Since FishEye Aquaculture is a commercial facility here in Florida, I was fortunate enough to be handed a Porkfish (Anisotremus virginicus) rearing protocol from the University of Florida Tropical Aquaculture Lab. This protocol was developed by Dr. Matthew Wittenrich and Eric Cassiano. Might I add, that had it not been for their hard work, the following would not have happened.
SeaWorld of Orlando contacted me shortly after I received the protocol and asked if I would be interested in rearing some porkfish eggs that they were collecting from their main display tanks. Of course, I was ecstatic to participate. Since I do not own the broodstock, nor the tank/system they reside in, the information above is sparse, my apologies.
On Sunday, September, 4, Sea World delivered eggs to our facilities that were collected that morning from one of the many display aquariums at the park. The eggs were brought to me in a standard 5gal bucket filled about half way. At first, I didn’t even see the eggs. But after close examination, thousands of eggs were observed! After a careful drip acclimation, these eggs were added to a system set up for this project. The eggs hatched that evening about an hour after the lights turned off. On Monday (9-5-11) morning, thousands of little porkfish larvae were observed!
The morning after they hatched (1dph), I just barely tinted the water with RotiGreen Omega. On the evening of 2dph I offered rotifers as a first feed. Once rotifers were added, the feeding response was impressive…I knew I was going to go through A LOT of rotifers. At 7dph, it was time for a water change. Because of the large amount of larvae, siphoning was going to take too long (and I would be sitting at a bucket with a pipette for hours catching porkfish larvae that had been siphoned), I decided to put a 250um screen around the overflow and ran water into the system. Unfortunately, I added the water at too high of a rate and lost a good number of larvae….notes taken for next time.
Porkfish larvae 7dph (09-12-11)
At 10dph, I started adding artemia and also more rotifers. By now the porkfish were very active hunters and clearing rotifer densities by afternoon and evening. At 16dph, they were completely off rotifers and eating enriched artemia. By this time, they were on a flow through and had constant filtration. They were also hiding whenever one would look into the vat. I began introducing Otohime A every four hours. At 20dph, I was feeding them Otohime B1 and B2.
Porkfish larvae 15dph (09-20-11)
Metamorphisis started to take place at 25dph and all of them had gone through the transition at 31dph. Aggression and cannibalism was also starting to become a serious issue. I noticed the larvae that had not gone through meta yet were stuck on the overflow screen with their gut missing. PVC pipe and fittings were added to the vat for shelter, this helped a lot.
Porkfish fry 30dph (10-04-11)
Porkfish juvenile 50dph (10-25-11)
Just as the protocol had stated, at 70dph the fry were now 1.5”-2” in length. So I let Sea World know that their fish were ready to come home and go on display. On 11/14/11, Sea World took delivery of their porkfish.
Porkfish juveniles 71dph (11-14-11) bagged up, ready to go to Sea World
Thanksgiving weekend, I took my family to Sea World. In the “Shark Encounter” exhibit, there was a large tank set up with hundreds of juvenile porkfish. Not only were the fish we reared in there, but also the fish that had been raised by Matt Wittenrich and Eric Cassiano at the University of Florida Tropical Aquaculture Lab. It was really comforting to see all of those aquacultured porkfish, knowing that was several hundred fish that would take the place of fish not being removed from the reefs.
<message edited by hyperboy on Thursday, January 26, 2012 7:49 PM>