For those of you who do not know of Adam's success with ORA, here is his bio. I am sure you will agree that he is very qualified to talk about breeding marine fish.
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Adam Mangino
Oceans, Reefs, and Aquariums
Research and Development Manager
While working on my undergraduate degree in marine biology at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, I began to work in the saltwater section of a local fish store. During my employment at the store I met Dr. Ileana Clavijo, who was just beginning to culture Tomato Clownfish (A. frenatus). I attended class during the day, helped culture clownfish and clean the school display tanks in the afternoon, and worked at the pet store in the evenings. After years of this schedule and completion of my undergraduate degree I still wanted to learn more about aquaculture. I enrolled in UNCW’s graduate degree program, where I continued my work on clownfish and learned about the larval requirements of foodfish species. During my graduate work I helped to expand UNCW’s marine ornamental culture lab by adding 3 more species of clownfish (A. percula, A. ocellaris, and A. polymnus), banggai cardinalfish, and H. kuda seahorses. In 2004 I attended the Marine Ornamental Conference in Honolulu, HI and met the former president of ORA. About 6 months later, I was offered a job in one of ORA’s fish production hatcheries.
When I got to ORA I worked in the growout area and was responsible for maintaining the bulk of our 30+ species in large recirculating systems. One year later, I was promoted to broodstock production assistant. I was in charge of spawning and producing eggs for the hatchery’s larval room. During my time in broodstock I created the Indigo Dottyback hybrid (P. fridmani x P. sankeyi â€"œ it can be ordered as Adam’s Dottyback) and spawned 5 new species of fish. Next I moved to the newly formed seahorse breeding program and cultured another 7 new species of seahorses (new for ORA) and got the Tiger-tail seahorse (H. comes) and the Sea Pony (H. fuscus) into production. I also began working with peppermint shrimp again (which ORA produced previously). I also did some experimental larval work on the blue-streak cardinalfish (A. leptacanthus) and raised the first batch of larvae (industry first).
In 2007, I was promoted into ORA’s newly formed Research and Development Facility. I have been working in this area ever since, developing ORA’s future fish species. Since the start of the project I have spawned 10 new species of fish and 3 species of invertebrates. One of the first accomplishments that came out of the project is the addition of the Tiger Goby (E. macrodon), an industry first, and the Striped Blenny (M. grammistes), an ORA first, is coming soon to our availability list.
