It has taken a couple of months to get my new aquarium system ready for experiments and I am so excited that I finally have the fish I will be using for actual experiments.

For my research, I am using Picasso triggerfish (Rhinecanthus aculeatus) as my study species. These beautiful fish have so much personality. They are curious and expressive and will pretty much bite at anything. When working with them, you have to be careful not to leave your hand in their tank or you will get a surprising nip taken out of you!

You can see in my video below that they will attack things that come too close to the glass of their tanks as well (in this case it is my finger).

This species is found on the Great Barrier Reef in Australia and on coral reefs around the world. They are omnivorous and territorial. They spend much of their day swimming around their home region taking exploratory bites out of pretty much everything

In their tanks at the lab, the fish seem to enjoy rearranging the gravel by picking it up with their mouths and dumping it elsewhere.