Simply Speaking

By, Tom Miller

Captive Reef Propagation Series

Part I: Tank-Raised Marine Aquarium Fish

In this and the following months I'm writing a four part series on marine fish, live coral, live rock and live sand propagation. This month we'll go over questions from a reader and especially those fascinating tank-raised marine aquarium fish! You may or may not have seen these little jewels yet. I've never raised them myself but will give an overview of what I've learned about them. And I'll give some resources to help you go further in case you catch the bug and want to try raising them yourself.

Even though most of you will not want to raise these intriguing wonders yourselves, you'll want to read on to find out how to obtain these fantastic fish and why they're really so great! Next month we'll get into the nitty-gritty on soft coral propagation, which I'm sure you'll be itching to try after you see just how easy it can be. The following month we'll go over stony coral, live rock and live sand propagation which you definitely won't want to miss.

I just returned from a two day conference/seminar on captive coral, live rock and sand farming at GARF. Todd Schwartz of Reef Renovators in Dalton, Georgia spoke on the benefits of plenums, live sand and CaribSea Reef Sand aragonite to aquariums and aquaculture. He showed how unique his Eco-Sand (Jaubert/NNR) Plenum Systems are and why they give superior performance. It was very interesting, entertaining and educational to watch coral propagation techniques, including the use of Super Reef Gel (special super glue developed by Mark Barnes, ReefGel@aol.com) for attaching coral cuttings to rocks. Mark Barnes and Larry Read demonstrated the techniques they developed and use with Super Reef Gel to attach coral cuttings.

John Walch - prominent ornamental marine fish breeder, coral maquaculturist and founder of C-Quest marine fish hatchery in Puerto Rico - has pointed out the difference in farming of the wild reef and "raping the reef". He's observed some collectors in the Philippines using haphazard collecting, handling and shipping practices and not just with drug caught fish. There also seems to be a race to get (or "wipe out" if I may use this term) the best specimens first before some other collector gets them. For example, the best established breeding pairs of clownfish are captured quickly because if that collector doesn't the next one will. An unintentional competition to deplete the reef of adequate brood stock.

On the other hand in Guadal Canal of the Solomon Islands John has observed extreme care and interest in the reefs by the locals who not only tend and harvest the reef, but claim it as their own. They harvest plenty but the difference is the attitude they carry with them. They want to make sure they have a healthy reef for their later years as well as for their children and grandchildren to farm and harvest. It hurts them deep down to see governments and industry performing actions harmful to their reefs.

That beautiful mated pair of clown fish and their host anemone are left in the ocean to produce more young to harvest next year, because these people own and farm these reefs. No other collector will come along and grab it up tomorrow if they don't grab it today! Farm it, use it and cultivate it. Hasn't eco-farming the oceans been a long standing dream of many societies? Real in-ocean farming is just as noble a cause as tank propagation. Please remember this point through out this series no matter how great tank propagation sounds to you. They both go hand in hand and are both imperative to understanding our planet's ecosystem which benefits everybody.

I really like clownfish, especially the common clown (Amphiprion ocellaris) often called an ocellaris clown and usually mistakenly called a percula clown which looks very similar. Both varieties are beautiful and the least aggressive of all clownfish. Clownfish are the most commonly tank-raised marine fish and could be totally supplied in the U.S. by current breeders today but are not! Surprised? Why isn't this happening?

Why don't most local stores order the captive-raised fish that are available? There are several reasons. The store owner doesn't know where to get them. Hobbyists aren't persistent enough and don't ask them to special order. Some owners don't want to pay the extra cost because aquarists may not want to pay more. Extra shipping costs result from the owner ordering from 2 separate sources. Hobbyists aren't aware or don't care that some tank-raised fish are available. Many hobbyists want larger fish than the smaller sizes most young tank- raised fish usually come in. And finally and perhaps most of all, the last batch of tank-raised clown fish that the store owner brought in a year or two ago didn't sell well because the colors were faded and poor. Why pay more for an inferior looking fish? But this isn't really so!!! THINGS HAVE CHANGED! If buyers were presented with the following info I think they would scramble to get tank-raised fish.

Inside Desert Fisheries, ornamental marine fish hatchery.

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A year ago, in October 1995, I made the scenic 70 mile drive from my home to Desert Fisheries in Grantsville, Utah. Desert Fisheries is in the desert where natural saltwater hot springs percolate at a pleasant 85 degrees. An ideal habitat for raising marine fish. I watched large angelfish and numerous other fish (65 species in all) swimming in the open saltwater scuba diving ponds of Bonneville Sea Base next to the hatchery. I was amazed to see large, colorful, graceful saltwater fish living in such ease in the desert at over 4200 foot elevation. When I saw inside the hatchery greenhouse I was further amazed at schools of many beautifully colored varieties of clown fish. I wanted to know where the tank-raised ones were. They told me that these WERE the tank-raised ones. These fish had better color than most wild caught ones you'll ever see.

