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Re: Breeding Journal, Species: Dunckerocampus baldwini
Monday, January 7, 2013 4:42 AM
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That's great news!
Interesting observation about the fry - I also noticed the s-swimming of the dragonface batch I had a month or so ago (also acquired from a "in the bag" birth); and the more gliding/going with the flow of D. excisus fry. I'm curious how some of the other flagtail pipefish fry behave.
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Re: Breeding Journal, Species: Dunckerocampus baldwini
Tuesday, January 8, 2013 12:10 AM
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Two of the fry from the first hatch lasted 4 days. The third one lasted 6 days.
Both males are still holding the vast majority of their eggs. Both males do have a couple of eggs that have disappeared (or been "absorbed"?), but the number of missing eggs is very low.
The male in Tank #1 is due to hatch tomorrow night, if the 10 day incubation period holds true. The male in Tank #2 is due on Thursday, given the same assumption.
The eggs go through a rather dramatic color change during incubation. At first, they are bright orange in color. As days progress, they become more whitish/light grey in color. On about day number 6 or 7, they start to darken. By day 9 or 10, they are a very dark grey.
I am expecting a shipment of Parvocalanus (a very kind gift from Dr. Andrew Rhyne) to arrive tomorrow. My experience with Doryrhamphus excisus was that I had higher survival rates when Parvocalanus was given as a first food, rather than Apocyclops. I'm hoping that this will hold true for this species. Additionally, these fry are coming from parents who now appear to be a little more well conditioned. Time will tell!
The two males in Tank #3 are kinda "status quo". I've only been feeding them frozen, and they are both still alive. I still see the one taking frozen out of the water column, and the other, I only see snicking off the bottom. I honestly don't pay that much attention to them. Frankly, I just consider them "backup males" right now.
The pair in Tank #1 has been worrying me, quite frankly. Although the male is still holding most of his eggs, these two fish are much more reluctant to eat frozen than the other pair. I have been "breaking down" and feeding them various live feeds from time to time, but my Tigriopus culture isn't really keeping up with the demand, and I have had a couple of Artemia failures (bleached one batch of cysts too long while decapping and killed them, airline failure caused massive suffocation when enriching in another case, etc.) that have significantly reduced the live food available to them. They do eat *some* frozen, but the amount of snicking I'm seeing with this pair leaves me worried. My long-term plan for them is to get my Artemia ducks back in a a row, and then cold turkey them onto frozen, like I did with the others. I have noticed that they will eagerly take Artemia that is up to perhaps a week old, but the larger, faster-swimming Artemia just don't interest them. They do express some interest in the "juvenile" size Artemia, but just grow weary of watching them swim in spirals, and seem to never take them.
The pair in Tank #2 is eating frozen food very well now. The male will eat frozen cyclops out of the water column with great enthusiasm, and while the female is still almost always snicking it off the bottom, she is still seen eating enough that I am encouraged that she will eventually come around, and become an enthusiastic frozen food eater. I have high hopes for them!
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Re: Breeding Journal, Species: Dunckerocampus baldwini
Wednesday, January 9, 2013 1:37 AM
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I fed the pair in Tank #1 some Dan's Feed enriched BBS tonight. They scarfed it up! That male is due to hatch tonight. When they eat, these fish often turn 180 degrees (upside down), and snick food off the bottom. While the male was doing this tonight, I got a good look at his eggs. It appears that he probably has only about 50% of the original egg mass left tonight. Not entirely surprising, since he hasn't been eating that well. If the idea proposed in the scientific papers that Tami posted apply to this species, then he may very well have been absorbing nutrition from some of the embryos he has been carrying.
I have a very dense, healthy culture of Parvocalanus that arrived today from Dr. Andrew Rhyne (many thanks, Andy!), so I have a combination of Parvocalanus and Apocyclops to feed the fry that I expect to hatch tonight from this male. Considering the missing eggs I described above, I expect perhaps about 25 or so fry from this hatch.
The male in Tank #2 is eating very well. Nonetheless, I also see some missing eggs from his abdomen. He is due to hatch two nights from now. We shall see how many eggs he has left on Thursday night, when his hatch is due.
I plan to use appx. 1/3 of the Parvocalanus that Andy sent me on the hatch I anticipate tonight. Another 1/3 is earmarked for the hatch I anticipate on Thursday night. The remaining 1/3, I will try to culture for future use.
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Re: Breeding Journal, Species: Dunckerocampus baldwini
Wednesday, January 9, 2013 4:00 AM
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The hatch was right on time tonight, right at 10 days. I snagged appx. 20 +/- fry in my Chad Vossen larval snagger, about 1 hour after lights out. Transferred them into the same 2 gallon kreisel setup I have previously described in my Doryrhamphus excisus journal. Added both Parvocalanus and Apocyclops, plus live Isochrysis, and set the airline and the filtered light on them just as described for the Bluestripes. Pictures and more updates later.
