🐠 Orchid Dottyback (Pseudochromis fridmani)
A Vivid Magenta-Purple Body With a Black Eye Stripe • A Captive-Breeding Success Story • A Hardy, Beginner-Friendly Nano Favourite
 
📋 The Orchid Dottyback, also known as Fridman's Dottyback, has a striking, uniform magenta-purple body with a distinctive black stripe running through the eye. It's often compared with our Strawberry (Magenta) Dottyback, and the black eye stripe is the quick way to tell them apart: the Orchid has one, and the Strawberry doesn't.
It comes from the Red Sea, where it stakes out a cave or crevice on vertical rock faces and overhangs. It's one of the great captive-breeding success stories of the marine hobby, so tank-raised specimens are widely available and settle in readily. Every Orchid Dottyback we ship is feeding well.
It's reef safe with corals, clams, and most invertebrates, and it happily eats nuisance bristleworms, though it may take delicate ornamental shrimp or small fan worms. It's bold in defending its cave, so keep one per tank unless you have a confirmed pair, and add it as one of your last fish. It reaches about 6.3cm, so a 75L tank suits it well.
 
💡 Highlights
🎨 Vivid Magenta With a Black Eye Stripe: An iconic, unmistakable dottyback
🧬 A Captive-Breeding Success Story: Widely available tank-raised
🌿 Reef Safe: Eats nuisance bristleworms, leaves corals alone
💪 Hardy and Beginner-Friendly: Settles in readily
☝️ One Per Tank: Defends its cave, so keep a single fish or a confirmed pair