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Re:Breeding Journal, Species: Doryrhamphus excisus
Friday, October 7, 2011 11:11 AM
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Jim,
I was able to get some to around day 14 in greenwater with populated L strain rotifers. I found that they liked good circulation and floating plastic plants to take a rest and hide under .
Good luck,
Nick
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Re:Breeding Journal, Species: Doryrhamphus excisus
Friday, October 7, 2011 11:41 AM
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The oldest right now is on Day 32! Two more at day 28, a whole bunch more at days 20 and 16, and they're all looking good, strong, and active. Thanks for the tips, Nick. I haven't tried giving them any hiding places, and they do seem to congregate in the corner of the fishbowl kriesel at around the 7-8 o'clock position. Maybe I should give them some fake plants now. I know I really need to move the older ones into something more natural and less incubator, I just haven't figured out exactly what to do and still keep them fed well.
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Re:Breeding Journal, Species: Doryrhamphus excisus
Wednesday, October 12, 2011 12:56 AM
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Hatch 10/7/2011: This was a weak batch, and they hatched the same night as my Ocellaris clowns hatched. They are being raised along with the clowns for now.
Hatch 10/11/2011: This was a large, healthy batch. The only other things snagged tonight were some copepods (probably Tisbe) and also some more hermit crab larvae. I'll feed these fry a mixture of copepods, and keep them in a 2-gallon fisbowl kreisel with a moderate amount of live phyto and moderate light.
There has been a request that I start a thread on the Hermit Crab larvae. I can't say much about them. I'm not sure what species they are, since I have both blue-legged and also red-legged hermits in the 210 display that houses the pipefish broodstock. I'm not even 100% certain that they are hermit crab larvae, but it does make sense, and the appearance of them is consistent with images others have posted of their hermit crab larvae. I'm not really trying to raise them, but, rather, am keeping them in the pipefish culture as a potential food item for the pipes. What I observed from the last batch of the hermit larvae, a few weeks ago, that happened to hatch the same night as my pipes, was that the hermit larvae survived for many, many days in the fishbowl kreisel (I think I saw them in there even after 2 or 3 weeks, but did not document this). I assume that they were eating the live phyto, but perhaps they were feeding on copepod nauplii. Eventually they disappeared from the kreisel. I assume that they eventually got eaten by the pipes, after the pipes got large enough. This particular kreisel did have the 4 UMPF (Ugly Mutant Pipefish Fry = Ocellaris clown larvae), too, and maybe it was the clowns that ate the hermits. Then again, maybe the hermits simply died of starvation. I don't really know. I will add that there were several shrimp larvae (I think peppermints, but they might be cleaner shrimps, since I have both species in the 210) that were also companions with the pipes and the clowns in the kreisel. Quite a few of the lysmata hitchhikers (freeloaders?) have survived for around a month now without starving or otherwise succumbing to things that might kill larval shrimps. They have even survived the transfer from the 2 gallon fishbowl to a 5.5 gallon rectangular tank, when transferred along with the pipes. FWIW, the clowns are now in their own 5.5.
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Re:Breeding Journal, Species: Doryrhamphus excisus
Wednesday, November 16, 2011 11:40 PM
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The parents continue to hatch every 4 days, without fail. I got complacent for a couple of batches, and didn't pay enough attention to them in their 2 gallon kriesels, and lost a couple of entire batches to either A) too much phyto + too much light too early on creating too many bubbles, and causing them all to float to the surface, or B) too little phyto causing either B1) the copepod supply to crash, or B2) ammonia to spike, killing the fry. My most recent batches have done very well. The two things I'm doing differently are 1) Feeding them Parvocalanus only, and 2) Providing only ambient light, and no direct light, for the first few days. While my observations are merely anecdotal, with great consistency, I find better survival rates when the pipefish fry are fed only Parvocalanus, and no Apocyclops or Acartia, during the first few days. The problem with too much light combining with the live phyto to generate tiny O2 bubbles is a big one for this species. I have found that the bright indirect ambient light is sufficient for the phyto to do its thing, and for the copepods to grow, and for the fry to see their prey, all without causing the O2 bubble problem. In fact, my most recent batch has well over an 80% survival rate at 4 days! They are hard to count, but I estimate over 30 fry still alive from the 11/12/2011 batch tonight, and examining them with a magnifying glass, I see full bellies on every single one of them! The main reason for this post, though, is to document reaching 60DPS for this species. Please find the pictures below. The first one was taken a few days ago, of the growout tank. I can count 21 pipes in this image, but there are probably twice that number in the tank. The next two pictures were taken tonight, of the 4 largest ones I could catch tonight. One of them, I'm not sure which, was hatched on 9/5/2011, and settled on 9/17/2011, making today 60 Days Post Settlement for them!   
