First Look At Aussie Captive Bred Royal Gramma's (gramma Loreto)
Hey Everyone,
Most of you who know me know that I love to bang on about aquacultured stuff at the best of times, but for me this is something really exciting, We are soon to have captive bred Royal Gramma's commercially available in Australia thanks to the guys across at the Batavia Coast Maritime Institute.
Royal grammas are one of those fish that for me are an absolute must, regardless of tank size and having a steady supply of these available and being captive bred would seem a massive win for aussie reefers.
These guys are wholesale only so you will have to steer your LFS to them to get your hands on them and for the record they also do lots of the normal favorites like designer clowns, bangai, dottybacks and assessors.
For those interested in some of the breeding details, Daniel from Batavia Coast Maritime Institute has provided the below;
"They are really subject to stress around settlement time and I think we lost quite a few due to vacuuming.
It's been a long journey with the grammas mainly due to getting our Broodstock to lay at regular intervals.
We began by collecting larvae in a specially designed larval collector to limit any stress on the pair in case they stopped spawning.
We had limited luck due to transfer into culture tanks but we did manage to settle 2 individuals out of different batches.
From this point we wanted to try something different so we decided to extract the eggs before hatching.
Now our grammas are different to our Dottybacks, Assessors whereby they lay sequential batches of eggs to the same batch...
So the sequential laying gives us on the first day hatch you will have for example 10-20 larvae, the next day you would have 40-50 larvae and the third day roughly the same amount again. We have had up-to 4 days of hatching but generally its 3 days worth. This has occurred with 2 pairs of our Broodstock, the third is yet to lay.
We hatch in a basket with the eggs directly aerated and held midwater. We hatch in glass, 100L tank blacked out with air stones in each corner. Algae paste and clear water is added constantly throughout the run until after settlement.
Copepods within the first feeds and through to settlement has been a must however we do supplement within traditional feeds (enriched large strain rotifers and enriched sep-art Artemia).
We hope the first batch will hit the wholesale market in possibly late July to early August dependant on growth.
The grammas are still currently in the larval nursery area and will be shifted to the grow-out soon once a suitable spot in the raceways has been cleared. We are hoping to keep the gramma as a regular"
Amazing works guys:worship:worship:worship:worship:worship:worship:worship:worship:worship:worship
Most of you who know me know that I love to bang on about aquacultured stuff at the best of times, but for me this is something really exciting, We are soon to have captive bred Royal Gramma's commercially available in Australia thanks to the guys across at the Batavia Coast Maritime Institute.
Royal grammas are one of those fish that for me are an absolute must, regardless of tank size and having a steady supply of these available and being captive bred would seem a massive win for aussie reefers.
These guys are wholesale only so you will have to steer your LFS to them to get your hands on them and for the record they also do lots of the normal favorites like designer clowns, bangai, dottybacks and assessors.
For those interested in some of the breeding details, Daniel from Batavia Coast Maritime Institute has provided the below;
"They are really subject to stress around settlement time and I think we lost quite a few due to vacuuming.
It's been a long journey with the grammas mainly due to getting our Broodstock to lay at regular intervals.
We began by collecting larvae in a specially designed larval collector to limit any stress on the pair in case they stopped spawning.
We had limited luck due to transfer into culture tanks but we did manage to settle 2 individuals out of different batches.
From this point we wanted to try something different so we decided to extract the eggs before hatching.
Now our grammas are different to our Dottybacks, Assessors whereby they lay sequential batches of eggs to the same batch...
So the sequential laying gives us on the first day hatch you will have for example 10-20 larvae, the next day you would have 40-50 larvae and the third day roughly the same amount again. We have had up-to 4 days of hatching but generally its 3 days worth. This has occurred with 2 pairs of our Broodstock, the third is yet to lay.
We hatch in a basket with the eggs directly aerated and held midwater. We hatch in glass, 100L tank blacked out with air stones in each corner. Algae paste and clear water is added constantly throughout the run until after settlement.
Copepods within the first feeds and through to settlement has been a must however we do supplement within traditional feeds (enriched large strain rotifers and enriched sep-art Artemia).
We hope the first batch will hit the wholesale market in possibly late July to early August dependant on growth.
The grammas are still currently in the larval nursery area and will be shifted to the grow-out soon once a suitable spot in the raceways has been cleared. We are hoping to keep the gramma as a regular"
Amazing works guys:worship:worship:worship:worship:worship:worship:worship:worship:worship:worship
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