The Goldbelly Damsel is an easy marine fish to keep and so if good for beginners. It's head and the top half of the body is a bright blue with the bottom half of the fish being bright yellow, making it very eye catching.
Care:
In the wild, these stunning electric blue and yellow damselfish inhabit inner reef slopes, usually staying close to the corals living amongst the mixed rubble substrate. Adults tend to congregate in small groups over favourable sections of reef, feeding on the zooplankton in the water column and to a lesser extent, benthic algae. Gold Belly Damselfish are colourful, hardy, and well suited to the reef aquarium. However, this is a fairly aggressive species, and as these fish mature, their belligerence also often increases. It is therefore advisable to keep either a single specimen, a known male-female pair, or a large sized odd-numbered shoal(9+) introduced simultaneously as juveniles into a spacious tank with plenty of hiding places amongst the rockwork. Small groups are often known to suffer fatalities. Choose tankmates with care, avoiding any really docile species suchas firefish and cardinalfish. The Neon Damselfish (P. coelestis) from the Indo-Pacific is a very similar looking species, but the Gold Belly Damselfish (P.auriventris) sports much more yellow in the lower half of the body. Another very similar species, the Caerulean Damselfish (P. caeruleus) from the Western Indian Ocean does not display quite as much yellow on the belly; indeed the pectoral finbase on P. auriventris is usually sited on a yellow area, whereas in P.caeruleus the pectoral fin base sits on a blue area.
Feeding:
Offer a varied diet, including meaty items such as Mysis shrimp, vitamin-enriched brine shrimp, chopped krill, also marine flake food, and herbivore rations. Feed small amounts 3 times perday.
Breeding:
These fish form distinct pairs when breeding. The tiny eggs (numbering up to 1000) are deposited in a cave or on the substrate and are guarded and aerated by the male fish until hatching.