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Re:Breeding Journal, Species: Doryrhamphus excisus
Saturday, November 19, 2011 8:35 PM
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My last couple of batches of fry have done extremely well, so I'm optimistic that I've actually developed a decent protocol for raising these. Here it is: Since the broodstock are in a 210 display, I have to use a Chad Vossen larval snagger to catch the fry. Of course, I turn all pumps/powerheads/wavemakers off while snagging them. I find that about 2 bubbles per second in the snagger works best. I have an LED light that I use ( http://joby.com/gorillatorch/original). I've taken the parts from two legs, and made one long leg out of them (they are like Loc-Line), so I can hook one leg over the tank, and position the light right where I want it near the trap entrance. It works best when I turn the LED light all the way down to the lowest setting. Turning all other lights in the room off is important. Every 10 minutes or so, I siphon the snagged fry with a 6' length of 1/4 ID vinyl hose into a 2-Gallon glass fishbowl. After an hour or so, all the fry except a few stragglers will have been snagged. I've learned the best way to catch the stragglers is to turn the LED light up all the way, and then siphon them with the hose, but it is important to approach them from the side -- hose pointing past their tail, come at them from the side, and then veer in front of them at the last millisecond. Once they are all snagged, I fill the bowl up to just 250 ml shy of the very brim with parent tank water. I then set the bowl where it will be for the next two weeks or so, and place a rigid airline at the 3:00 o'clock position, with about 6 bubbles per second. I take 1 liter of a dense Parvocalanus culture, sieve it through a 54 micron sieve, and backwash the copepods into the bowl. I take 250 ml of a dense live Isochrysis culture, and drip that at 1 drip per second into the bowl. I give very weak light immediately the first night -- a fluorescent strip light from a 10 gallon tank on top of some eggcrate on top of the bowl, with about 3-4 layers of paper towel between the light and the eggcrate to filter the light. I then go to bed. The next morning, I remove the light, and give no more direct light for the next 4 days, just ambient light from the nearby windows, and from other nearby tanks/bowls. After 4 days, I replace the strip light/paper towel/eggcrate combo, and leave it like that for the next 4 days or so. After 8 days, they can take more light. Aside from the very first night, they get dark at night. Maintenance consists of dosing with about 5 drops of AmQuel Plus every day or two, monitoring the copepod population and augmenting it if necessary, and monitoring the phyto density, and augmenting it if necessary. Usually the copepods bloom, and I don't need to add any for the first whole week at least. The phyto may get depleted, depending on how intense the copepod bloom is, and how much light the bowl gets. Truth be told, I have been doing no water changes and no bottom vacuuming at all for the first two to three weeks with these guys most recently. The main problems I have to watch out for are, in order of likelihood and severity: 1) Too much light making too many tiny bubbles, especially in the first 4 days, which makes nearly all the fry float and die. 2) Copepods bloom and eat all the phyto, requiring more phyto or else either the copepods will crash, and/or requiring more AmQuel Plus, or else ammonia will spike and kill the fry. 3) Copepods fail to bloom, and I need to add more copepods after about 4 days. After about 12 days or so, they start to settle, and begin hanging out near the bottom instead of the top. At that point, I move them into the community tank. It's getting to the point where I'm going to be starting another community tank for the younger fry now, though. I've not experienced any dieoff later than about a week with these guys. The last two batches have been by far my most successful. They are 7 and 3 days old today. The both of them have well over 30 fry still alive -- I'd say about an 80% survival rate, if not higher! The two previous batches, 15 and 11 days old, have 15 and 10 fry alive, respectively. The 15 day old batch was fed Apocyclops instead of Parvocalanus, as was the 11 day old batch, and the 11 day old batch was looking really good until problem #1 listed above happened to them.
<message edited by JimWelsh on Sunday, November 20, 2011 8:56 AM>
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Re:Breeding Journal, Species: Doryrhamphus excisus
Saturday, November 19, 2011 8:42 PM
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Excellent news and work! Can you elaborate on this: " 1) Too much light making too many tiny bubbles, especially in the first 4 days, which makes nearly all the fry float and die"
How is the light making more bubbles?
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Re:Breeding Journal, Species: Doryrhamphus excisus
Saturday, November 19, 2011 8:56 PM
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A general equation for photosynthesis is 6 CO2(gas) + 12 H2O(liquid) + photons → C6H12O6(aqueous) + 6 O2(gas) + 6 H2O(liquid).
The way I like to put it, live phytoplankton + ammonia + light = more phyto + O2.
What I've found to be very consistently true, is that with my fishbowl kreisel, if I provide too much light too early on, two things WILL be observed: 1) Tiny bubbles on the top edges of the bowl later in the day, and 2) Many, many fry will be bobbing at the surface, and either already dead or unable to escape the surface, even when "helped" by pushing them gently down with my finger. If the only change I make is to use less light, then neither of those two things happens, in my experience.
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Re:Breeding Journal, Species: Doryrhamphus excisus
Saturday, November 19, 2011 8:59 PM
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Cool! Thanks for explaining that for me. Makes sense now. 
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Re:Breeding Journal, Species: Doryrhamphus excisus
Tuesday, November 22, 2011 5:31 AM
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Great thread. Awesome work Jim!
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Re:Breeding Journal, Species: Doryrhamphus excisus
Saturday, December 3, 2011 1:18 AM
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These parents continue to pump out the fry every 4 days, like clockwork. Another hatch tonight.