I was baffled because all the tank-raised clowns I'd seen before this had very pale see- through coloring and had not impressed me, nor many other hobbyists. Since Desert Fisheries only sold through the local stores and not direct to the hobbyist, I couldn't wait to get back to the stores and get some of these new radiant charmers. Of course I wanted to know what had happened to change the colors of the tank-raised fish. The answer was basic, good nutrition, variety and several feedings daily .

VibraGro fish food played a major role in the superior fish coloration. VibraGro isn't just some junk food with hormones or dyes to enhance fish colors. It is nutritionally and scientifically put together to provide the very best balance of nutrition for any fish. It has natural foods which naturally enhance colors. Just read the label on a can of it . It's like going to a health food store for your fish. It works! This is a spinoff benefit of fish breeding that all of our fish can benefit from. OSI has Color Stars and Wardley is following with Total Color Marine Flakes which my fish may like even more than the others which are sinking pellets. Doesn't good nutrition just make good sense though? By the way I've started taking in some of these ingredients myself - spirulina, kelp, buffered vitamin C... I think I feel better already. And my fish friends tell me that MY color is looking better too! Before and after photos later.

After looking for these improved colored tank-raised fish at many local fish stores I was disappointed to find that tank-raised fish didn't seem to be in stock anymore. I and several others kept asking for these new improved tank-raised fish at different stores with no more than luke warm assurances that they would be ordered but "not this week". Weeks turned to months and still no tank-raised fish. I needed some tank-raised fish for the quickly approaching annual reef aquarium tour where I wanted to show off a 29-gallon reef aquarium with nothing but tank- raised fish, live corals, live rock and sand. I was just missing the fish. When the public comes to see your reef aquariums it helps to have fish in them. This makes them look more charismatic. To make a long story short, I ended up getting the fish directly from Desert Fisheries in Oct 1996.

I was very happy to finally get the captive-bred fish, but saddened to find that the hatchery was not doing well financially. Although most of the bugs have been worked out of ornamental marine fish rearing, the marketing side of it is still a real problem for all involved. The fish were being raised but not being sold fast enough. Desert Fisheries was now facing the same decision that some other hatcheries have faced: Stay open and struggle to increase sales, or close to cut possibly mounting losses.

The owners, Linda Nelson and George Sanders are SCUBA diving instructors and are very involved with instruction and tours around the world. In their travels, the owners have noted that since 1990, the first year they guided a tour to Indonesia, the reefs were the most impressive they had ever seen! Since that time they have returned every six months and have noticed a constant and shocking decline in the condition of these reefs. They have to go further and further from where they used to go, just to find intact reef that is still beautiful to dive in.

Fish collectors using cyanide kill off small patches of reef animals including corals. The numbers and size of fish steadily decline. More shocking is the commercial fishing industry which far out does any harm that the marine fish hobby could ever do. Commercial fishing fleets from Japan strip the watery forests of life by dumping barrels of cyanide to help capture food fish. The locals who depend on fish for food now can't easily catch what they must have to survive so they resort to dynamite fishing as a more effective means of catching fish for subsistence. Dynamiting is now commonly heard among these now declining coral reef forests.

Linda and George are very environmentally conscious which has driven them in their efforts to run a marine fish hatchery in the beautiful Utah desert. They feel compelled to do something about the reefs. They love keeping reef fish aquariums but hate to imagine them hurting the reefs. This is the driving force that inspired the hatchery over three years earlier. They hope to change the world and make a difference. Linda says that people just may not be ready for tank-raised fish yet. Or is it the industry that isn't ready or responding? Maybe hobbyists like myself aren't insistent or persistent enough. IS there enough demand from the hobbyist yet?

Will it actually take shutting down wild fish collecting and wild reef imports to make marine fish hatcheries and captive coral farms really successful? Hopefully not. But why wouldn't a hobbyist want to pay a few dollars more to have a healthier more colorful fish that survives, thrives, is more disease resistant and not as aggressive??? Take for example the gorgeous purple or strawberry dotty-back (pseudochromis porphyreus). Many people buy this fish because it is so dazzlingly handsome! But many hobbyists get it home and within a short time it becomes their least favorite fish due to aggression. It chews up and even kills small fish similar to itself, especially small fish added to your tank after it is added. Royal grammas, firefish gobies and damsels are its first victims. Don't even try to put a second strawberry dotty- back in with the first. They are most aggressive towards their own kind.

