Queen Triggerfish Bred Successfully for the First Time.
The New England Aquarium in Boston, Massachusetts, joined up with Rogers Williams University in Bristol, Rhode Island, in a project to raise the world’s first captive-bred Queen Triggerfish.
The New England Aquarium’s Bahamian coral reef exhibit features a pair of Queen Triggerfish, Balistes vertula, which have been seen to spawn since their early days in the aquarium. Although these fish regularly lay tens of thousands of eggs every 18 to 20 days, the resulting larvae need live food of a small size, making them difficult to feed and keep alive.
Most marine fish larvae are very small and need live food of a correspondingly smaller size. Whereas some species, such as clownfishes, can be successfully raised using rotifers, organisms that grow and reproduce at a fast rate and in high densities, these are too large for many other species or don’t have the correct nutritional profile needed.
In the wild larval marine fish eat copepods, micro-crustaceans found virtually everywhere in the oceans, but raising copepods in large enough quantities is currently difficult. This is one of the reasons why far fewer species of marine aquarium fish are captive bred than are wild caught.
Eggs were collected from the aquarium and taken to the university’s marine laboratory where, at the first attempt, there was a successful hatching.
Although thousands of larvae hatched, work was concentrated on a relatively small number, which were initially fed with a local species of copepod grown by the lab.
Although the majority of the larvae died, four were successfully raised to the point where they could eat dry food and now, at more than four months old, remain alive, three at the university and one at the aquarium, the first triggerfishes to have been successfully bred in captivity.
The success of this project was largely due to Dr. Rhyne’s research into copepods, the critical live food for marine fish larvae.
Dr Andy Rhyne, assistant professor of biology at Roger Williams and a research scientist at New England, was hired in August 2009 in a collaboration between the aquarium and the university to study larval fish production at the aquarium and to start a program in aquarium science and aquaculture at the university.
Today many species of fish are threatened by a combination of overfishing, climate change, and environmental degradation, indeed the Queen Triggerfish is listed on the IUCN red list as being vulnerable. The species is important both as a food fish and for public aquarium displays. It’s a large species; reaching up to 60 cms total length and its bright colours make them a favourite of public aquariums although too large for the majority of home aquaria.
This is an important step in the cultivation of marine species, as researchers such as Andy Rhyne develop new feeding strategies, it increase the chances of being able to raise further species of marine aquarium and food fish in captivity, rather than continuing to take them from the increasingly vulnerable and deteriorating oceans.
To find out more about this wonderful achievement go to MOFIB to see Andy Rhyne’s diary recording the day-by-day progress of the project.
Congratulations, Andy!
Tim Hayes
Midland Reefs
©2010
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Tags: Aquarium, climate change, Coral, fish, oceans, overfishing, Reef, Triggerfish