Reef aquarium owners around the globe were suddenly desperate to add the bright orange saltwater fish with the white stripe to their collection, just as Nemo was added to a fish tank in a dentist's office in Australia.

Wild clownfish were overharvested to satisfy surging demand, sending their numbers plummeting.

Even captive breeding programs, which some hope could replenish enough clownfish to prevent their demise in the wild, have been woefully inadequate in curtailing the species' dwindling numbers and damage done to its natural habitat.

That may soon change, however, as a Taiwanese saltwater ornamental fish research team has unlocked some of the mysteries surrounding the breeding process and hopes that through the diffusion of the technology, the clownfish trade will emerge as another success story in Taiwan's aquaculture industry, following in the footsteps of the advances made in raising shrimp and grouper.

The research team estimates that by 2011, Taiwan could breed 2 million clownfish and generate NT$100 million in the lucrative ornamental fish market, while helping save the species in the wild.

The team is led by Ho Yuan-hsing, an associate researcher with Fisheries Research Institute of the Eastern Marine Biology Research Center in eastern Taiwan's Taitung County, who has been actively engaged in fish breeding programs for nearly two decades.

In 1997, Ho published the world's first report on the artificial breeding of the giant grouper (Epinephelus lanceolatus), but later turned to research on saltwater ornamental fish and edible fish like abalone because he wanted "to do something more important and that has greater influence on Taiwan."

His change in interest was largely motivated by pursuing an area that few had treaded because he has always wanted to be a "trailblazer."

The captive breeding of saltwater ornamental fishes has a high entry threshold because of technology barriers and the difficulty of obtaining sea water, which is why an overwhelming 98 percent of saltwater ornamental fishes are still caught in the sea rather than artificially bred.

Taiwan is ideally positioned, Ho says, to reverse the disturbing trend, especially for clownfish. The country's warm weather and waters provide a perfect habitat for the prized fish, and its large fish farming population (127,000 in 2007) has traditionally excelled in the field.

"Taiwan has artificially bred the most fish species in the world," Ho says.

The country has also broken considerable ground in the development of live bait as a food source for clownfish larvae, a critical advancement since finding suitable food and mass producing it is essential to the artificial breeding process.

Ho's center inaugurated a clownfish fry production farm in November 2008, which Ho estimated could produce 100,000 clownfish this year and potentially double that in 2010.

The center actually began researching clownfish in 2002, but the Fry Production Model Farm only became a reality because Ho's team was finally able to master several core technologies.

For one, pairing the clownfish is not easy. Though clownfish are strictly monogamous, that does not mean that "they will mate automatically if a male and female are put together," Ho says.

"We have to see to it that the two see eye to eye and will not attack each other, especially because the fish is very fierce and protective of its own territory and attacks any fish, even of its own species, that encroaches into its territory," he adds.

The farm now has 150 seed pairs, with half of them spawning.The center also controls the spawning, Ho says. In their natural habitat at sea, clownfish lay from 500 to more than 1,000 fertilized eggs once per month, but the center has been able to get the fish to spawn twice a month.

After the eggs hatch, the next challenge is to prepare the right food for the larvae, Ho says, a potentially difficult step because the larvae are only about 0.4 mm in size at birth.

The center has solved the problem by providing live bait and also micro-organisms, such as rotifers and copepods, to suit the needs of the larvae. Pellet diet is only fed to the fry after they grow to 20-day-olds.

Clownfish larvae are also more vulnerable to disease in the winter when the water temperature is low, and the center will install a water heating system this year to solve the problem.

"Clownfish could be one of the easiest fish species to breed if you can master those core technologies," Ho says.

Having mastered the process, the center plans to hand these technologies and the planning and management of the farm model to 10 selected breeders next year, and Ho estimates that the breeders will each be able to produce 200,000 clownfish and generate NT$10 million in revenues annually.

The many years of research by Ho's team also culminated in the opening of the world's first aquarium devoted solely to clownfish adjacent to the center in mid-May.

Though it may be the smallest aquarium in Taiwan, it has nine exhibition areas and displays nearly 1,500 clownfish from 18 species -- including eight from foreign countries and five from local waters. Ho's center can now breed 13 out of the 18 species.

The Aquarium of Amenone fish will soon become the center's main remnant of its basic clownfish breeding program as it recently has shifted its focus to raising ornamental fish with added value, concentrating on two new approaches.

One involves breeding "hybrid" species while the other emphasizes selecting unique fish within the same species, such as those with more exotic or brighter patterns, and trying to reproduce them after repeated trials.

Ho cited as an example an Australian clownfish, which is black with two white bands, but its two bands are gradually approaching each other and will one day merge together.

Such a species, because of its rarity, could be highly prized and fetch 10 times or more the value of a typical ornamental fish, Ho said.

Andrew Fang, executive director of saltwater ornamental fish exporter Taikong Co., said the center's research and breeding efforts of clownfish and other saltwater ornamental fish has outstanding commercial potential and will help protect the species in the wild.Saltwater ornamental fish, he says, are more prized than freshwater species because of their bright and beautiful color, but fish harvested from the wild often succumb to weakness when kept in tanks, making them dicey commercial propositions even if they are highly sought after.

"Most aquariums actually sell mostly freshwater ornamental fishes, because saltwater ornamental fish only have a 20 percent chance of survival if they are kept in water tanks," Fang said.

When saltwater ornamental fish are caught, the netting used to trap them or the drugs used to daze them often damage the fish or leave drug residues adhered to their skin.

Those dangers, coupled with the suspension of feeding during the transportation process, results in the fish arriving at a private aquarium in a highly weakened state.

Fang estimates that the survival rate of ornamental fish in tanks may be less than 20 percent.

The breeding program, however, produces healthier fish that will be more than competitive with those caught in the wild.

"Captive breeding could solve the problem of keeping them alive in tanks," Fang said.

The trader strongly believes that the strong demand for clownfish and other ornamental fish triggered by Finding Nemo will continue unabated but with an environmental element added.

"Products that meet environmental requirements -- conserving the species and not damaging marine ecology simultaneously -- will remain in vogue," Fang believes.

In Southeast Asia, where ornamental fish species are abundant, fishermen often use drugs such as potassium cyanide to trap their targets, not only harming their catch but also nearby fish and the surrounding marine ecology.

Fang noted that the European Union, one of his three major export destinations (the others are Japan and the United States), is very strict on the origin of imports, and some EU countries will not accept ornamental fish caught in the wild.

"The captive bred fish could easily make inroads into their markets," he says.

If Taiwan has the skills to artificially breed the clownfish and then mass produce them at a consistent level of high quality, it will have a significant competitive edge in the market, Fang believes.

That may also allow many young clownfish like Nemo to thrive once again in the wild and protect the coral reefs that serve as their natural habitats.