Tail-spot Wrasse

The tail-spot wrasse is a small member of the Labridae family, reaching around twelve centimetres. Males wear an emerald green coat streaked with fine pink lines, while females and juveniles stay far plainer. Like all Halichoeres, it is a protogynous hermaphrodite: dominant females turn into males. It lives on shallow coral reefs and rocky shores across the western Pacific, from Japan south to the Great Barrier Reef and east to Samoa, between one and fifteen metres down. There it patrols the substrate endlessly, hunting small invertebrates such as polychaetes, copepods, isopods and forams. In the aquarium, allow 300 litres for a single specimen, a fine sand bed five to seven centimetres deep that it burrows into each night, and a tight-fitting lid, as it jumps. Feed meaty foods several times a day. Harmless to corals, it clears flatworms and pyramidellid snails but tolerates its own kind poorly.