Sometimes news comes along that really excites me. The news of someone successfully breeding a fish that is rare in the hobby is always on that list. This particular fish is actually one of my favorites. It’s the Blue Reef Chromis and it’s a stunner. I’ve owned them before but not often. I found the fish easy to care for and it swam with my other chromis in the shoal.
As you may know the green chromis, sometimes known as the blue/green chromis is common in the hobby. I’m always able to find them. They aren’t super hard fish to keep for me but many aquarists do report having terrible luck with them. But there is another chromis, the blue reef chromis, that I think is much more attractive and which I’ve found to be quite hardy but it’s really hard to find in the hobby. It’s also quite costly when it is found often running $30 or more per fish. That’s a lot when you want and need 7-9 of them!
One of the greatest ways to reduce cost in our wonderful capitalist system is to increase supply. And that’s just what is going to happen now that they will be breeding them. As always such efforts will take a few years to reach the hobbyist’s wallet but when it does you know I will be buying MORE of these fish.
New England Aquarium aquarist Monika Schmück succeeds in producing the world’s first captive-bred Blue Reef Chromis, Chromis cyanea. Source: Breeding the Blue Reef Chromis
