Hi all, I have two friends that are trying to breed Assessors and Yellow Pyramid Butterflies. The one who’s trying to breed butterflies is doing it as a hobby (but hopes to produce then commercially if he can succeed) and collects their eggs. He’s an employee at a local aquarium. If anyone has resources or any info on breeding and rearing these two types of fish, please let me know / post the links here. Thanks a lot!
Hopefully someone will have better info for this than I do currently and chime in for you.
I can’t find any records of captive breeding for the butterflyfish (Hemitaurichthyspolylepis) or other species from the genus which are usually the best to learn/guess from when trying to breed a new species, but I do know that several other butterflyfish have been bred from different genuses. Hopefully these could provide a good starting point for your friend:
Butterflyfishes are small colorful reef fishes with deep, laterally compressed bodies and small mouths. The family comprises 130 species in 11 genera. The giant Chaetodon genus contains 90+ species.
Butterflyfishes are mostly small, conspicuously colorful reef fishes with deep, laterally compressed bodies and small mouths. The family comprises 130 species in 11 genera. They primarily feed on…
www.frankbaensch.com
They’ll likely need S-Strain Rotifers and Parvocalanuscrassirostris pods (amongst other things) for larval rearing/first foods, I’d make sure they have cultures going before they get too far along.
The assessors are a different matter. Do you know what species they want to breed? The three in the genus have all been captive bred: the yellow/gold (Assessorflavissimus), the blue (Assessormacneilli), and the Randall’s (Assessor randalli), and they should have relatively similar requirements. However, the yellow and Randall’s are nest spawners, while the blue is a mouthbrooder. These guys were all bred by ORA, so I’d imagine the breeding info is proprietary, so I’m afraid I’m not much help here. That said, I’d assume starting with S-Strain Rotifers and Parvocalanuscrassirostris pods would be a good idea for these species too.
Generally speaking, when rearing larvae you want round tanks, low flow and turbulence while maintaining good oxygenation, lower lighting, lots of smallish quantity feedings daily, and to keep the food suspended for them - kreisel tanks are the gold standard for this sort of thing. Once the larvae settle you should be able to up the lights and flow. You can probably introduce some foods like TDO Chromaboost Type A pellets a few days after they hatch for pretty much any species, but they may or may not go for it until they’re older and trained onto more regular foods.
Again, hopefully someone with more specific info can chime in here, but that’s the best I’ve got.
Assessors are like Marine Betta. A. flavissimus and A. randalli may form hybrids - I had one of each together and they acted as if they might have been a pair. Unfortunately, I lost them in a power outage.
That’s unfortunate. How were the fry in terms of raising them? Environment, temperature, and feeding schedules would you consider them difficult to breed? What about Grammas?