Panic stricken hobbyists have called me to find out what to do about the "terrible killer fish" in their tank. I lend them my Ultralife fish trap to solve the problem. Wouldn't it just be easier to only buy tank-raised fish of this variety? You can even keep more than one of its own kind in the same tank once they're second generation tank-raised!!! Aggressive clownfish are a little bit mellower too when tank-raised. Another HUGE advantage is that tank-raised fish go through much shorter shipping (and starvation) stress. Prolonged shipping and starvation may kill more marine aquarium fish than cyanide does!

I just think that most hobbyists and store owners aren't aware of the REAL advantages of tank-raised fish. So what's the problem hobbyists?! Now, get out there and demand your rights!!! But wait, not all that many fish are tank-raised yet. Readily available tank-raised species include most types of clownfish, gobies, grammas, dotty-backs and jaw fish. Some others are getting into small production such as the pretty Banngai cardinalfish. When demand goes up so will production and varieties. Support it if you want to see it grow.

Well, I'll get off my soap box now and stop preaching to the choir (most folks who read Marine Fish Monthly). Let's take a look at how percula and ocellaris clowns, the most popular clownfish, are raised at Desert Fisheries. First of all you need a good pair of brood stock - a mated and very healthy pair of fish soon to be proud parents. The better the health of the spawning pair the more often they will produce healthy fertilized eggs for hatching. They are kept in a 20 to 40 gallon bare tank with a flower pot on its side and plenty of nitrifying bacteria coating the surfaces to break down waste. In fact the tanks are seldomly and sparsely cleaned for this reason. New water drips into the tank and old water goes out though a screened overflow. These lucky parents are well fed with a nice variety of foods including live brine shrimp fortified with green water algae and/or Selco (like Selcon). The only decoration in the tank is one or two clay flower pots laid on their sides which the fish hang around almost like an anemone. The female, which is the bigger of the two, lays her sticky eggs on the inside wall of the flower pot. The male passes over the eggs to fertilize them intermittently as they're laid. Mostly the male guards, tends and fans the eggs, fluttering over them at times until hatching about 5 days later. Clownfish have their own unique egg laying and tending behavior.

Proud percula clownfish parents at Desert Fisheries.

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A mated pair of Arabian (neon) dottybacks playing hide 'n seek in flower pots at Desert Fisheries.

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Linda couldn't let me freely walk up and down the isles of brood stock because new people can frighten the fish causing them to panic and eat their own eggs. The flower pot can be taken out before the eggs hatch and put in a hatching and grow-out tank tended by humans at this point. Linda puts her finger into the hole in the bottom of the flower pot to plug it and lifts it out undisturbed and full of water and into the new tank which is being cultured with rotifers and green water planktonic algae to feed the soon to hatch larvae. The flower pot with eggs attached to an inside wall is placed on its side and a fine air bubbler is placed under the eggs to provide fanning or water flow across the eggs to prevent fungus from destroying them while waiting to hatch. A few days later, not long after sunset, most of the larvae hatch out. Some remaining ones will hatch the following night. The planktonic rotifers have been eating the green water algae and are now quite nutritious providing the green water was previously fed a nutritious fertilizer with vitamins (including B-12), minerals and amino acids.

Best survival rates of tank-raised marine fish are achieved when both parents and larvae are well fed and healthy. This helps the larvae transition through metamorphosis into full fledged colorful young fish after just a couple of weeks. Good survival rates start with what the green water is fed. The nutrition passes directly from green water to rotifer to clownfish. After about 4-5 days of feeding on rotifers the new little fish larvae are started on larger food: new hatched live brine shrimp which are very high in HUFA (High Unsaturated Fatty Acids = omega- 3 oils) which is essential to new larvae growth and health and at metamorphosis time.

As the new larvae grow and go through metamorphosis they are fed progressively larger live fortified brine shrimp and other mixtures of dry, canned and frozen foods with an emphasis on nutrition for good health and color. A fish farmer has to know about fish diseases and prevention, how to tend spawning pairs of fish as well as tend eggs, larvae and growing fish. He or she has to think nutrition, and know how to keep a nutritious stock of green water, rotifers and brine shrimp growing. Wow, with all this nutrition talk you'd think I was a health food nut! Just call me "Granola Tom".

It takes about 4 to 6 months to raise most fish to marketable size. Tomato clowns (Amphiprion frenatus) are some of the easiest to grow, but ocellaris and percula clowns are the top sellers. If you'd like to raise marine fish, start by growing and maintaining good cultures of green water, rotifers and brine shrimp while you are waiting for your mated pair(s) to spawn. You can feed these live plankton cultures to your fish and corals meantime. Corals thrive on live plankton! And of course get some books on marine fish breeding and join the Breeders Registry (see references).

