Folowing on from our report on the recent resurfacing of the rarely encountered circled dragonet Synchiropus circularis, the species is once again grabbing the headlines. This time it was De Jong Marinelife who made the announcement that they’ve not only sourced the species, but also in a happy accident, they’ve also managed to establish a captive-breeding pair! Their release on the De Jong Marinelife Fish Nursery Facebook page explained “This species is exceedingly rare and only shows up very sporadically and intermittently. In the last 10 years, it has only been collected a few times. In March, we were unpacking a shipment from the Philippines when we noticed two ‘strange’ dragonets. After unpacking, it became clear that we had just unpacked two of these beautiful S. circularis. We were lucky because it was a male and a female. We transferred the fish to our quarantine breeding facility. Already after 1 week, they start mating and spawning. We still cannot believe how lucky we were. But this was not the end. We were also able to collect the first eggs and raise the larvae. It’s a new species, and we knew nothing about larval development or what food they needed. Therefore, we applied the same protocols we are using for S. splendidus breeding. The larval development was the same, which made us able to give them the correct food. This resulted in small, incredible cute, settled S. circularis. At this moment, they are still too small for sale but we hope we can offer these little guys soon and bring a new species to the market. I’d like to thank our breeding team for all their efforts! Also, the breeding team fell in love with it and gave it a popular name: Our little Hutts (Star Wars)”
Featured image courtesy De Jong Marinelife
