Taxonomy & naming
Datnioides campbelli was described by Whitley in 1939. The Catalog of Fishes records the type locality as the Fly River, with a note that it is not the upper Sepik River. It belongs to Lobotidae, the tripletails and tigerfishes, in the genus Datnioides, whose Asian species are the familiar Siamese and Indonesian tigerfishes.
Morphology
FishBase gives a maximum of 12.5 in SL. Like its relatives it is a deep-bodied, laterally compressed perch-like fish with bold dark vertical bands on a pale body, and it has a large mouth.
Habitat
FishBase records the species as freshwater and brackish, and benthopelagic. It lives in brackish river mouths, coastal lagoons and rivers above tidal influence, and its range is restricted to Gulf of Papua drainages and the coastal waters of New Guinea.
Feeding
Diet is not recorded in the FishBase entry. Datnioides are ambush predators of fishes and crustaceans.
Mating
Courtship and spawning behaviour have not been described for this species.
Breeding
FishBase has no reproduction entry, and breeding in captivity has not been recorded.
In the aquarium
A fish for a large tank with other robust companions too big to be eaten. Temperature, pH and hardness are not recorded for the species. Because it ranges from rivers into brackish water, keepers of the genus often hold it in slightly brackish conditions, and it takes frozen and live foods.
Conservation
The IUCN Red List assessed Datnioides campbelli as Least Concern in 2019.