazer.

Good to know

Genicanthus lamarck reaches about 25 cm and is strongly sexually dimorphic: males are almost teardrop-shaped with black pelvic fins, a few stripes radiating from the eye, and long flowing filaments trailing off the tail, while females have white pelvic fins and a broad black band along the top and bottom edges of the body. The species can change sex from female to male, and the two sexes look different enough that they were once mistaken for separate species entirely. It is named for the French naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck.

Did you know

Males and females look so different, a teardrop-shaped male with flowing tail streamers next to a banded, white-finned female, that the species was first captive-bred only in 2017, at an aquarium in New York, well over a century after it was first described.

Related species

• 

  Zebra Angelfish

  Genicanthus caudovittatus

  7.9 in (20 cm)90 gal (340 L)75–82°F (24–28°C)

• 

  Bellus Angelfish

  Genicanthus bellus

  7.1 in (18 cm)85 gal (320 L)72–79°F (22–26°C)

• 

  Watanabei Angelfish

  Genicanthus watanabei

  5.9 in (15 cm)79 gal (300 L)72–79°F (22–26°C)

• 

  Swallowtail Angelfish

  Genicanthus melanospilos

  7.1 in (18 cm)106 gal (400 L)72–79°F (22–26°C)

• 

  Regal Angelfish

  Pygoplites diacanthus

  9.8 in (25 cm)124 gal (470 L)73–81°F (23–27°C)

• 

  Flagfin Angelfish

  Apolemichthys trimaculatus

  10.2 in (26 cm)100 gal (380 L)73–81°F (23–27°C)