Zac MacDonald

Our 200-gallon peninsula is starting to emerge from the dreaded ugly phase... still plenty of brown algae and Acropora not exactly thriving. But this trio of captive-bred yellow tangs from @biotaaquariums has at least made our tank something worth looking at again. As our lights dimmed for the evening, I spent a good hour with the OM-1 trying to photograph Earl, Perl, and Swirl (@dani_mariea in charge of names). Also pictured is our rad new elegance coral, also from Biota.

I’ve been keeping aquariums at home for about 30 years, and at work, I research and teach conservation biology. From a conservation perspective, there's an obvious paradox to reef keeping--while the whole point is appreciating biodiversity, a long history of collecting wild fish and corals has caused real damage. IMO, aquaculture of both fish and corals is the best path forward, and it’s sweet to see groups like Biota making it work at scale.

Yup, captive-bred fish sometimes cost a bit more upfront, but once losses from wild-caught fish (and guilt associated with it) are accounted for, I figure it's a wash. CB fish come in cleaner, adapt quicker, eat easier, and disease risk is I think quite a bit lower. If I tried to quarantine (QT) all five of our Zebrasoma tangs properly, there’s no way we could introduce them together (required for territorial reasons). All our biota fish went straight into the display, no QT and no issues so far. Not suggesting anyone skip QT, but I just set up my first QT, and it sucks.

To be clear, some of our fish are wild caught (from sources that I hear are reputable and possibly sustainable). But I think we're really moving in the right direction with these captive breeding programs.

@innovative.marine @reefbreeders @biotaaquariums @omsystem.cameras