Related FAQs: Melichthys Triggers, Triggerfishes in General, Triggerfish: Identification, Selection, Selection 2, Compatibility, Behavior, Systems, Feeding, Diseases, Triggerfish Health 2, Reproduction,

Related Articles: Triggerfishes (Family Balistidae), Red Sea Triggerfishes, Triggers of the Cook Islands, Hawaiian Triggerfishes, 

/The Best Livestock for A Marine Aquarium (Series)

 Triggerfishes of the Genus Melichthys

Melichthys vidua

Melichthys indicus (Randall & Klausewitz 1973), the Indian Triggerfish. Indian Ocean, Red Sea including east African coast. To ten inches in length. A good fish-only aquarium species. This one in the Maldives.

Most wholesalers offer two species of Melichthys more or less continuously, the circumtropical Black (Durgon) Triggerfish, Melichthys niger (Bloch 1786) (usually out of Hawai'i), to eighteen inches. Pictured: an individual in the Bahamas, and one in Maui, Hawai'i.

And the Pinktail Trigger, Melichthys vidua (Richardson 1845), is the other commonly offered member of the genus. Found throughout the Indo-Pacific. These are "medium" aggressive fish species that grow to about a foot in length in captivity, sixteen inches in the wild. Here are specimens in captivity and Hawai'i.