Appearance
The clown knifefish is very distinct, with normally silvery gray with a long knife like body (laterally compressed) and a long anal fin that gives these fish their common name. Mature fish normally have 5-10 (or even more) black spots ringed with white that usually increase in number and size as the fish grows. Juvenile fish have striped bands instead of spots. Their long anal fins are used to allow the fish to make graceful forward and backward movements.
The clown knifefish grows to a fairly large size, up to 100 cm and 5 kg in the wild. It has 2 nasal tentacles above their large toothed mouth. In the center of the body there is a flaglike dorsal fin and has no ventral fins. Most clown knifefish are afflicted with cloudy eye color when they age, it is perfectly normal.
Read more about this topic: Chitala Ornata
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