ORA’s captive-bred Synchiropus ocellatus, the Scooter Dragonet, is often called a “Scooter Blenny” in the aquarium trade. Image courtesy ORA
via ORA
Scooter Dragonets, or Scooter Blennies as they are often called, have always been one of our favorite fish. Way back in 2010 when we were intensively raising Mandarins we tried our hand with Scooters countless times with little luck. We were only able to raise roughly 1 Scooter for every 5000 mandarins! We were frustrated to find that we were missing a suitable prey item for their first feeding.
Juvenile Red Scooter Dragonets, Synchiropus stellatus. Image courtesy ORA
We learned something important from the few Scooters that we managed to raise though: they grew quite fast once the larvae settled to the bottom of the tank. With Mandarins, under our culture conditions, you will have a few fish that shoot up to 1.25” in around 8 months but the majority of the batch will take up to 14 months to reach that size and 18 months or more to reach 1.5”. Much to the chagrin of hobbyists, this timeframe is the reason we are not actively culturing Mandarins today; their slow growth makes them too costly to raise. Scooters on the other hand start spawning at less than 1″ in length and reach 1.5” in just 4 to 6 months!
A few years ago we made significant improvements to our Live Feeds program allowing us to increase the variety, quantity and quality of the food we were raising for our larvae. Our most important addition was a consistent supply of a variety of copepod species. These new copepods were just the thing we had been missing for our beloved Scooters.
Once we began setting up spawns from regular and red Scooters with our new supply of copepods we started observing excellent survival and high settlement rates. It was encouraging to see the juveniles accept a pelleted diet at a very young age.
With their rapid growth and eager acceptance of a prepared food diet, Scooter Dragonets are proving to be very receptive to our aquaculture conditions and will thrive in a wide array of hobbyist home aquariums.
We are excited to announce that retailers have access to the first batch of Scooter Dragonets now. The Red Scooter Dragonet will be available soon.
To learn more about species of Dragonets we’ve raised, check out their livestock page here: http://www.orafarm.com/products/fish/dragonets/
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