the.com/tropical fish
Living jewelry that turned reef survival into the world's most beautiful arms race.
means Brightly colored fish native to warm, equatorial waters — especially coral reefs — commonly kept in heated home aquariums.
from A plain compound of two words. "Tropical" comes from the Greek "tropikos," meaning "of the turning," referring to the tropics — the bands of latitude marking where the sun appears to turn back at the solstices (related to "trope," a turn). "Fish" is deeply old Germanic, traceable to a root shared with Latin "piscis." So the phrase literally means "fish of the sun's turning latitudes," though it grew its modern hobbyist flavor only as heated aquariums made warm-water species keepable far from the equator.
- color trick
- Most blues aren't pigment, just light bending off scales
- clownfish swap
- All born male, dominant one becomes female
- venom carriers
- Lionfish spines pack neurotoxins that ruin a swimmer's day
- price tags
- A single peppermint angelfish sold for 30000 dollars
- hidden eyes
- Many sport fake eyespots to fool predators into wrong guesses
discus fish — native to amazon river basin, prized for aquariums, can cost $50-$300+ per fish
clownfish — symbiotic with sea anemones in coral reefs, made famous by finding nemo 2003
angelfish — found in amazon and orinoco rivers, popular aquarium fish since early 1900s
betta fish — native to southeast asia, males fight aggressively, called siamese fighting fish