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Re: Breeding Journal, Species: Dunckerocampus baldwini
Thursday, January 10, 2013 2:06 AM
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Re: Breeding Journal, Species: Dunckerocampus baldwini
Thursday, January 10, 2013 2:12 AM
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You'll get it conquered soon. 
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Re: Breeding Journal, Species: Dunckerocampus baldwini
Friday, January 11, 2013 1:28 AM
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Great pics. At least you are getting them in focus.
Cute little guys.
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Re: Breeding Journal, Species: Dunckerocampus baldwini
Friday, January 11, 2013 1:50 AM
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nail it Jim, nail it!
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Re: Breeding Journal, Species: Dunckerocampus baldwini
Friday, January 11, 2013 12:27 PM
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Thanks, everybody, for the encouagement! Well, just like the last time Tank #2 hatched, I waited and waited, and saw no fry. I checked several times throughout the night, but saw no fry, and I could see that the male was still holding dark eggs. Finally, at 5:00 AM, I gave up and turned the filter back on. Of course, at 8:00 AM I awoke to find 8 fry in the snagger! This was a partial hatch, as the male is still holding some dark eggs, and I see no new orange eggs. I'm not sure how many I lost to the filter. Rather than set up a whole kreisel just for those 8 fry, I added them to the existing larval kreisel from the hatch from two days ago. I also added more phyto to that kreisel. The male in Tank #1 has absorbed almost all of his eggs from the spawn just two mornings ago. It looks like I'm not going to get any to hatch from that spawn. This pair really needs to get weaned onto frozen better. I think I need to get really mean with them. The 2-day old fry (now working on day 3) are looking good this morning. Nice full guts, and good strong "posture" in the water, without excessive fast "S" squiggle swimming. For those of you who didn't see the image on Facebook yesterday, here is a nice shot I got of one of them yesterday morning: 
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Re: Breeding Journal, Species: Dunckerocampus baldwini
Friday, January 11, 2013 1:24 PM
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wow jim great pic
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Re: Breeding Journal, Species: Dunckerocampus baldwini
Friday, January 11, 2013 1:49 PM
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Go man, go! I think tank #1 just needs time. Your going on ... what? ... a month and a half or so?
--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: Dunckerocampus baldwini
Saturday, January 12, 2013 5:10 AM
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Great pictures! Very exciting!!!
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Re: Breeding Journal, Species: Dunckerocampus baldwini
Saturday, January 12, 2013 3:44 PM
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The rest of the eggs the male in Tank #2 was carrying hatched sometime last night. I got about 12 fry from this hatch, and once again, added them to the single kreisel. I vacuumed the bottom a little bit with one of my used phyto rigid+flexible airline rigs, and topped off with about 150 ml of dense Isochrysis + 100 ml of RO water. The copepod population in the kreisel seems to be doing OK -- lots of both Parvocalanus and Apocyclops can be readily seen. Lots of hunting and snicking, too. The older fry are easily distinguished from the ones 2 or 3 days younger by their longer snouts and overall larger (thicker, more so than longer) size. They are hard to count, but out of the total of about 40 fry I've put into that tank over the last 3 days, I'd say that appx. 25 are alive right now. I believe I've had some pretty harsh transfer losses from the last two nights' hatches.
The male in Tank #2 is holding new eggs this morning, but it is a sparse, weak spawn. The female in that tank is just starting to snick the cyclops out of the water column, I suspect she just needs to eat better.
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Re: Breeding Journal, Species: Dunckerocampus baldwini
Saturday, January 12, 2013 9:15 PM
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Congratulations on your excellent success! Do you start with a sterilized kreisel for the larvae? How do you manage water quality for them?
check out Kathy's Clowns, llc website: http://kathysclowns.com Captive bred clownfish and more (Wholesale to the trade.)
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Re: Breeding Journal, Species: Dunckerocampus baldwini
Sunday, January 13, 2013 2:13 AM
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I am using the protocol I developed for Doryrhamphus excisus. You can find it here: http://www.mbisite.org/Forums/fb.ashx?m=63782 I am not exactly sterilizing the fishbowls I use for the kreisels, I just wash them very well with very hot water. The water quality is primarily maintained by using live Isochrysis for my "green water". I do use a small amount, like 5 drops or so, of AmQuel Plus daily, just as insurance. We shall see how much tweaking this protocol needs for whatever differences there are between this species and the Bluestripes.
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Re: Breeding Journal, Species: Dunckerocampus baldwini
Sunday, January 13, 2013 11:52 PM
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Today's update: I awoke this morning to the fry in the kreisel not looking just "right". Their bellies weren't quite as full as I'd like them to look, and I saw few of them snicking. Many of them were looking a bit listless. I freaked!
