Newly Settled Ternate Damselfish, 25 days post hatch - courtesy Matt Wittenrich / Rising Tide
The team at the University of Florida Tropical Aquaculture Lab continue to hit home runs, breaking new ground on every frontier. Their latest success, rearing Ternate Damselfish (Amblyglyphidodon ternatensis) hatched from eggs shipped from the Steinhart Aquarium in San Fancisco, further hit home that collaborative breeding in the form of egg shipments is in fact a viable project these days.
Larval Ternate Damselfish, 1day post hatch - courtesy Matt Wittenrich / Rising Tide
Still, this project wasn’t without it’s hiccups – cold shipping water and a very poor hatch rate meant that this project started with only 4 viable larvae! The other kicker – these larvae were reared to settlement with nauplii from the now commercially available Pseudodiaptomus pelagicus (you can get these pods through vendors that carry the new Algagen copepod cultures introduced in 2011). There’s nothing to suggest that the home hobbyist couldn’t quite easily duplicate this rearing success. The time to settlement is only 25 days (comparable with many gobies and dottybacks), and they can go to baby brine shrimp at 8 days. Of course, Todd Gardner’s success with another Amblyglyphidodon species suggests that copepods may not be required – rotifers *might* work too here (it’s just that no one has tried yet).
For more information, read the full story of rearing the Ternate Damselfish at the Rising Tide Blog.
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