Why is it so hard to breed marine fish?

[andrewsk]

I was wondering if some of you could perhaps shed some light on why it is so hard to breed/raise marine fish other than Clowns, seahorses and a few select others?

I know for a fact that many fish spawn in large tanks where the parameters are all good, but why can we not raise their fry.

Obviously it is a feeding issue, but what needs to be done by the brilliant minds out there in the future to fix this and allow us to do this.

I guess the real question is "What do these fry get in the wild, that we are unable to provide?"

Thanks!!!

 

[Jeffrey Porter]

most of these fish require a planktonic stage of development. losts of space , right size food , very clean water and so on and so on.

 

[IanInDC]

There's also another thing to consider -- the triggers (the condition, not the fish) necessary for many fish to phase into juveniles. Breeders have spent their lives isolating the triggers for individual fish, from light, to flow, to the noise level in the tank!

RTC Hawaii's breeder has had some real luck with centroype angels... and ORA with some of the simpler species, like clowns and cardinals.

But it's still really hard.

 

[andrewsk]

Ah, so it's not just feeding them, it's getting them to shift to the next "phase of life" Interesting!

Does anyone have any good links?

 

[vessxpress1]

Andrew: FWIW, if you're wondering about tangs, there was a show on the discovery channel a couple weeks ago showing tangs breeding in the wild. They get together in huge shoals at a designated area over a reef and periodically a few will swim up towards the surface, quickly release sperm or eggs into the big cloud of it and just as quickly, swim back down into the middle of the pack. I had never seen that before and I was amazed. They said it's triggered by water temps and moon phases. It was a pretty big production. All of a sudden it kind of hit me like, "ooooh, so that's why they aren't breeding tangs." Then the juveniles just float in the open ocean for a while. Naturally, most don't make it. There were other fish eating the eggs while they were releasing them.

 

[verde_ad]

I think right now the most promising method is tank raised, not bread. In order to do this you harvest the post larval fish from the ocean and then raise it. It is much easier at this point to raise the fry and has a minimal impact on the reef. Most fry will die before they ever make it to adulthood, so harvesting them at a young age doesn't hurt the balance of the reef very much.

 

[lux_06]

i saw that show too ves... amazing and i can see just how difficult that is gonna be to replicate.

BUT they are having more and more success with hatching Southern Blue Fin tuna and other marine species for human consumption so im sure this technology will soon be used on ornamentals, i had no idea till i joined RC how big this industry was in the states, i dont think it will be long till the demand is recognised. and i think the skills are out there it just needs the right companys and money to be invested.

if the scientific side of captive breeding or raising these fish can be understood, i think the possibilites for business are unbelievable on par with aquaculture for human consumption as fish dont have to be grown for 2 years before they rech an edible size for a start.

maybe one day we will all have clones of reef fish rather then wild caught or tank raised! then we can clone the well behaved flame angels that dont pick at corals! lol

 

[verde_ad]

Or we will just have geneticaly manipulated fish that have been changed to only fit the niche in our systems. JK. I like the gambel of whether a fish is going to work in my system.