The biggest challenge we had was increasing the numbers with the sudden increase in demand for yellow tang. We're always looking to refine our methodology and increase our success rates but never as rapidly as we have with the yellow tang. It took around 4 months, tons of new equipment, new employees, and much more space but we're very confident in the numbers we've got coming in from July to the new year.
I do think this methodology can be used for similar tang in the zebrasoma genus but it seems like it might be pretty different for acanthurus but I think it might just be a matter of time before us or some of the other companies crack that. We've also had quite a bit of success with successfully breeding hippo tangs but we're just making tweaks to the process to make sure the coloration is right.
Our Hawaii facility is working with and has success with Cleaner wrasse, melanarus, red coris, and yellow coris. But we do still have a bit of work to do on that. Many of the Cirrhilabrus species the people want to see captive-bred can be pretty hard because of their ability to fluctuate between sexes and their different life stages so it might be quite a bit before some of those are successfully bred. We're incredibly happy with how the pink square anthias production is progressing and I don't see why that methodology couldn't be used for other anthias. We have a few we think are incredibly important to the trade that we've set our sights on and hope to have more success in the future with this genus.
Awesome news! I would love to be able to stock my entire new 80g build with captive bred fish, and a Melanarus wrasse is near the top of my list along with a yellow tang. Any idea what kind of timeline you’re looking at for availability of the Melanarus?