Check Out Our Wrasses!

As mentioned in our previous post, six adult melanurus wrasses (3 male, 3 female) were moved to the Tropical Aquaculture Lab back in February.  After settling into their new environment and being offered a conditioning diet of LRS Reef Frenzy, PE mysis shrimp and Otohime EP1 pellets, the wrasses have quickly got back into their routine of spawning nearly every night.  While we continue to work through some kinks in production, we wanted to share some of our excitement with our latest group of captive bred melanurus wrasses.   [embedded content] Video 1:  Melanurus wrasse broodstock spawning at dusk.  Notice in slow motion all three males can be seen making an attempt at fertilizing the female’s eggs. Figure 1.

Commercially Available Porkfish

Figure 1. Captive bred Porkfish juvenile available fromFishEye Aquaculture. Three years ago we posted a blog stating the commercial production potential of Porkfish, Anisotremis virginicus (Porkfish Protocol – Rising Tide’s First Commercial Species). As you’ll recall, researchers at the Tropical Aquaculture Laboratory collected eggs spawned at SeaWorld Orlando and grew them to the juvenile phase and beyond. This was not the first time that Porkfish had been grown in captivity (again credit goes to Martin Moe and company). It was, however, the first time that Porkfish had been grown from eggs spawned in captivity using standard commercial production protocols; including the use of hatchery grown live feeds (rotifers and Artemia). This proved inspiring to one of Rising Tide’s industry partners who decided to add this fish to their list of available species. Figure 2. Captive bred Porkfish juveniles available fromFishEye Aquaculture

Rising Tide at MACNA 2014

Figure. Samantha Groene in the Rising Tide booth at MACNA 2014. My name is Samantha Groene, and I am a biological technician at UF-TAL. I’ve been with the lab for almost two years, but this is my first official introduction on the Rising Tide Conservation blog. This past week, some of you might have seen me in Denver. The annual Marine Aquarium Conference of North America (MACNA) took place in Denver, Colorado this year and I had the privilege of representing Rising Tide at the conference! This year's MACNA was quite the experience!