What is brilliant yellow, about five inches long, often seen in groups and tropical? You guessed it, Banana Wrasses (Thalassoma lutescens)! Though to be fair, they're often collected singly as well. The females are a stunning sunbeam yellow. Males will gain some orange / green stripes to their faces, while the fins will start to have a blue tinge and a brilliant orange stripe! Thalassoma lutescens is an all-star on our list of “Highly Underrated Fish.” In addition to being gorgeous, this fish is amazingly hardy and resistant to most common aquarium maladies. As a result, the aquarium parameters they require are easy to achieve. They aren't picky to temperature and will be comfortable in a range anywhere from the mid 60s to the upper 70s Fahrenheit. The pH and specific gravity you shoot for should be tuned to your other aquarium inhabitants, an SG range between 1.021 and 1.026 with a pH anywhere between 7.8 to 8.4 will not adversely affect these fish, though all fish will do better in a stable environment that hovers in the low eights. Banana Wrasses are incredibly easy to feed, and this is one of the reasons you don't see them in reef style aquariums very often. It isn't that they are a risk to the corals, in fact, they are extremely unlikely to bother them, they are however, single minded hunters that relish eating crabs, hermit crabs, snails, urchins, worms and clams. This means it can be difficult to keep a large tank stocked with enough cleaners in a standard reef setup. The flip side is that these fish usually take to pellet foods very easily, and in house they greedily eat both the shots and the sinking pellets from Nutramar. We also feed them a mix of thawed meaty foods like krill, mysis, chopped prawn and mussel from Gamma Foods and we do this twice a day. Click here to learn more
