Yellow Headed (Pearly) Jawfish
Opistognathus aurifons

Identification: It's coloration is yellow on the head and front half of the body with a bluer color down towards the tail and has noticeably blue finnage. 

Maximum Length: Grows to a length of approximately 5 inches.

Origin

Minimum tank size:   Gallon

Behavior: Yellowhead Jawfish are quite territorial and protect their burrow fiercely even from other specimens of their own kind. If several specimens are kept in the same tank, which is recommended by the way, your aquarium should be large enough to accommodate them.
These fish will come out of their holes and hover right over them, not quite straight up, maybe at a 25 to 30 degree angle. At the slightest sign of danger they dash back into their nest. Note that in nature the end of the burrow is really a little chamber, fortified with pieces of coral rock where the fish hides and rests. this is hard to duplicate in an aquarium as you usually cannot provide thick enough layers of sand (they may go anaerobic). You should, nevertheless provide them with the ability to build these "nests" or "burrows" as otherwise they will not survive. This should be easy to do in the newer live sand filtration tanks that have recently been advocated.

Feeding and diet: Feeding should start with small live foods (e.g. Cyclops, Mysis, Brachionus, Various Nauplii, etc.) and progress to mussel, scallop and crab meat. They can easily be enticed to eat and do not pose a great deal of problems in this respect. This species is a hardy aquarium fish. It will accept a variety of prepared foods, particularly smaller meatier preparations such as brine shrimp, clam or mussels. This species will excavate a burrow from which it will quickly dart out when feeding.

Reef Compatibility: This fish makes an excellent marine reef aquarium species because it will not bother invertebrates whatsoever. Again though, it is necessary to have a fine substrate covering the bottom of the aquarium. Those reef aquarist which are using a bare bottomed method should not attempt to keep this species.

Cautions: Because they truly are very shy fish they often get out competed for food, one of the main reason for their early demise. They should, as a result, be kept with non-aggressive fish only and you should make visually quite sure that they are indeed feeding. If they don't, they will starve and die. When trying to get food they move extremely fast but only if no other fish are posing a threat to them, hence the reason that no aggressive fish should be present in the aquarium as this will prevent the Jawfish from feeding.

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