This article guides you through the caring, breeding, and diet of Red Head Solon Fairy Wrasse. The Red Head Solon has a beautiful yellow, orange face and a blue body with bright red running down the dorsal margin. The Tricolor Fairy Wrasse, Redheaded Fairy Wrasse, and Red-eyed Fairy Wrasse are all Red Head Solon Fairy Wrasse names. It’s differently bred by some aquarists to be a different color form of the Blueside Wrasse (Cirrhilabrus cyanopleura). It may vary running along depending on color like yellow, orange, blue.
Let’s learn more about Cirrhilabrus solorensis in this post.
Table of Contents
Overview
- Care level: Easy
- Scientific Name: Cirrhilabrus solorensis
- Family: Labridae
- Size: 4.3 inches on average
- Color: Yellow, Orange, Blue,
- Tank setup: Saltwater
- Tank size: 39 inches long / 30-70 gallons
- Temperament: Peaceful with the suitable tank mates, but aggressive with its species
- Diet: Carnivore
- pH: 8.1-8.4
- Temperature: 72F to 78F
- dKH: 8-12
- Salinity: 1.020-1.025
About the Red Head Solon Fairy Wrasse
Cirrhilabrus solorensis is its scientific name, and it belongs to the Labridae family. Although it can be challenging to tell apart from other closely related wrasses, the red head solon fairy wrasse has one distinguishing feature. The eye of the fairy wrasse is highly well adapted!
The cornea has two lenses, one of which serves as a close body sensing mechanism for its little prey.
Fairy wrasses are one of the few wrasse genera with this crucial evolutionary advantage. Apart from red, these shrimp are running along with different colors like yellow, blue, yellow, and orange.
A variety knows the red head solon fairy wrasse of names among fishkeepers:
- Red Head Solon Fairy Wrasse
- Tricolor Fairy Wrasse
- Red Headed Fairy Wrasse
- Red-eyed Fairy Wrasse.
Red Head Solon Fairy Wrasse Tank Care
Here is the guide to take care of Red head solon fairy wrasse:
- Fine-sand sandbed
When given a 2-inch sandbed, fairy wrasses thrive. This minor element can have a significant impact on their conduct. When they feel threatened or frightened, the layer of sand will simulate their natural habitat.
It takes advantage of it by burrowing into it. To avoid injury, use finer sand for the fairy wrasses’ reef sandbed. If you like bare bottom reef tanks, you may vary by substituting a container of sand for the sandbed.
- Live rock
When planning the aquascape of a reef aquarium, make sure to include enough rock for your fairy wrasse redheaded. They require a variety of hiding places to explore during the active solar and bother display at night.
By promoting the growth of natural plankton populations, live rocks will also help augment the active mood and food of tricolor fairy wrasses.
- Shaded area
Bright lights have a color intensity display effect on their mood. However, creating a shaded area away from bright lights can be helpful. A shaded area away displays cyanopleura, a sense of home.
- Glass cover or lid
Despite the open-top design of current reef aquariums, it is strongly advised to use a cover to prevent your fairy wrasses from jump ship. The redheaded fairy wrasse is known for jump out of its aquarium mysis.
- Sufficient space
The tricolor fairy wrasse, a very busy fish during the day, requires a lot of space to fulfill its natural mood to swim and explore. Ensuring your reef aquarium is at least 39 inches long is an excellent place to start assessing if you have date brine.
When all of the fairy wrasses are fully adult, a school requires a 70 gallons aquarium. Juvenile and adolescent specimens may bother you more time to size up your saltwater reef aquarium.
Red Head Solon Fairy Wrasse Diet
The red head solon fairy wrasse is thought to be a picky eater by most fishkeepers. Even though fairy wrasses are carnivores/zooplanktivores as a species, they can be picky eaters.
You can train your school of color fairy wrasses to eat just about anything. Before adding them to the community aquarium or acclimating them to their new habitat if living as a single species, now is the best time to do it.
Bring in a hungry red head solon fairy wrasse to a tank stocked with plenty of live tanaids. After that, you can pass on to frozen marine foods, mosquito larvae, brine shrimp, and live plankton.
You’ll be able to give fairy wrasses any commercial carnivore food after a few weeks, as the expectation of diversity will have become ingrained in their feeding patterns.
Here’s a list of foods that will keep your fairy wrasses well-fed and healthy:
- Mysis crustaceans
- Raw table shrimp
- Krill
- Squid
- Clam
- Mussel
- Frozen marine food
- Frozen flaked marine
- Frozen commercial food
When in its natural habitat, the red head solon fairy wrasse feeds on zooplankton. Its tiny mouth heavily influences its diet and small-prey pursuing adapted eyesight.
Fairy wrasses should be provided at least twice a day, and they should not be kept in the same tank as predatory plankton-eating fish. You don’t want your fish to get hungry.
Red Head Solon Fairy Wrasse Breeding
Since males and females have very similar patterns, sexing wrasses can be challenging. The only way to tell them differently is by looking at their body color fluctuation.
Males of the species will have a brighter color, be more significant than females, and have longer pelvic fins than females. The end of the gill cover of mature male red-eyed wrasses is also darkly shaded.
They can live in small or large groups in the wild. They form a harem in captivity, which is a natural behavior they reproduce. Larger females occasionally form aggregations in the wild.
The red head solon wrasses, like most other wrasses, are protogynous hermaphrodites. It means that each individual of this species begins life as a female and can change gender as habitat conditions permit.
The structure of their harem has a significant influence on how they transition from one sex to the other. When the dominant male in a small group of females dies, the dominant female undergoes a sex change.
In the wild, the red head solon fairy wrasse reproduces in the following pattern:
- A single male dominates a tiny group of females.
- Within the harem, he has first dibs on breeding rights.
- The dominant wrasse male engages actively in fast flashing (color intensity variations).
Tank Mates
It may seem strange, but the wrasse redheaded fairy only on the list of tank mates is themselves! When housed with other wrasses, they are more likely to be aggressive than any other species.
As a result, the presence of two male fairy wrasses in the same tank might be a substantial cause for fighting. If you choose fish that are similar in size to wrasse, they will be able to share their habitat with a wide range of aquarium mates.
A quiet and healthy school of red head solon fairy wrasses fish can achieve this by keeping wrasse away from fish that annoy and frighten their tank mates.
Another vital factor to remember when selecting tank mates is that competition for food will stress out your tricolor fairy wrasse! The bright red head fish are corals safe and reef-friendly as this fish will not eat corals or other bottom-dwelling invertebrates.
Not compatible Tank Mates
Groupers, Lionfish, Cleaner Shrimp, Tangs
Compatible Tank Mates
Blennies, Damsels, Cardinals, Apolemichthys
Conclusion
For a fish that’s easy to care for while also being interested and active in the water column, try keeping a red head solon fairy wrasse in your marine aquarium.
