Biota AMA

[Variant]

@Biota_Marine any plans to breed bandit angels? And if so, do you have brood stock for them?

On a similar npte, how do you aquire brood stock if the hawaii ban is in effect? Special permits?

 

[Biota_Marine]

@Biota_Marine any plans to breed bandit angels? And if so, do you have brood stock for them?

On a similar npte, how do you aquire brood stock if the hawaii ban is in effect? Special permits?

We may work on some bandit angelfish in the future. Right now there is a private breeder in Hawaii named Karen Brittain that has had some success with them and when you see them available captive-bred in the hobby they're usually from her.

We are able to collect specific quotas and specific species through scientific permitting when approved and typically a DLNR or adjacent employee needs to be present or inspect after collection.

 

[Biota_Marine]

Thanks! Is there a way to see where I may be in the waiting list?

The next batch going up will notify all of those on the waitlist- we just had a few customers that contacted us minutes after the first batch went out and it was pretty unfortunate they waited so long for the species to be available again.

Today we experimented a bit and put a countdown timer to all of those waiting on Yellow Tang and it seemed to work out. We'll likely do something similar for these and other highly in demand species.

 

[areefer01]

Milletseeds Teasing of course. Love my biota fish and corals. My green acropora from Palau is one of my favorites. I will probably need a chain saw to frag it should I ever attempt it due to their branch size. Deer antler thick.

 

[KLaRue]

Has Biota looked into captive breeding chevron tangs?

 

[Biota_Marine]

Has Biota looked into captive breeding chevron tangs?

Those aren't a species we currently have broodstock for at the moment. Right now we're working on other zebrasoma species as well as some close adjacent species.

That's not to say we wouldn't in the future.

 

[TinyReef522]

Any idea when Royal Gramma's and Coral Beautys may be back in stock?

 

[Biota_Marine]

Any idea when Royal Gramma's and Coral Beautys may be back in stock?

I should have just a couple Royal Grammas going up this coming Tuesday. Coral beauties are back in production at our Palau facility we're just waiting for them to grow out to sellable sizing, likely a month or so.

 

[littlefoxx]

Hey y'all,

Tom and I want to start to incorporate more customer feedback and questions onto our social media. I get tons of emails and messages about our animals, process, and ideas across all of our platforms and I was hoping to open up a discussion. We also want to do some short form videos on our Facebook and Instagram answering some of your questions you may have for us. Let some questions fly and I'll answer as many as best as I can and we're hoping to choose a few every week to give a bit more in depth answers on our Facebook and Instagram.

I appreciate all the questions and responses.

Are you working on any new kinds of fish? If if so what new kinds of fish are you guys working on breeding?

 

[Biota_Marine]

Are you working on any new kinds of fish? If if so what new kinds of fish are you guys working on breeding?

Tons! If you follow our social media platforms we announce new species all the time. Many times they're projects with minimal successes that we sometimes use to guage interest in various species or families.

Some of the most recent were our white damselfish and lawnmower blennies where we only got a batch though but it seems like most hobbyist are very interested in more lawnmower blennies. We also had a suprise small batch of flame angelfish come through our Hawaii facility.

We actively have broodstock for a bunch of the dwarf angelfish, various zebrasoma, tons of different blennies, gobies, damsels, anthias, and others. Many of the species we target are either ones that have a need for the hobby due to popularity like the yellow tang or due to low success wild collected rates like with our mandarins and court jesters.

 

[KingSyn]

So we do have a section called "Ocean Oddities" which we should advertise a bit better, but that is our WYSIWYG section. Usually when we get larger batches of clams we pick out an assortment of 50 or so and grab some nice photos of them under daylight lighting. We plan to also use this in the future with oddities or morphs that are a bit different from our normal stock, like a white yellow tang or clown trigger with stripes instead of spots.

We recently added some crocea clams to the site and the photos under those products are actually the exact one's customers can expect to receive (https://shop.thebiotagroup.com/products/ultra-grade-crocea-clam). I separated those baskets for retail customers so it's going to be exactly one either shown in that photo or one that may have gotten cut off. For other clams the stock photos we take are from our population and there isn't a ton of variation with the derasa and squamosa.

White yellow tang?! I can only imagine how much those will go for!

 

[littlefoxx]

Tons! If you follow our social media platforms we announce new species all the time. Many times they're projects with minimal successes that we sometimes use to guage interest in various species or families.

Some of the most recent were our white damselfish and lawnmower blennies where we only got a batch though but it seems like most hobbyist are very interested in more lawnmower blennies. We also had a suprise small batch of flame angelfish come through our Hawaii facility.

We actively have broodstock for a bunch of the dwarf angelfish, various zebrasoma, tons of different blennies, gobies, damsels, anthias, and others. Many of the species we target are either ones that have a need for the hobby due to popularity like the yellow tang or due to low success wild collected rates like with our mandarins and court jesters.

Oh the white damsel would be cool!

 

[Biota_Marine]

White yellow tang?! I can only imagine how much those will go for!

Lol I wouldn't get too excited of the tens to hundreds of thousands of yellow tang we've been we've only seen two anomolies, 1 white yellow tang and 1 orange yellow tang. The orange ended up growing out and looking normal in our systems and the white mostly ended up as very pale. Maybe in a few years we'll be looking at some designer ones like we have with our cuban basslets.

 

[Biota_Marine]

Oh the white damsel would be cool!

I actually have 4 of these guys left, they are very aggressive even for a damselfish but a biologist friend of ours let us know they're actually a species known for farming algae in the wild.

White Damsel

Dischistodus perspicillatus - Biota Palau is announcing another new cultured species! The White damselfish is very rare in the aquarium trade. This species is an exceptionally hardy saltwater fish and perfect for the damselfish collector or large aquariums with other aggressive species and...

shop.thebiotagroup.com

 

[littlefoxx]

I actually have 4 of these guys left, they are very aggressive even for a damselfish but a biologist friend of ours let us know they're actually a species known for farming algae in the wild.

White Damsel

Dischistodus perspicillatus - Biota Palau is announcing another new cultured species! The White damselfish is very rare in the aquarium trade. This species is an exceptionally hardy saltwater fish and perfect for the damselfish collector or large aquariums with other aggressive species and...

shop.thebiotagroup.com

How big to they come?

 

[Solasis]

Any chance of yellow eye kole tangs coming from Hawaii?

 

[Biota_Marine]

How big to they come?

They're all about 2" right now

 

[Biota_Marine]

Any chance of yellow eye kole tangs coming from Hawaii?

We haven't had success with them yet but the only wild fish we have in our whole Florida facility is a Yellow Eye Kole tang. It's one species we hope to eventually offer them