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Captive bred Lipogramma klayi may soon become a reality with recent success by Todd Gardner at the Long Island Aquarium

Lipogramma klayi is an amazing deepwater basslet whose deepwater price has kept it out of the mainstream, but Todd Gardner has just reported successful breeding this stunning species. Since Lipogramma klayi has to be careful collected in very deep water in Curacao, the price of Lipogramma klayi has hovered between $1000 and $2000 for the last five years and only recently has the Curacao Aquarium Submarine been able to collect this species in numbers enough to get the price down to sub-thousand dollar level. This new breakthrough with captive bred Lipogramma klayi may eventually get this gorgeous fairy basslet a little bit closer to the mainstream, for those who fancy it. 

Todd Gardner announced his recent success with captive bred Lipogramma klayi on Friday and he teased a few juicy details about the “relative” ease with which he was able to raise this gorgeous fairy basslet. Unlike the related Liopropoma which have also been captive bred, the captive bred Lipogramma klayi are the result of just a one month long larval period, just a tad longer than your easily bred clownfish. However, Todd’s first successful spawns of captive bred Lipogramma klayi seem to be from clutches of just one to five eggs at a time, which would pose a challenge to breeders wanting to produce captive bred Lipogramma klayi on a commercial scale.

Todd is planning to reveal more information about his successfully captive bred Lipogramma klayi at the Marine Breeders Initiative later this summer.

One of the captive bred Lipogramma klayi

One of the captive bred Lipogramma klayi