Red Coris Wrasse

Sold as a small orange-red juvenile with white saddles, but this is a fish that ends up around 40 cm — the adult is a heavy-bodied green-blue wrasse with dark spotting, a red-marked face and a yellow tail, and looks nothing like the animal that was bought. It needs a deep sand bed to dive into at night and when startled, and it will rearrange rock, flip shells and hunt down snails, hermits, small crabs and ornamental shrimp as it grows. Corals are generally left alone, so it is reef safe in the coral sense but not in the cleanup-crew sense. Buy it only if the tank is genuinely large and permanent — the common failure is a 200 L tank bought for a 5 cm juvenile.