Blue Planet Reef Farms is a new venture from Vermont which is setting it’s sights on making post-larval fish aquaculture (captive-reared fish) fashionable again. Although post-larval reef fish aquaculture (PLA) is a fairly mature techonology, in the US the process of catching reef fish as teeny weeny post-larvae and raising them to market has never really caught on, although there are no less than three companies in Europe which do quite well with PLA. There are even some European countries which mandate that if fish are available as captive-reared fish, it is illegal to buy those species from wild-caught sources. Blue Planet has been building up their operation for quite some time and they are just now ramping up operations to provide captive-reared fish outside of their local markets. One of the greatest benefits of captive-reared fish is that the fish are acclimated to captive conditions and prepared foods, and both the retailer and the aquarist benefit from having fish which are hardy, active, and otherwise do not incur the same level of disease, mortality and poor quality which is rampant with the wild fish which make up the majority of reef fish available in the trade. We are particularly excited about species like Regal angelfish, butterflyfish and Mandarin gobies being available as captive reared fish as these species often have some difficultes adjusting to eating prepared foods. We call dibs on the first couple captive reared Tinker Butterflyfish they produce. We hope to bring you a lot more information about Blue Planet Reef Farms in the future and if you would like to know more about the company, visit their website and/or take a look at their very informative brochure.
