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Re:Breeding Journal, Species: Pseudochromis tapeinosoma
Tuesday, March 13, 2012 8:52 PM
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Well, so far I haven't been able to catch a break with these guys. Dad had a hard time keeping the eggs in the uncapped PVC cave. The first night after this spawn, I found the egg mass laying on the sand behind the PVC caves. I used a turkey baster, and replaced the eggs into the PVC cave that they spawned in this time, and then moved the PVC cap from the capped cave to the one they chose to spawn in, in an effort to help keep the eggs contained in that PVC. This morning, I found the eggs on the sand again. This time, they had come out the front of the PVC. I once again replaced the eggs into the PVC, but today when I came home from work, there were no eggs to be found. I guess Dad ate the eggs this time. I'm guessing that my disruption of his environment by cleaning the tank on the day of the spawning was just too much for him. I'll have to wait for the next spawn, and try to not be such a disruptive influence next time.
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Re:Breeding Journal, Species: Pseudochromis tapeinosoma
Thursday, March 29, 2012 1:04 PM
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Time for an update. The most recent spawn happened exactly 11 days after the previous spawn, on March 22nd. Unfortunately, I didn't think she looked quite "ready", and also, I had a large order arrive from Reed Mariculture that day, and so I didn't open the gate, and arrived home from work to find that she had laid her eggs on the outside of her PVC again. Arrgh! So, the plan was to wait another 11 days, and to open the gate on days 10, 11, and 12 (if necessary). I've been feeding them well, and everything has been going according to plan -- until today. The female seems to be "not well" today. She isn't eating. She is resting on the bottom of her PVC cave, near the front, where she can see out. She is alert, and if I wave my hand at her, she responds, and seems to swim normally, but then quickly returns to her resting on the bottom of the PVC behavior. The male is fine, and acting normally. I did a moderate water change, and gave her a 5 minute FW dip. She seemed to handle the dip just fine. Swimming around some, not too frantic, and kind of "hid" next to the pH probe I had in there. I took advantage of the dip to examine her closely. No white dots are visible, either large or small. The only odd thing about her appearance is that her pectoral fins seem to have some odd dots or bumps, and have a reddish tinge, like they are irritated. Everything else about her looks normal and healthy. After the FW dip, she went back to the same behavior as before -- resting on the bottom of the PVC, at the front of the top cave, where she seems to be interested in looking out at her world. She is not hiding. Her breathing is not labored. Anybody have any ideas what is going on with her? Advice welcome!
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Re:Breeding Journal, Species: Pseudochromis tapeinosoma
Thursday, March 29, 2012 6:51 PM
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To simply reiterate my advice over email - with no photos, and with no vectors in for new parasites, and with redness in the fins and loss of appetite, "bacterial" problem cropped up in my head. My reaction, based solely on what was presented above, may have been to hit with Maracyn SW or Maracyn II SW. If it's "wrong", it won't be damaging (minus any biological filtration implications).
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Re:Breeding Journal, Species: Pseudochromis tapeinosoma
Saturday, March 31, 2012 11:05 AM
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So, I came home Thursday night (same day I reported the problem), and she was looking better already. Swimming more normally, no more resting on the bottom of the PVC, and interested in food, but not taking any yet. I did dose with Maracyn that night, and as of yesterday morning she was eating again. This morning, she is back to her usual self, and actually rushed up to the turkey baster to take food from it! I'll keep dosing the Maracyn per instructions, just so as to not create some monster, immune strain of bacteria, but it looks like this mini-crisis is over. The next spawn is expected soon (Monday will be 11 days), unless her illness has put her off of her schedule. We'll see what happens.
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Re:Breeding Journal, Species: Pseudochromis tapeinosoma
Saturday, March 31, 2012 2:16 PM
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Good to hear! I've had so few success stories with fish disease that it's nice to hear one that seems to be ending well.
--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: Pseudochromis tapeinosoma
Saturday, March 31, 2012 2:37 PM
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I've had good luck wih Myracin II as well.
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Re:Breeding Journal, Species: Pseudochromis tapeinosoma
Saturday, March 31, 2012 3:12 PM
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Oh I'm glad she perked back up for you Jim! Would the Maracyn II affect developing eggs? Maybe her next batch is a write off anyway?