Young tomato clownfish nearing the time to leave their home at Desert Fisheries.

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***** NEWS FLASH: Even as I write this, I have just discovered that my Arabian dotty- backs have spawned and are tending a mass of eggs! I'm going to be a dad!!! Or a grandpa?? Or... maybe just... well, a fish farmer! The green water and rotifers are brewing.

To tie up this months column, Mr. Aubrey from Arizona writes such a long letter I can't print it all, so I've called him back and answered his questions and we'll just keep the readers in the dark! Actually I'll share two of his main concerns in hopes that it will help some of you too. He converted a 45 gallon fish only tank into a super simple HANDY Reef about 4 months ago leaving the lights on during the break-in cycle and is still contending with some hair algae and red slime algae (cyanobacteria or cyano for short). He also has seen a mean looking bristle worm and has tried to trap it in a nylon stocking with bait inside to no avail.

As for the lingering hair algae, it is a common problem in most new tanks, especially with fish in them and lights on from the start. Yes, you can go this route with the HANDY Reef since it is started with lots of established bacteria to filter the water from the get-go. You'll have the least amount of problems when cycled in the dark which wasn't very practical since you were converting an existing tank with fish. Yes, these converted tanks still go through an initial brown fuzz and algae stage almost like a new tank. Change your Phosphate remover and carbon and step up protein skimming. Only leave the phosphate remover in a day or two at a time in reef tanks, especially if you keep leather mushroom corals (sarcophyton). Just use it on an as needed basis. Don't use red slime killers (antibiotics - not good for your reef tank) - the problem just comes back worse. Cut back on trace elements too. Siphoning off the cyano with airline tubing gets it off things temporarily but it comes back until it is ready to go on its own. Using RO/DI water using a Silica Buster DI unit from Spectra Pure will help limit added nutrients from water changes. A water change of 20-30% now, then 20% per month will help.

We tend to forget water changes nowadays. I know some of you are on a budget and don't have real bad tap water anyway. In this case you could run an HOB (hang on tank) power filter like a Millennium or Whisper, on your barrel of replacement water, loaded with filter bags of carbon and phosphate remover. This removes some organics, chlorine, phosphate and silicate from top off water or before mixing with salt for a water change. See your water supplier to find out if you have any other harmful substances (like copper) which need RO/DI treatment. Once you go through this initial algae phase whether light or heavy, you can expect a nice clean reef with reasonably easy care. Cut skimming back to about one night a week once everything settles into a clean routine. This conserves plankton.

If you have one bristle worm you probably have more. They mostly come out at night and scour the rock and sand for algae and crud. Only some varieties will cause problems by eating corals. The large red Caribbean fire worm is not welcome in a reef tank. Even some small otherwise harmless varieties can eat snails or your prized tridacnid clams! Ones with pinchers are real carnivores. Since they are active in the dark, that's when to trap or catch them. Use the nylon stocking trap at night. You could try the bristle worm trap from Ultralife. Or, you can just put a couple of flat or slightly cupped rocks upside down on the sand and check under them morning and night and remove the bristle worms as they show up under this favorite dwelling place. Just don't touch them, they sting. But easiest of all and it ties in perfectly with this month's topic: Get a tank-raised dotty-back! They are beautiful and are voracious bristle worm eaters.

That ties it up for this month. Please send any questions or comments to me in care of Marine Fish Monthly or Email to: EZreef@yahoo.com Next month I'll show you my secret recipe for "easy no-bake corals" - soft coral cuttings of course. And remember: "A blenny raised is a blenny earned". Sea you next month.

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References:

The Breeders Registry
PO Box 255373
Sacramento, CA 95865-5373
Web site: http://www.breeders-registry.gen.ca.us

John Walch
The Aquatic WildLife Company
15042 N Moon Valley Dr.
Phoenix, AZ 85022

Inland Aquatics (marine fish and coral breeder)
Terre Haute, Indiana
812-232-9000
NLandAqua@aol.com

Dessert Fisheries/Bonneville SeaBase (no longer breeding fish - diving only)
9390 West Hwy 138
PO Box 1179
Grantsville, UT 84029
801-884-3874
linda@cybernect.com

The Marine Aquarium Handbook
Beginner to Breeder
by Martin A. Moe Jr.
Green Turtle Publications
PO Box 17925
Plantation, FL 33318

Conditioning, Spawning and Rearing of Fish
With Emphasis on Marine Clownfish
by Frank H. Hoff
Aquaculture Consultants Inc
(Florida Aquaculture Farms Inc)
33418 Old Saint Joe Rd
Dade City, FL 33525