Captive Bred Randall's Assessor Coming Soon from ORA

After more than a decade of breeding yellow and blue assessors, Oceans Reefs & Aquariums (ORA) has just announced their success with a lesser known species of the genera, the Randall’s Assessor (Assessor randalli). The successful breeders acquired their Randall’s assessors from Koji Wada of Blue Harbor in Japan, and it marks the first time this species has been available in the US. Not wasting any time, the gang at ORA threw their experience at this fish and have just had their first small batch of the uncommon assessors go through metamorphosis. With this major step toward getting them out to the public, ORA is now shifting their focus to increasing the overall number of captive bred individuals within their facility. The first ORA Randall’s Assessors should be available in early 2013.

Fortuantely for the breeding process, the Randall’s assessors are nest spawners like their yellow counterparts. This leads to quick reproduction rates and large nest sizes, and ORA is already seeing the typical assessor behaviors (e.g. swimming upside down) from their first batch of offspring.

This is, no doubt, an excitng announcement by ORA. We can’t wait until these fish start trickling into the local fish stores as their unique swimming habits, relatively small size, and calm demeanor make the species ideal for just about any aquarium setup.

For more informationa about this new captive bred species, be sure to visit the ORA Blog

Thanks Dustin for sharing this great news with us.