Flame Angelfish Care

The flame angelfish (Centropyge Loriculus) is probably the most popular member of the genus centropyge in the saltwater aquarium hobby nowadays. It owes this fact to the beauty this saltwater aquarium fish possesses. It is a bright mixture between orange and red with blue accents toward the end of its anal and dorsal fins.

Flame Angelfish by Ken Tam

Vertical black stripes that vary in number are also present across its body. While most flame angelfish are similar in appearance, they typically vary with regards to the number of stripes present along with the overall color. Some have more orange than others.

True Hawaiian flame angels are a bright red all over their body with very little to no traces of orange present. Their stripes are also a lot more narrow than other variants. Most angelfish come from Christmas and Marshall Islands however, as Hawaiian variants are rarely seen in the marine aquarium hobby.

With proper acclimation and feeding, they can become a resilient fish to have. In the wild they graze on algae, small crustaceans and algae and are known to nip on an assortment of corals. With regards to coral nipping, it really is the luck of the draw as they can abruptly gain a taste for specific corals overnight.

A great countless marine aquarium hobbyists have kept them in full reef aquariums and have gotten away with it but there is always a risk. And once they start nipping, you will have to deal with removing them from the reef aquarium by some means, a task that is highly undesirable as it generally means dismantling the rock structure if a trap does not work.

They are not demanding feeders and will try out a broad diversity of foods in captivity. Once they have established themselves in the aquarium, they can become quite a bully. They do not tolerate the presence of other members of the dwarf angelfish family and will likely hound another flame angelfish to death if kept together in a small tank.

Author Resource
Written by Pima Laga
The Flame Angelfish along with other members of the genus Centropyge are touched upon in the authors marine aquarium fish website.