- More on Blue Angels -
Oh how wonderful life is with aquaria in hand and doing life's work, without shoving it back to you, and saying here take this you... I have to ask cheers j- are you female or male not that I care but curious!!! <Last time I checked, I was a male - J is short for Jason.> your advice {splendid indeed master splinter} ! I did as you requested and ordered bobs book the conscientious marine aquarist, should be here Monday! <Excellent, I think you will enjoy it.> I really have a question about my blue angel, or my queen angel you see the blue angel has lines that curve back toward the tail and the one I have although 4 inches in length just body not tail look to be straight, and another thing that leads me to believe it is a queen is the dorsal fin from front to back is neon blue as is the fin from front to back on the underside of him is neon blue, and from what I've been reading the adult blue has no blue color! <Hmm... that doesn't happen for quite a while... give it some time and you will see. More on the Holocanthus angels here:
http://www.wetwebmedia.com/marine/fishes/angels/holacanthus/index.htm > I paid 68 bucks for this blue angel so they say, but did I get a blue or did I get a queen? <Hard to say without a photo - I'm guessing by your description that this fish still has it's juvenile colors.> if I got a queen I need to hurry and get a 400 or 5 hundred gal tank right? <No hurry, they don't grow that quickly but either way, both of these fish get considerably larger than four inches and if you want to keep it for a long time, a larger tank will be in your future.
Cheers, J -- >

Queen Angel
Just wanted to say Thanks for all the great info on the Queen angel. I am going to purchase a 3" (or so) juvenile for my 220 FO, and I wanted to see if there was a good way to distinguish the Queen from a Townsend. Is a Townsend's markings just a subtle mix of the Queen and Blue? Any definite things for the untrained eye to look for?<Not really they are pretty distinguishable>
I hear there have been some of both offered locally as Queens these days, so I wanted to try & educate myself on the differences. I was in a LFS today and they tried to sell me what was clearly a blue angel as a Queen.<Yea that is either plain dishonesty or lack of knowledge on the LFS part>
Thanks again for your time!<good luck, IanB>