One note on my protocol detailed above that I left out: I have a diffuser on the Gorilla Torch that consists of a paper coffee filter strapped on with a rubber band that I neglected to document. That was an important detail to leave out!
Another few bits of information I'd like to document:
1) If you wait too long on hatch night to turn the lights off, Dad will NOT wait for you! I lost one batch recently due to waiting too long to turn the lights off and set the snagger up. The fry had already hatched, and most had gone over the overflow.
2) I have, to myself at least, reinforced that the young fry do better with Parvocalanus at first than with Apocyclops. Don't get me wrong -- if all you have is Apocyclops, then by all means, use it! The fry will do very well. They just will do better if you have Parvocalanus for the first few days instead.
3) Having tamed the "too much light makes too many tiny bubbles that coincide with the fry dying" problem, I now find that my biggest problem is having the supply of copepods peter out on me. Since I have a larger number of fry surviving, I have literally more mouths to feed. I an discovering that if I don't pay close attention to the copepod density in the fry fishbowls, then I will lose fry to starvation. I generally need to augment the copepod supply with extra Parvocalanus if I have them, and Apocyclops if I don't have Parvocalanus to spare.
My next big challenge is to get the older pipes weaned onto frozen mysis. I'm finding that it is relatively easy to get them, even the younger ones , to eat frozen baby bbs, but I'm dubious about the nutritional value of that feed. Fewer of them, but still many of them, will eat frozen cyclops and/or Cyclop-Eeze. When it comes to frozen mysis, I find that they take better to chopped mysis. The larger pieces are rarely taken. If I use a cheeze grater on the frozen mysis, the tiny particles that result are too small, and entirely ignored. It helps a great deal to be really, really mean, and hold off any live copepods, and really starve them. They are MUCH more likely to take the frozen foods when they are REALLY hungry. Still, I see some of the largest ones just swimming around frantically from food item to food item, and rejecting each one. I feel awful. I hate starving them. So far, I always cave, and give them some live copepods. I guess I'm just not mean enough.
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Re:Breeding Journal, Species: Doryrhamphus excisus
Saturday, December 3, 2011 9:09 AM
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These are beautiful fish. So happy you're having success with them.
RLTW 180 Gallon Mixed Reef Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, "Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?" And I said, "Here am I. Send me!" Isaiah 6:8
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Re:Breeding Journal, Species: Doryrhamphus excisus
Saturday, December 3, 2011 5:24 PM
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 Originally Posted by These are beautiful fish. So happy you're having success with them. x2.
--Andy, the bucket man. "Not to know the mandolin is to argue oneself unknown...." --Clara Lanza, 1886
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Re:Breeding Journal, Species: Doryrhamphus excisus
Monday, December 12, 2011 8:12 AM
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Excellent work Jim! It tempts me to try Doryrhamphus dactyliophorus (Ringed Pipefish). Tagging along...
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Re:Breeding Journal, Species: Doryrhamphus excisus
Monday, December 12, 2011 10:45 AM
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Originally Posted by kbb0118
Excellent work Jim! It tempts me to try Doryrhamphus dactyliophorus (Ringed Pipefish). Tagging along...
Do you have a pair of those yet? If so, where did you get them?
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Re:Breeding Journal, Species: Doryrhamphus excisus
Monday, December 12, 2011 12:05 PM
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No not yet. I have seen them regularly on Saltwaterfish.com, but they move quick.
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Re:Breeding Journal, Species: Doryrhamphus excisus
Monday, December 12, 2011 1:47 PM
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Kudos Very nice thread and acomplishment.Such nice fish!. I keep a pair of D.dactylophorus.Larger and more finicky eaters than excisus.Mine still refuse any food other than live copepods.This species could be captive raised in an Oz facility. And I recently obtained a pair of D.baldwini,the Hawaiian endemic red pipe.They are already taking bbs and Cyclops.Gorgeous glowing red fish!.Wonder how come they´re not more popular? Excuses for off topics!
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Re:Breeding Journal, Species: Doryrhamphus excisus
Monday, December 12, 2011 5:47 PM
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Congratulations Jim!
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Re:Breeding Journal, Species: Doryrhamphus excisus
Monday, December 12, 2011 7:21 PM
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Hi Jim, great stuff. I notice that the parvo being fed is about the same size as rotifers? Do the young eat rotifers at all? Luis, I'm so jealous I've been hunting for that species!
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Re:Breeding Journal, Species: Doryrhamphus excisus
Monday, December 12, 2011 7:39 PM
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Jim, those babies are completely awesome!
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Re:Breeding Journal, Species: Doryrhamphus excisus
Tuesday, December 13, 2011 1:55 AM
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@FuEl, actually, I think they are eating mostly the Parvocalanus nauplii, which are much smaller than rotifers. I think that might be what makes the difference. They do OK with Apocyclops, but do better with Parvocalanus. They tend to do horribly with rotifers, BTW.
Thanks to everybody else for the support. I am very pleased with my success with this species!
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