Breeding Journal, Species: Paracanthurus hepatus

That is excellent! Congrats.

http://www.fishtalpropagations.com/#!home/mainPage
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Hi Guys
I am new here but  have been keeping fish for over 8 years. This past weekend my yellow belly hippo and my Blue hippo tang start acting up. They were so noisy in the tank I could not hear the TV. I believe the are in the start of a courting dance. I watch Capt movie and I believe they are doing the same thing. They have been doing this about every night for the last 3 nights. I grabbed my camera phone and then used my good camera to catch the action. I did not see any actual spawn. But base on what the Capt said I will start to look out for it. Let me know what you think. my youtube channel in NWAOcean
 
First night

 
Second night

 
 
 
 
 

Wow! Beautiful fish, all of them. I haven't seen a Rock Beauty or Moorish Idol in a while. You should start a journal for those tangs too!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Ken

Thanks. I love all of my fish and give them all the care I can.
 
I started my own thread under breeding fish. If you watch some of my other videos I have clowns that spawn in the tank regularly. I am waiting for my pair of leopard wrasses to start doing things. 
 
I am hoping to be getting a 240 or 320 gal 8ft long tank in the next few months. 

Yup, that looks like the pre-spawn activity.  Basically they get faster and tighter in their "synchronised swimming" and more splashy, especially when they spawn.
 
Thats excellent!

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Thanks Capt. 
 
They were already noisy. I wanted to see if what I was seeing was the same thing you were seeing. I started a new thread as not to high jack yours and keep yours with your information. Thanks for letting me know what you think.

Have sent you a pm

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Yes that is fine. I am still unable to send a PM yet since I am a new member. you can link to my videos. I will try to capture more over time. You can follow my experience under the fish breeding area. I am sitting next to the tank and they are splashing me at my computer. This is the 5th night for this activity. I think he is winning the show. she has been swimming more next to him over the last couple nights where at first he was having to follow her and now she is following him.
I can also see on the female a white bump between her lower fins sticking down. tonight might be a night for spawning.

I find my females get quit fat/broad across the bottom of the body they day of the spawn. They tend to be light in colour as well at the bottom.

Is your pair ending with a flourish/large splash? If so look out for a cloud of bubbles.

Once this occurs I find the easiest way of collecting the eggs is to turn off the pumps and let it sit for 10 mins. Then using a torch shine it at the surface of the water at a shallow angle from underneath. The eggs are much easier to find this way.

Or if you have chromis/damsels, just watch where they are getting a free meal.

Thanks for letting me us the video

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I will be posting a new video in my section. Tonight was the night. They spawn and got it on video. I am bring down the video now and compressing it.

I just updated my thread with the actual leading up to the spawn video and the actual spawning video.

Well I think I have some interesting developments
 
For the last few weeks the replacement P. hepatus have been going through what looks to be courting behaviour predominantly between the two larger fish.

I have a group of three, one of which was a survivor of the power failure.  Given the previous experience, Im expecting that they will start to spawn in the next few months as the behaviour is very similar.  The large fish chasing the smaller fish, swimming in tighter and tighter cycles, then dashing away from each other.
No spawns have occurred as yet that I have seen (I used to just wait for them to splash at the surface, as that was loud and noticeable).

One odd part of the behaviour is that there has been a change in the gender of the fish doing the chasing.
Previously the old male would initiate and chase/spawn with one female and then sometimes repeat the process with the other within about 5-10 minutes.  Mostly it was the larger female one day, then the smaller female the following day.
 
With the power outage, I lost the two larger fish, one male and one female.  This left the smallest female, who is now the largest blue tang in the tank.
 
The largest fish, now appears to be taking on the initiator role with the new smaller fish (believed to be male). Weirdly the largest fish also will occasionally/rarely repeat the behaviour with the smallest fish (believed to be female), though this will typically start with chasing the middle sized fish and then swap to the smallest.
As I experienced with the previous trio, if the larger fish "gets board" with the process and stops chasing, the smaller fish will start to chance the bigger fish and encourage the process to continue.

I had associated this behaviour with the male initiating spawning, but as I only have one example to base this on, there is a lot of room of error here.
 
Another option may be a change of gender for the largest P. hepatus, but I am not aware of them changing gender.  The surviving fish was the only tang in the tank for about 6-8 weeks in case this is relavant.
 
Is anyone aware if gender changing is even an option with P. hepatus?

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Great news tonight, I spotted the tangs spawning and then the chromis and anthers in the tank feasting on the eggs.  This was at lights out as the tank was going dark.
The three fish were all involved so Im no closer to confirming sex on the fish. 
 
I managed to collect a couple of hundred eggs and will post some images in a bit.

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Mccullochi Clownfish MccullochiClownfishBreeding 

Some eggy photos, they look good, not sure if they have been fertilised or not.
 

 

 
 
 

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Mccullochi Clownfish MccullochiClownfishBreeding 

That's awesome! Way to go (again)!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Ken

Video of the eggs about 1-1.5 hours post spawn.

 
Ill do some more photos and video in the morning to determine if they are fertilised.
For the moment, they are in a plastic container, sitting in a water bath to keep the temp up (27c).  

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Mccullochi Clownfish MccullochiClownfishBreeding 

I am loving this Darren.  Keep the eye candy coming! 

A few new pics of the eggs and their development.  These are seperate eggs, one looks like there is no or little development, the rest show a range.  Approx 20 hours post spawn.
 

 

 

 

   

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Mccullochi Clownfish MccullochiClownfishBreeding 

So pretty with that green yolk.  I think you have some fertilization.
 

check out Kathy's Clowns, llc website:
http://kathysclowns.com
Captive bred clownfish and more
(Wholesale to the trade.)

Yup, they had hatched this morning.  Looks like I have about 20 or so from the eggs I collected.  Not really enough to bother with, but Ill collect some plankton and see how I go.

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Mccullochi Clownfish MccullochiClownfishBreeding