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Re:Breeding Journal, Species: Pseudochromis tapeinosoma
Sunday, April 1, 2012 12:36 PM
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Thanks for all the words of support and encouragement, everybody! She continues to do well. And it was regular Maracyn, not Maracyn II, FWIW. And I really can't imagine that Erythromycin would have any negative effect on any eggs she might lay. If anything, it would probably help keep bacterial infection down. Today is day 10 since the last spawn. I opened the gate to see what would happen. Basically three things: 1) The female was NOT interested in going over to the male's side at all, 2) The male excitedly went over to the female's side, and kept trying to "lead" her over to his side, passing back and forth through the gate, wishing she would follow him, and 3) The female kept shooing the male out of her half of the tank, getting more and more aggressive as time went by. After just a few minutes of this, I closed the gate again. We'll see what tomorrow brings.
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Re:Breeding Journal, Species: Pseudochromis tapeinosoma
Tuesday, April 10, 2012 7:52 PM
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Finally, I get to make a positive update! (Keep reading) After the last post, I opened the gate each day April 2nd through the 5th. Each day was basically a repeat of what I reported in the previous post. The evening of the 5th, I came home to find the female in an odd predicament: she had eggs coming out of her ovipositor, and the same egg mass was going into her mouth! It was as though she started eating the eggs as she was laying them, and somehow got stuck with neither process complete. She looked quite stressed, so I caught her and gently removed what remained of the egg mass from the outside of her body. I gave the eggs to the male. The female calmed down after this, and things went back to normal. For the last few days, she has looked more and more gravid each day, so I've been opening the gate each day, and still, the male has been eager, but she has been unwilling -- until today that is. She eagerly went over to his side today, and within minutes, was laying in his capped PVC cave. The previous spawn events had a duration of something like 15-20 minutes, but this time, she was in there for more like a full half hour. She came out very noticably thinner, and there is a nice large egg mass in the male's cave, which he is tending. I have a good rotifer culture ready, a backup rotifer culture going, plenty of fresh RGComplete, plus a fresh order of RotiGreen Omega and ClorAm-X. I've been practicing on my ocellaris clowns, and getting nice survival and growth of the clowns with the "tried and true" protocol of rotifers grown on RGComplete + greenwater technique using RotiGreen. Now, if the male tends the eggs and doesn't eat them, maybe I'll have another chance at raising these guys in 4 days.
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Re:Breeding Journal, Species: Pseudochromis tapeinosoma
Thursday, April 19, 2012 9:53 AM
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Time for a brief update. This is day 5 for this batch of larvae, and they are still going strong! For these guys, rotifers + RotiGreen seems to really rock! Copepods, schmopepods (did I really just say that?). I will be giving them some copepods in the near future, but will stick with rotifers as their main diet for now. I suspect that the problems I had with the earlier batches were due to pH swings caused by the high pH of the live phyto, but I'm just guessing. I've fiddled with too many variables to really know exactly what has made the difference. I sacrificed one to the microscope gods yesterday. Comparing the un-resized images of younger larvae I took earlier, they really aren't growing that much in length right now, as much as they are plumping up. Here is a stiched image of one at 84 hours: I've basically been dripping in about 20-25 drops of RotiGreen Omega + the same amount of a stock ClorAm-X solution (12 tsp. per liter) diluted in appx. 500 ml of new, aged, half-strength salt water about twice a day. The rotifer density is staying around 23-30 per ml, and I've not had to add very many rotifers. It seems that the rotifers are growing in the BRT at a rate that more or less makes up for the rate at which they are being eaten. I have added a few rotifers about every other day, but not many. The half-strength salt water I'm dripping in is making up for evaporation, keeping the SG at 1.026. I'm watching the pH, and if it drops below 7.2, then I add about 5 drops of the Alkalinity part of B-Ionic 2-part buffer to the next feeding drip, and that slowly brings the pH back up to about 7.3. Whenever I drip stuff in, I make sure to keep the rate below 1 drop per second, and to drip into the bubbles from the air stone. The seed flat heaters I have under the BRT are keeping it between 78 and 79F, with no heater in the tub to cause any trouble. The parents' schedules is all wonky. I came home on Monday the 16th to find that she had laid eggs right by the divider, only 6 days after the last spawn. She kept looking at the egg mass over and over again, almost like she was pointing it out to me. The male was also at the divider, and all excited. I turkey basted the egg mass and gave it to the male, to see what he would do. He immediately ate them. Now I don't know what to do about their spawning schedule. I'll have to just keep an eye on them, and probably let them have "play dates" daily to see what transpires.
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Re:Breeding Journal, Species: Pseudochromis tapeinosoma
Thursday, April 19, 2012 9:43 PM
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KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK JIM!
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Re:Breeding Journal, Species: Pseudochromis tapeinosoma
Friday, April 27, 2012 12:55 PM
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Looks very good! Updates?
