Originally Posted by cpreefguy
How about rare Pygmy Angelfish?I figured this might be a good time to chime in… My name is Brad and I’m Mark and James’ business partner at Gulf Coast Reef and Aquaculture. This is great to see such strong MAAST support! We are really excited about this place and we think you guys will like what we are doing.
Let me answer a few questions about the fish breeding program;
No, we don’t have any immediate plans for pygmy angelfish right now. I’m sure as many of you know, they are actually quite easy to breed in aquaria but because they are broadcast spawners, the eggs are very small compared to those of clownfish or gobies and their larvae are subsequently also very small. This means they will not take traditional ‘first foods’ you would feed to a clownfish for example. Rotifers are simply too large for the fry to take as a first food and no commercially available microplankton has proven to be the answer. Some breeding facilities have raised these angels successfully but the technique (food source for the larvae) is a closely guarded secret. Also, most commercial breeders need around 60+% survival to make breeding a certain fish large scale a viable option, and as of yet survival of most captive reared angelfish is well below 10%. Through my PhD work I have observed some plankton that can potentially function well as a first food so in the future we may attempt some pygmy angels.
I have successfully bred and raised 3 species of seahorse (H. reidi, H. zosterae and H. kelloggi) as well as several clownfish species, gobies, cardinal fish and a couple basslet species.
We hope, if all goes well with the species Mark listed previously, to add bluespot jawfish and also helfrichi firefish to our list of broodstock.
Cheers!
