Early Success with a Halichoeres Wrasse!

Figure 1. Halichoeres melanurus egg on a 1 mm SedgewickRafter cell. Here at the Tropical Aquaculture Lab we’re very fortunate to have the opportunity to work in a field we’re truly passionate about. That passion inspires me to not only work on captive breeding of marine species here at work, but to also explore other fish by working from home. I’m pleased to announce that the first project I’ve taken on as an at-home aquaculturist resulted in the successful captive rearing of the melanurus wrasse, Halichoeres melanurus, using only cultured prey items. Although only a few fish were brought through metamorphosis, survival should be higher when larvae are raised in the controlled environment of a dedicated facility as opposed to the chaos of a household living room. I strongly believe this fish, and others in this genus, will have significant commercial potential. We now have broodstock at the Tropical Aquaculture Lab because of this early success. The work done so far will stand as strong supportive evidence to move forward with other wrasses as well.

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