Common Name: Painted Basslet

Distribution: Uncommon in the Solitary Islands Marine Park. Distributed throughout the Western Pacific: New Caledonia and the southern Great Barrier Reef, Norfolk and Lord Howe Island. In Australia recorded from around Shark Bay in Western Australia, the Great Barrier Reef in Queensland and south to Montague Island in New South Wales.

Ecological Notes: Frequents reef drop offs often in aggregations above steep slopes, usually in the depth range 12 to 40 m.

Additional Notes: 

ail less strongly forked that most basslets, male with pale bar in centre of tail and two tone colour, pinkish forebody turning abruptly reddish at the rear, see top photo. Usually small to moderate aggregations with females (middle photo) outnumbering males. Smaller juvenile in bottom photograph. Sometimes found with aggregations of Pseudanthias squamipinnis. Feeds on zooplankton in the water column. Grows to 12 cm.

References: R. Stuart-Smith, G. Edgar, A. Green, I. Shaw, Tropical Marine Fishes of Australia. Reed New Holland Publishers, 2015. p.105.

Atlas of Living Australia website at https://bie.ala.org.au/search?q=Pseudanthias+pictilis. Accessed 01/06/18.

FishBase. Froese, R. and D. Pauly. Editors. 2018. World Wide Web electronic publication. https://fishbase.ca/summary/Pseudanthias-pictilis.html. Accessed 01/06/18.

Dianne J. Bray, Pseudanthias pictilis in Fishes of Australia, accessed 23 Sep 2018, http://fishesofaustralia.net.au/home/species/4398