If you are a fan of Odontanthias, those large colorful anthias that love living in the deep, then here’s a little bitty to convince your significant other that you need more than one. Marine fish culturists extraordinaire Frank Baensch recently became the first person to rear this species from a eggs to a nearly full grown fish.
The Yellow anthias Odontanthias fuscipinnis is a rare deepwater species from Hawaii which can command up to $1000 a piece and has been featured many times on Reef Builders. Frank collected some eggs of the yellow anthias from surface waters which were then relatively easy to rear using wild caught plankton, copepod nauplii.
The yellow anthias reared by Frank at RCT Hawaii were kept in a small 50 liter (13 gallon) aquarium with multiple species. Apparently the yellow anthias is bright red as a larvae and it rapidly loses its red spots over the quick 80 day period it takes to go from hatching to small fish. Frank describes the larvae of yellow anthias as robust in a mixed culture environment which should embolden any aquarists to try their hand at breeding this and similar species of anthias.
