#frog fish

You get an Angler

Almost forgot today's mermaid!

OMG!!!!!!!!

SO! Number 1 is OBVIOUSLY Oncorhynchus mykiss... AKA the rainbow trout

These guys are amazing. They are the most farmed fish in the world by weight (not numbers). And they're not a trout! They are a true pacific salmon, like chinooks, cohos, sockeye, etc etc.

These dudes are different than the other pacific salmon though as they can spawn multiple times! That's why they don't undergo quite such extreme transformations during spawning season.

Rainbows are typically landlocked. Steelhead trout (which are Oncorhynchus mykiss mykiss) are the rainbows you see out at sea.

NUMBER 2: Acipenser transmontanus.... WHITE STURGEON!

This photo is a poor image I took of the baby white sturgeon I got to take care of for a year during my fisheries and aquaculture tech program.

White sturgeon are the largest sturgeon species. The largest ever recorded was 20 feet long and roughly 120 years old. The oldest sturgeon I worked with, Tyra, was about 9 feet long and was only 65. They reside along the pacific coast of North America and they are pure muscle. A two year old is about a foot long and the scutes (modified scales) are sharp as hell. You can't wear gloves when you handle them either so your hands get cut up real bad. I loved taking care of them. They're like giant, muscly, slimy dogs.

Females will lay roughly 3 million eggs per spawn and the eggs will hatch after about 6 days. A newly hatched white sturgeon is a few millimeters long. Crazy to think about.

This is my jar of dead babies.

NUMBER 3: Frog fish!

Wish I could remember who took this photo!

Frog fish have specially adapted pectoral fins that they use almost like legs! They're bottom dwellers and "walk" along the sea floor.

I don't know much about them I'm afraid. My brain was almost entirely consumed by rainbow trout and white sturgeon.

These guys look so grumpy! (I like to say my 'fursona' is just a regular ol' frog fish lol)

NUMBER 4: A fish my family had for about 15 years... A bloodred parrot cichlid named Sir Rupert Finklebottom III, Esq. (We learned she was female when she was about 9 years old)

These fish are man made abominations and I do not recommend owning them. They have horrible health issues and they have nasty personalities. We had two of them. Rupert and Regina. Because they're crossbreeds they're essentially infertile. Rupert and Regina both laid thousands of unfertilized eggs when they were roughly 9 years old. They only did this once. They ate all of their eggs within a week.

People say they're good community tank fish. They are not. They're aggressive little assholes. Ours had to live in their own tank and they'd try to bite you if you put your fingers in their tank (it didn't hurt because they can't close their mouths and have no teeth.)

They have malformed swim bladders and are just generally awful fish. But boy do I miss my Rupert and Regina.

And finally

NUMBER 5: All manner of eels. For the purposes of this I'm going to say Rock Gunnels.

These slippery little dudes are sharp as hell. When I did a practicum at an oyster farm these dudes kept getting pulled up in the oyster beds and I ran around scooping them up and tossing them back into the sea. They come in a variety of vibrant colours too!

BONUS FISH:

Something fishy. Our world is full of aliens.

The Macrognathus aral, One-stripe spiny eel has its mouth and anterior shaped like a bird's beak. People make artworks by combining different kinds of animals or their forms. People also wonder about aliens, how they would look, and we have had so many drawings, cartoons of aliens. But isn't our own earth, the very world where we live, comprised of creatures alien-like? We have thousands and lakhs of species, all different from one another. And if we were to pick any animal group from these, let's say, fish, even they have so much variety. This variety, again, is in their body shapes, colours, size. And they are found in different habitats - freshwater (rivers, streams, ponds, lakes), saltwater/ marine, estuary. Let's consider their looks and body features. There's this one, in this post itself - Macrognathus aral, One-stripe spiny eel - which has a bird's beak-like anterior. There're 'flying fish' that can fly or glide in air for some time (with help of their fins). There're 'frogfish'. From their name itself, one can understand that they must be appearing like frogs. Walking on the seafloor. 'Sole' are flat fish that can be observed, again, on the seafloor, and with both of their eyes on one side (facing upward), on contrary to the single eye on each side of the fish. There are anglerfish, which lure their prey with their luminescent part. And so many others, grouped together based on their 'usual' characteristics, but still 'unusual'. Our world itself is full of aliens!

Clown Frog Fish painting study

True Facts About The Angler Fish 

True Facts: Frog Fish