Paracanthurs hepatus at Sustainable Aquatics - news from John Carberry at TCMAS event last weekend

So before I completely forget to post this, I had to share.  John Carberry presented about SA at the TCMAS Saltwater Expo (Frag Swap) this past weekend.  Most of what I saw I knew, but a few things jumped out.
 
#1.  They feed beef heart to broodstock, which I found surprising but maybe shouldn't.  Said it had to do with bioavailability of certain amino acids that are critical to egg producing fishes.
 
#2. The big one - apparently they almost settled Paracanthurus hepatus.  The important finding is this - I could be misremembering, but they are eating Parvocalanus, but they don't actually digest the pods. It's the pod's gut content which the larval fish lives off of.  In short, the pod intakes food and releases it partially digested in about 20 minutes.  So the hurdle on Hepatus is that you must have constantly enriched nauplii avaialble at all times so that the gut content of the nauplii can be released inside the larval fish.  That was the gist.  He said the fish cannot actually digest the pods themselves until about 30 days post hatch.
 
FWIW,
 
Matt

I was unaware John had anything to do with the breeding aspect of the company. I thought he was all business.
 
Beef heart poses numerous issues to feed manufacturers.  Its something most companies now a days, with stuff like Foot and Mouth Disease, don't want to touch with a 5K foot stick.  Exporting it would be totally out of the question, so the market would be purely domestic.

Interesting, thanks for sharing Matt!

Don't let fear and common sense stop you! =]

Frank Hoff's clownfish book used beefhearts as the main ingredient of his food recipe.  I thought it had more to do with economics than with the amino acids but that is just a guess.  Congratulations to Sustainable for getting so close to this milestone.  

extraneous post.  You may delete if you wish.

check out Kathy's Clowns, llc website:
http://kathysclowns.com
Captive bred clownfish and more
(Wholesale to the trade.)

Beef hearts in the US are processed right along with all other organs, both to the chains and independents. Its in our stores here in Michigan, from Walmart to the local grocerys.  This is well worth trying, after slicing away all of the fat.

Jake
We are all in this together

Forum issues had made this thread unavailable, but those issues are fixed now.  I'm posting to bring this thread back to the top of the recent posts list.