Leopard Wrasse

The leopard wrasse is one of the most striking labrids in the marine trade. Females and juveniles wear a whitish to greenish coat scattered with irregular black spots, the pattern behind the alternative name guinea fowl wrasse; the rarer males turn orange-red with greenish yellow spots ringed in blue. It reaches 15 cm and crushes hard-shelled prey with powerful pharyngeal teeth. It lives throughout the Indo-Pacific, from the Cocos-Keeling Islands to the western Pacific and the islands of Oceania, over subtidal reef flats, outer lagoons and seaward reefs from the surface down to about 30 m, where sand, rubble and living coral meet. The sand is no decoration: the fish buries itself there each night to sleep and vanishes into it at the first alarm. This is a fish for experienced reef keepers. The limit is not swimming room but the maturity of the system: it grazes constantly on the microfauna of established rock — foraminiferans, amphipods, small snails — and a young tank simply starves it. Allow 400 litres, plenty of well-colonised live rock and a bed of fine, rounded sand. Keep one per tank unless a group goes in together. Peaceful and reef safe, it needs two meaty meals a day and is not bred in captivity.