In late September of 2006, a photograph began circulating among tropical fish hobbyists on the Internet. It was a shot of a beautiful freshwater fish, almost too beautiful to be real. In fact, many of the first people to see it assumed it had been doctored, figuring that no fish that stunning could have been overlooked by the aquarium hobby for all of these years.
 
In truth, the fish had only been discovered a few weeks earlier in a small plant-laden spring-fed pool in the Southeast Asian nation of Burma. The area where it was collected had been off-limits to westerners for many years, so it has become the source of several new fish in the past few years. But none of the other newly discovered fish from the area compared to this one—this was definitely something special.
 
If you haven’t guessed it by now, I’m talking about the beautiful miniature fish known in the trade as the ‘‘galaxy rasbora.” It has also been distributed under the trade names of “fireworks rasbora” and “Microrasbora sp. galaxy.” The reason all of these names are in quotes is that exporters were only guessing as to which genus of cyprinids it belonged, because it really didn’t seem to fit exactly within any of the known genera.
 
Why Not Galaxy Rasbora?
Scientists agreed that this fish didn’t fit into any known genera, and on February 28, 2007, Tyson R. Roberts of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute released his formal description of the species, erecting a new genus for it. He also suggested a new common name, since his discovery of a familial relationship between this fish and the danios meant the trade name galaxy rasbora was misleading.
 
Naming
Dr. Roberts coined the common name of celestial pearl danio (CPD) to reflect that the fish are actually danionins, related more closely to the danios than to the rasboras. According to Roberts he coined the generic name Celestichthys from the Latin and Greek words meaning “heavenly fish.” Since the specific name margaritatus means “adorned with pearls,” Celestichthys margaritatus translates to “heavenly fish adorned with pearls.” It’s a great descriptive name, but a bit awkward to use in conversation, hence the name “celestial pearl danio.”