Coral Rabbitfish
The Coral Rabbitfish, (Siganus corallinus), or blue-spotted spinefoot, ocellated spinefoot or orange spinefoot, is a species of marine ray-finned fish, a rabbitfish belonging to the family Siganidae. It is found in the Indo-Pacific where it is often caught as a food fish and occasionally as an aquarium fish. The Coral rabbitfish has a deep and compressed body with a standard length which is around twice its depth. The dorsal profile of its head has an incline of around at 45°. There is an indentation on front of the eyes and another behind the chin which makes the snout obviously protrude. There is a forward pointing spine in front of dorsal fin. The caudal fin is emarginate in juveniles with a standard length of less than 5 cm (2.0 in)but it becomes more forked with age so that it is deeply forked in subadults, the lobes of the caudal fin are sharply pointed. pesce coniglio del corallo
This species attains a maximum total length of 30 cm (12 in), although 20 cm (7.9 in) is more typical. The overall colour of this rabbitfish is orange-yellow marked with small blue spots on the head, breast and flanks, with a dark smudge-like mark surrounding the eye. Small juveniles have slender blue vertical lines on the flanks that break up into spots as they grow. The spines in the dorsal, anal and pectoral fins are grooved and each groove contains venom glands, the venom can cause a painful wound but it is thermolabile, i.e. it is broken down by heat. The Coral rabbitfish has a widespread Indo-West Pacific distribution. It occurs from the western Indian Ocean, where it is apparently restricted to oceanic archipelagoes such as the Seychelles and Maldives, to the western Pacific Ocean, where it occurs from the Ryukyu and Ogasawara Islands, east to New Caledonia and Vanuatu and south to Australia. It is found at depths between 1 and 30 m (3 ft 3 in and 98 ft 5 in) in coral reefs, with the juveniles in sea grass beds.
Coral rabbitfish school as juveniles in sea grass beds, moving into branching Acropora corals and beginning to form pairs as around 6 cm (2.4 in). Once paired, the adults are sedentary in areas of branching corals but will move into intertidal areas as they are flooded to feed. The juveniles may form mixed aggregations with parrotfishes and other rabbitfishes. The juveniles browse epiphytic algae from the leaves of sea grasses while the adults prefer macroalgae. The Coral rabbitfish spawning is governed by the water temperature and the lunar cycle, normally occurring at dusk.
(extract from Wikipedia)
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