ReefGen was cofounded by Laura Birenbaum and Justin Credabel to produce premium aquacultured coral, invertebrates, fishes and sharks. The operation is in collaboration with Joe Yaiullo, curator of the Long Island Aquarium, probably best known for his highly respected 12-year-old, 20,000-gallon reef tank. The ReefGen collaboration with Joe Yaiullo means that they offer the majority of corals grown at the Long Island Aquarium, along with the fish and invertebrates bred by Long Island Aquarium staff including Todd Gardner.
Unique Corals wasn’t kidding when they promised they had a lot of other exciting stuff in the works having recently announced a partnership with ReefGen. Basically this means you can expect some pretty amazing ReefGen captive bred livestock and aquacultured corals to appear on Unique Corals soon, including rare captive-bred Basslets, Chain Dog Sharks, and for the first time ever, captive bred Flamboyant Cuttlefish.
The news of captive bred Flamboyant becoming available to the market has us especially excited, considering that these are some of the most stunning cuttlefish available. Flamboyant cuttlefish are unfortunately imported very rarely and often come in as adults with little of their lifespan left. Adult cuttlefish also tend to ship very poor and often arrive at less than ideal shape at the importer, which mainly explains their irregularity and high price.
The ReefGen Flamboyant cuttlefish would however likely be eggs, which ship a lot better and obviously have their full lifespan rather than the previously expected few weeks or few months at most. The fact that the ReefGen cuttlefish are captive bred also circumvents any potential ethical dilemma of importing a species with very high death rates and short lifespans. Don’t expect them to be cheap, but once hobbyist start to breed these, which is relatively easy, the price might come down over the next couple of years.
The news that there will be a single, reliable source for captive bred basslets is obviously equally exciting. Our keyboards have been smoking trying to keep up with the large amount of basslets (and other really cool fish for that matter) successfully bred by Tod Gardner and we can assume that the majority of them will be available through Unique Corals in the future. In case you are living under a rock, some of the exciting species include the Swissguard basslet (Liopropoma rubre), Lipogramma klayi and of course the Candy Basslet (Liopropoma carmabi). Unique Corals will also offer several clownfish including the Spotcinctus clownfish and Todd’s Long Island Red clownfish, along with many other fish of course.
Corals, as we mentioned before include a wide variety of corals grown at the Long Island Aquarium including classics such as the Milka Stylophora. Beside classics many other cool and other colorful corals grown out in house will be available as well. Some of the livestock offered by ReefGen is available on Unique Corals today, and we expect a lot of others including the flamboyant cuttlefish and rare basslets to show up in the next couple of months. You can find the ReefGen livestock selection at the Unique Corals website.
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