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Re:Breeding Journal, Species: Pseudochromis tapeinosoma
Friday, April 27, 2012 5:02 PM
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Sadly, yes. They were doing GREAT through day 7, when I fed them some Apocyclops panamensis. Day 8 they looked good, too, and I fed them more Apocyclops and also some Parvocalanus. There were still plenty of rotifers in there, and I kept adding the RotiGreen twice a day. I also started sprinkling in the tiniest amount of TDO A on Day 8. At the beginning of Day 8, I started hatching some Artemia for them. As of Sunday night (the night of Day 8), there had been very, very few deaths. I woke up on Monday (Day 9) to a LOT of dead larvae -- more than half had died during the night. At this point, the only changes in the protocol they had seen since hatch had been the introduction of the copepods, and the introduction of the small amount of TDO A. My suspicion was that the copepods may have brought some bad bacteria with them, perhaps? The dieoff happened basically two days after I introduced the copepods, and I also had massive dieoff two days after hatch in the earlier batches, when I had fed them copepods immediately upon hatching. I immediately dosed with Erythromycin, siphoned out as many dead larvae as I could find, and then fed the NHBBS, after treating the NHBBS with Hydrogen peroxide and then rinsing with fresh salt water. The larvae that survived continued to grow over the next couple of days, but there were fewer and fewer each day. I continued to dose with Erythromycin each day, and also to feed NHBBS, but by yesterday morning (Day 12), they were all dead. So, I made it to Day 11 with this batch.
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Re:Breeding Journal, Species: Pseudochromis tapeinosoma
Saturday, April 28, 2012 12:38 PM
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The parents are giving me another chance. Spawn today!
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Re:Breeding Journal, Species: Pseudochromis tapeinosoma
Saturday, April 28, 2012 1:03 PM
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Could it have been due to the NHBS?
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Re:Breeding Journal, Species: Pseudochromis tapeinosoma
Saturday, April 28, 2012 4:13 PM
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No, Kathy, actually the massive dieoff happened *before* I ever added any NHBBS. I started them hatching on Sunday. On Monday morning, I awoke to a large number of dead larvae. It was only a little later on Monday morning that I fed the first NHBBS to them.
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Re:Breeding Journal, Species: Pseudochromis tapeinosoma
Thursday, June 7, 2012 11:48 AM
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Time for a long overdue update. There was another hatch in early May, but this time the A. panamensis had contaminated my rotifers, and as a result the rotifer culture was doing very poorly. So, I didn't have enough rotifers for the larvae, and what rotifers I did have had a LOT of A. panamensis in them. I started dosing Erythromycin on day one. This time, there was no large, sudden dieoff at once, but just a steady dwindling, until the last larvae died on day 9. The parents have been spawning regularly, but life and poor timing has wreaked havoc with my efforts to raise the larvae. The next spawn was just before the solar eclipse in May, and since I was out of town for the eclipse the day of the hatch, I just let that one go. The next couple of spawns came sooner than expected -- their spawn cycle actually dropped to 7 days, which is unprecedented in my experience! As a result, I came home to eggs in the female's side of the divider one day, and another time, she was in the middle of laying them on her side again when I went to feed them. That time, I let her go on the male's side to finish laying, but for whatever reason, he wasn't interested in fertilizing that batch, and when she was done laying the egg mass, he ate it. That brings us to today. First, I'll mention the other pair of these dottybacks I got in late December last year. They have been separated, the female in the 210 and the male in the 65. This morning, I went downstairs to feed everybody, and there was no sign of the male in the 65. I don't know what happened to him, but he is nowhere to be found. Odd. So, I went to feed the breeding pair, and guess what? The male is dead in the corner. He was fine at the last feeding last night. Everything looked normal last night. Dead this morning. So, I lost two males in two different tanks the same day, both for unknown reasons. Ever get the feeling the Universe is trying to tell you something? That leaves me with two females, one in the breeder setup, and the other in the 210, where I'll probably never get her out without tearing down the whole tank. I'm depressed.
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Re:Breeding Journal, Species: Pseudochromis tapeinosoma
Thursday, June 7, 2012 9:24 PM
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UPDATE! The male from the 65 has been found, alive, in the sump!!!! This project just got a reprieve.
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Re:Breeding Journal, Species: Pseudochromis tapeinosoma
Thursday, June 7, 2012 9:42 PM
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Originally Posted by JimWelsh
UPDATE! The male from the 65 has been found, alive, in the sump!!!! This project just got a reprieve. Awesome news!
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Re:Breeding Journal, Species: Pseudochromis tapeinosoma
Saturday, June 9, 2012 8:57 AM
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Good! I hope they get back to their amorous ways soon.
--Andy, the bucket man. "Not to know the mandolin is to argue oneself unknown...." --Clara Lanza, 1886
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