First thing I did was to do an ammonia test. It showed an undetectable ammonia level. Not surprising, given the combination of live phyto and also the use of AmQuel Plus over the last few days.
I did stay up until about 2:00 AM this morning, and the lights on their tank did stay on until then. I wondered if the issue was some sort of sleep deprivation issue, but in my previous conversations with Dan Underwood about this issue with seahorse fry, he didn't consider this to be a big issue, if I recall correctly (which I sometimes don't do).
I finally did notice that the copepod density in the water column where the fry were was relatively sparse. There were quite a few copepods, mostly Apocyclops, that were hugging the lowest 1/2" or so of the fishbowl. I did my best to stir these up into the water column. I did have a rather dense culture of Apocyclops that I've been holding in a 500 ml beaker, ready for the hatch from Tank #2 that was expected last Thursday night, but ended up being spread over two nights. I siphoned some detritus and a few dead pipe fry from the bottom of the kreisel, and replaced the water I had removed with the dense Apocyclops culture. Within a couple of hours, I saw the usual snicking pattern, and also saw the nice, yellow bellies on the fry that indicates to me that they are eating nicely.
I have found that it is very important to pay close attention to the fry-- to make sure that they are eating -- to make sure that they have full guts, and that they are actually successfully snicking live food items. While I previously had a theory that the Bluestripe pipefish (Doryrhamphus excisus) did better for me when fed Parvocalanus instead of Apocyclops as a first food because of the smaller nauplii size, what I have been observing with these D. baldwini fry is that they seem to prefer adult Parvocalanus, rather than the nauplii. My experience today leads me to believe that they will take larger Apocyclops, too, but there seems to be something about the Parvocalanus, whether it be the shape, or the swimming pattern, or whatever, that makes the fry more inclined to take them, rather than the Apocyclops. Whatever it is, it doesn't seem to have anything to do with the nauplius size, since they are focusing on the adults.
Meanwhile, I am pleased to report that the male in Tank #2 now has a very full abdomen of eggs! While he had a very sparse set of eggs yesterday, it appears that the gaps in his flaps were filled by a second egg transfer this morning. Nice to know that they may carry eggs simultaneously from multiple egg transfers on different days. I have a relatively young pair of D. excisus in another tank that recently started breeding, and I similarly noticed that the male was carrying just a few eggs one day last week, and that just two days later, his abdomen was much more full of eggs. Very similar thing happening with both fish.
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Re: Breeding Journal, Species: Dunckerocampus baldwini
Tuesday, January 15, 2013 1:09 AM
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We are now at the end of Day 6. I still have appx. 18 fry alive (hard to count them in the "green water"). I think that most of the losses are from the later hatches, and that that the vast majority of the survivors are from the hatch from Tank #1 on the night of the 8th.
I've been apprehensive about today, because it was after Day 6 that I lost the last fry from the weak hatch of 3 fry I first had. These guys, though, are doing MUCH better. I see full bellies on almost all of them. It is really cool at night, when they are light primarily from the fluorescent light from above, you can clearly see the dark backbone of the fry, with a bright pink stripe below that, running from just behind the snout to the location of the anal fin. The thickness and brightness of that pink stripe is a good indication of how well that particular fry is eating.
The food in their bowl is almost exclusively Apocyclops at this point. There are a few Parvocalanus, but they are outnumbered by at least 10:1, if not 20:1 by the Apocyclops now. There is a tendency for the Apocyclops to congregate in a rather dense cloud very near the bottom, on the "leeward" side of the bottom, relative to the circular current created by the bubbles from the airline. A couple of times a day, I will turn the air way up, and wiggle the rigid airline down around the bottom, so as to stir up the cloud into the water column, hoping to make more food items available to the fry swimming up there. The fry tend to primarily hang out in the "leeward" half of the upper half of the fishbowl. Still, even without doing this, there are plenty of Apocyclops up in the water column to be available as food.
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Re: Breeding Journal, Species: Dunckerocampus baldwini
Tuesday, January 15, 2013 9:24 AM
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 Originally Posted by Nice to know that they may carry eggs simultaneously from multiple egg transfers on different days. Yes. That would explain the partial hatching that you've been getting.
--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: Dunckerocampus baldwini
Tuesday, January 15, 2013 11:17 AM
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Well, not necessarily.
The male in Tank #2 received a complete egg transfer on January 1st, and I saw no change on the 2nd. Nonetheless, that batch did hatch out on different nights.
It was the subsequent spawn, after the hatch that was complete, that occurred over two days.
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Re: Breeding Journal, Species: Dunckerocampus baldwini
Tuesday, January 15, 2013 12:11 PM
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Keep up the great work Jim - success with this species will be a great way to kick off the new year.
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