Distinguishing
Characteristics
Body somewhat deep; head small, dorsoventrally compressed; mouth small, oblique, nearly vertical; color yellowish to olive; dark spots form horizontal stripes on the sides; dorsal fin with rows of spots; caudal peduncle broad, caudal fin rounded, sometime with dark border; females larger and more plain colored than males; males with enlarge long dorsal fin (longer and higher than in females). Similar Species
Sailfin mollies have horizontal rows of spots, gambusia have pigment around scales forming cross-hatching, sheepshead minnows have irregular vertical bars.
Chris, I live over in the Katy area and am wondering if it’s productive to go collecting this time year? Probably not right this second, but on a week when it warms up to 70’s during the day. The wife and I saw a video of you collecting and thought it would be really cool to go.
Cool, yeah, we’d like that. We’ll need to find a sitter but will probably be able to come out in a few weeks. I’ll post once we can get a couple of dates together. Yeah, post what you see tonight, we’ll be keen to see!
Hey chris85, this looks fantastic. I was just reading about rock flowers and thinking about buying some, I hadn’t even considered collecting my own! I live down by South Padre, do you have any tips for finding RFA? Ever been to SPI yourself to collect?
Never collected in padre, or collected RFA the anemones i collect are.... Warty rock anemone, onion anemone, and tricolor anemone.
For the warty nems.... Just pull up a rock and scrape them off with a dull key or credit card.
Onion anemones are sand dwellers but i usually find them when the water gets rough washed up on the beach.
Yhe tricolor nems are usually attached to the back of a hermit crab shell... You can also pick them up when the water gets rough.
From what i have gather on the RFA is that they are a little deeper starting a about a meter deep or so for the bland colors and up to about 60ft. for the more colorful ones.
You guys should have some really cool stuff down there. How far is the continental shelf from you guys? I have watched some videos of spearfisherman at the aransas jetty and have seen lots of coral just a meter or so underwater.
So get suited up, get wet, have fun, and post some pictures!! Please
Cool pics Chris! Maybe it's just me, but when I kept a molly miller, I always thought of them as sort of the body builders of the fish world, because their "pecs" are impressive. Their thick pectoral fins, thick fin base, and muscular chest enable a perfect benthic lifestyle. All blennies have similar characteristics, but molly millers seem like their on the extreme end of the spectrum. Your first pic demonstrates perfectly what I'm referring to.
Yeah I think that maybe because... They use there fins to hold and push kind of like a push up when they eat. They chomp down and push up to remove whatever food source they are eating( algae). I have had a bunch of them and he is one of the prettiest ones I have caught. I just got done setting up the my system after my little boo boo!! He is going to be one of the breeders. I have a few more little things to do, but i should be 100% by mid summer. I guess we will see how it goes. For now I will be doing Molly millers, mollies, pajama cardinels, the other Benny pictured above, peppermint shrimp, and ghost shrimp for now. I lost one of my springi blennies when my tank split so hopefully i will get another one of those this year. Man I just exhausted myself.... Wish me luck!!
Yeah I wish I could have gotten them, but they were in a tough spot.
Then my head lamp and flashlight died and my phone about ten minutes after that. It was fun gave me some time to relax. I also got a few molly miller blennies, some peppermint shrimp, a few sergeant majors, some crabs that are close to salley light foot crabs, and a couple other blennies, but like I said my phone crapped out.
So sorry no more pictures.
The lyretail goby was caught a few weeks ago and that one is a first for that species. I was so excited when I knabbed him.