ORA Announces Commercial Availability of the Orbic Cardinalfish

Here’s a fish that you might have already assumed was a conquest of the captive bred world. Oceans Reefs & Aquariums announced a few days ago that the ORA Orbic Cardinalfish (Sphaeramia orbicularis) would finally be commercially available to the masses. With this marvelous achievement, ORA has now had success with six different types of Cardinalfish (Banggai, Yellow Line, Black, Blue Streak, Spotnape and now the Orbic), which now includes both members of the Sphaeramia genus. Similarly, ORA had previously completed a genus by successfully breeding all of the Assessors. Talk about knocking it out of the park. Way to go ORA!

Getting back to today’s cardinalfish, ORA had done extensive research and found that there had been no prior success with the Orbic. They also discovered, however, that their techniques with the pajama cardinal easily applied to the Orbic, and after putting two and two together, they starting seeing lots of success with their (S. orbicularis). The reason for the lack of success, they hypothesized, was due to the nature in which most cardinalfish breed. While they are mouth brooders, which seem like a walk in the park for breeders, only the Banggai hatch fully developed juveniles. The others release tiny juveniles that need lots of special attention and feeding.