Intelligent selection of pelagic spawner species

[pelagicspawner]

Hello everyone,

I am new to this site, but so far have spent the last four hours filling my brain with incredible info. I have a dream to breed pelagic spawning ornamentals! Yes, I'm sure we all have this dream - and for many of us it will remain just that! However, I have some ideas on how to tackle this challenge. But first I would like to get your advice/opinion on which pelagic spawning species to begin with. For the sake of limiting tangents, I have two 75 gal, one 30 gal, and one 20 gal setups fully cycled with a handful of chromies (chromis viridis) in the 75s and 30, and a breeding pair of ocellaris in the 20. In addition, I have a complete microalgae culture station with Isochrysis galbana and Nannochloropsis (going without a hiccup for the past 8 months), and a parallel culture of daphnia salina and parvocalanus crassirostris to which I feed the microalgae. I have been tinkering with the chromis, but I really want to go after a species that is wholly pelagic spawning, is commercially available at sexually mature sizes, and can be raised happily at sexually mature sizes in numbers of 5-20 in the 75s I listed above. Case in point: I would LOVE to work on zebrasoma flavescens, but they take up to 7 years to mature, are not sexually dimorphic and are also difficult to assess in terms of maturity, so purchasing a large from my LFS or online vendor is risky. Are there any species you can think of that would fulfill these requirements? I appreciate your thoughts!!!

pelagic spawner

 

[DaveK]

I would say that to even make an attempt at breeding something like Zebrasoma flavescens (Yellow tang for people not up on scientific names), you would have to be prepared to spend a lot of money for much larger tanks, and equipment. Consider the the minimum tank size for the fish is 100 gal, and you'd need a lot more than that to be able to house enough stock in hope of getting a breeding pair.

Most of other fish that would seem to fit the category are also large. I can't blame you for being interested in such a project. Breeding the large SW angels has sort of been the "holy grail" in this area. Consider the prices a 1" juvenile sells for, and the fish lay a lot of eggs. If you could spawn them and raise the fry, it would be possible to make a bundle. Regretfully, I don't think it's even been done on any sort of regular basis.

I'd say you best chances for success would be to choose species that have already been bread in commercial quantities, and start there. Note that most of these are smaller fish, at least as far as the aquarium trade goes. Then work up to related species that might breed the same way.

Good luck.