Home › Sea Life › Marine Animals › Vertebrates › Angelfishes › Keyhole Angelfish
Interesting Facts about Whitespot Angelfish
[Phylum: Chordata] [Class: Actinopterygii] [Order: Perciformes] [Family: Pomacanthidae]
It's classified as a 'pygmy' and it has several common names, including the black angelfish, melas angelfish, puller angelfish, and the whitespot angelfish.
This page contains some lesser-known facts about keyhole angelfish (Centropyge tibicen), including their preferred habitat and daily diet.
Keyhole Angelfish Distribution and Habitats
Angelfishes are one of the most observable of all ray-finned vertebrates that inhabit coral reef structures, such as atolls and barrier reefs.
In actual fact, around eighty marine angelfish species inhabit a variety of saltwater environments worldwide.
Most of the large angelfishes live close to coral reefs that are shallower than 20 metres (66 feet) and around sunken shipwrecks.
Perciformes are bold and quite friendly in the wild. They often swim up close and interact with scuba divers and skin divers.
The Indo-Pacific is one of the foremost places to find keyhole angelfish (Centropyge tibicen). They inhabit most dive sites in the Western Pacific, especially Indonesia, the Philippines, and Papua New Guinea.
Beyond that, the whitespot angelfish is also one of the common sightings in southern Japan and the Great Barrier Reef (including the crevices and caves around Lord Howe Island in the Tasman Sea).
Pro Tip: The angelfish classification differs for "Cichliformes" (tropical cichlids) and "Pterophyllum fish" (freshwater angelfish), that are often kept as part of a fish keeping hobby.
Keyhole Angelfish Characteristics
Despite being closely related to butterflyfishes, most of the ocean angelfish species have strong facial support from their preopercle bones. These "boomerang-shaped" structures are gill covers that help them to breathe and feed.
Centropyge tibicen is actually classified as a pygmy angelfish (often called dwarf angelfish). It is one of the largest dwarf angelfish - when compared with cherubfish (Centropyge argi).
Even so, their body shape retains the oval shape and lateral compression, or thinness. At full maturity, adults often measure around nineteen (19) centimetres in length (almost 8 inches).
Here's the thing:
The most notable features of keyhole angelfish are the dark blue (velvety black) body colouration and the white vertical "keyhole" marks.
They also have bright blue and yellow margins on their dorsal fin and anal fins.
The juveniles tend to have more colour variations than the adults, often displaying multiple light coloured orange spots and bars.
They have fourteen (14) spines on the dorsal fin and up to sixteen (16) soft rays. The anal fin also has three (3) spines and sixteen soft rays.
What Do Tibicen Angelfish Eat?
The classification of angelfish defines their individual feeding habits. For example, marine angelfishes of the family Pomacanthidae (also called swallowtail or lyretail angelfish) are typical planktivores (e.g. they feed on planktonic organisms, filamentous green algae, and zooplankton in the water column).
Whereas, a staple food source for most of the large angelfish species includes benthic invertebrates (crustaceans, marine worms), bryozoans (moss animals), hydroids, sea sponges, and salpa (barrel-shaped tunicates).
How Do Angelfish Reproduce?
A pronounced shift in colouration combines with maturity and social ranking for many of the angelfish phylum. Put another way, the characteristics of juvenile angelfishes see a dramatic change and colour shift as they develop into adulthood.
Keyhole angelfish are protogynous hermaphrodites, meaning females can change gender to become a functional male if the dominant male dies or is removed from the harem.
But wait - there's more:
Angelfishes are pelagic spawners. Hence, they release between 150 and one thousand miniscule buoyant eggs into the water column.
The eggs float around with plankton in ocean currents until they hatch. As a consequence of that, most of them fall victim to a range of planktonic feeders, such as large marine mammals.
Threats and Predators
Saltwater angelfish have several natural predators, especially barracudas, large open ocean fishes, and most of the shark phylum.
Are Angelfish Poisonous?
Some large angelfish are edible and fished for human consumption for food. But, caution is needed because some species are not safe to eat and may cause a foodborne illness called ciguatera poisoning. Moreover, ciguatoxin has similar symptoms to pufferfish poisoning.
Pro Tip: The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species last assessed many of the angelfish phylum in 2009. They cited the keyhole angelfish (Centropyge tibicen) as being of "Least Concern" (LC) with a population trend of "Stable".