Why buy captive-bred fish?

Captive-bred fish can be cultured disease free and are healthier when you purchase them. Collected fish undergo a traumatic journey from the reef to the retail store. Removal from their natural habitat, decompression, handling, packaging, long flights, and acclimation to numerous holding facilities are stresses that will weaken their natural resistance and immunity at a time when they are exposed to a variety of diseases. On the other hand, farmed fish are raised disease free and usually supplied directly to the retail shops, make them healthier animals when you purchase them.

Captive-bred fish thrive on conventional aquarium fish foods. Captive-bred fish are raised on prepared aquarium foods from the time they are young juveniles. New purchases will easily begin feeding and remain colorful and healthy on quality flakes, pellets and frozen food.

Captive-bred fish will easily adapt to a new tank environment. Being raised in captivity and accustomed to aquarium life captive-bred fish will more easily adapt and remain healthy in your tank than wild-caught individuals of the same species. Keeping captive-bred fish will reduce the incidence of disease in your tank.

Captive-bred fish are less aggressive. Farmed fish are raised in a far less competitive environment than wild fish grow up in. They usually peacefully coincide with their tank mates making it easy to keep different species of the same family or even genus together. For example we have kept captive-bred flames, lemonpeels, fishers, interruptus and multicolors all together in the same tank without aggression.

Captive-bred marine ornamentals are an environmentally sound product. Wild reef organisms are often obtained using intense and selective collection practices. These have proven destructive to the coral reef habitat; result in high mortality of collected organisms; and may deplete wild stock populations, especially of less common species. By purchasing captive bred animals you are helping keeping these animals where they belong: the reef.

Why do we currently only sell rare angelfish species?

Our long-term objective is to develop cost effective production protocols for reef aquarium fish of ecological and economic importance. Of primary interest are the pygmy angelfishes. We are confident that, in time, commercial breeding of common pygmy angelfish species can be achieved through research advances. We opted to run a privately owned, profitable aquaculture venture to fund our research rather than obtain state or federal funds to meet our goals. Since the cost of producing commonly available angelfish is still too high to compete with wild-caught pricing we chose to work with rare, more valuable species.

Why buy direct from us?

Our fish are produced disease free. We will ship directly from our facility to your door. This eliminates exposure disease, a common problem associated with store bought fishes. It is not necessary to quarantine our fish if you buy direct from us.

How and where do we ship?

We ship our fish worldwide. Orders outside of the US are shipped on an airline through cargo express. Orders within the U.S. are shipped with FedEx Overnight.

How can you purchase your fish?

We exclusively accept PayPal.

What foods should I have available?

Our juveniles were raised on spirulina flakes, quality crumble feed (about 1mm) and brine shrimp nauplii and then converted to a gelatin diet, pellets and flakes. We recommend you have a flake that contains a high percentage of algae (spirulina); a small, quality pellet (such Hikari micro pellets) and a mashed frozen food (such as mysis or adult brine shrimp) available to feed to our fish. If you are purchasing a smaller individual (b/w ¾” to 1.25”) we would also recommend you provide supplemental feedings of live brine shrimp nauplii and/or frozen cyclopeeze until the fish is more accustomed to larger feeds.

How do I acclimate my new fish?

We package our fish in lots of water, provide plenty of pure oxygen and provide long lasting heat packs, to make their journey to your tank as comfortable and safe as possible. However, acclimating your fish is still essential since the conditions (esp. water temperature) they experience during transport greatly differ from that of your tank. This will take about one hour.

1. Place the bags into the water of your tank under very low or no light for 30 minutes. This allows the water temperature to adjust to the tank water.
2. Transfer the fish and shipping water into a container, such as a bucket, and provide air. This oxygenates the water and removes the carbon dioxide that accumulated during shipping.
3. Take a temperature reading to assure that your shipping water temperature does not severely differ from your tank water (more than 5degrees Celsius).
4. Water chemistry (pH and ammonia) and further water temperature adjustments should be made by slowly transferring water from your tank into the bucket either by setting up a drip, (such as with air tubing) or by using a transfer device (such as a small measuring cup). The transfer rate should double the water volume in the bucket no faster than every 30 minutes.
5. After this time check the temperature to make sure it is within one degree of your tank water. If so, the fish can safely be transferred into your tank. If not, continue slowly adding water from your tank until the temperature has adjusted.

Are our captive-bred species reef safe?

Unlike their wild-caught counterparts, captive-bred species will not pick on corals or other reef organisms. They did not grow up on a reef and therefore do not make reef organisms a part of their diet. Many if not most of our fish are sold to hobbyists who keep them in reef tanks. No problems have ever been reported.