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Re: Breeding Journal, Species: Pseudochromis fridmani (Orchid Dottyback)
Monday, May 13, 2013 12:34 PM
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Originally Posted by shannpeach
Should I be concerned that the time between spawns went from 10 days to 6 days to 5 days? 5 days between spawns seems super short... I mean, its nice to have another chance so soon, but it is also a bit worrisome. Could this be an effect of the copper? Mine stuck to a 7 day cycle most of the time. As long as yours are spawning I wouldn't worry about it.
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Re: Breeding Journal, Species: Pseudochromis fridmani (Orchid Dottyback)
Saturday, May 18, 2013 9:50 AM
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The last egg mass got all fungus-y by the day of the hatch. I will try the same tumbling method again, but keep the flow higher in the beginning and sterilize the eggs with hydrogen peroxide the first two days (maybe the third too) instead of leaving methylene blue in the entire time. No spawn yesterday, but I am hoping this weekend I will get another egg ball to play with. The last larva from the hatch on 5-10 disappeared yesterday.
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Re: Breeding Journal, Species: Pseudochromis fridmani (Orchid Dottyback)
Monday, May 20, 2013 10:36 AM
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There was another spawn last night, but it was a super small egg ball. I may have had better luck tumbling a small egg ball because there are just fewer eggs to keep oxygenated in the center, but I decided to just let the male keep this one for practice. This spawn was 7 days since the last one.
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Re: Breeding Journal, Species: Pseudochromis fridmani (Orchid Dottyback)
Monday, May 27, 2013 7:39 PM
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Another spawn on Sunday, May 26th. I didn't remove it immediately (I forgot) but I took the egg ball this morning so the male had it for about the first 12 hours, and during that time it was exposed to copper. I am not sure how detrimental that will be. I sterilized using hydrogen peroxide (2.5mL in 500mL of ASW) for 15 minutes and then put it in the tumbler set-up. The egg ball is small-ish and stays at the top of the tumbler with very little air, whereas the last one stayed toward the bottom with high air flow pulling water through.
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Re: Breeding Journal, Species: Pseudochromis fridmani (Orchid Dottyback)
Thursday, May 30, 2013 1:39 PM
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Well, yesterday it became clear that the eggs were bad (they were white). So yet another tumbling failure. Not sure if the problem this time was the actual tumbling itself, or if it was because the eggs were left in the copper tank overnight. Luckily, the copper will start being removed from the broodstock system next week or the one after, so hopefully I won't need to steal the eggs from him in the future.
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Re: Breeding Journal, Species: Pseudochromis fridmani (Orchid Dottyback)
Sunday, June 2, 2013 8:24 PM
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Another spawn today. I removed it very shortly after they spawned and the male put up a bit of a fight for them. This time I am doing something a little different. I put the tumbler in the 3 gallon (or so) fish bowl/orb with a heater and a bag of cuprisorb. I put two drops of methylene blue in also. We shall see if the additional water volume and the cuprisorb help.
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Re: Breeding Journal, Species: Pseudochromis fridmani (Orchid Dottyback)
Friday, July 19, 2013 11:30 AM
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They have been spawning reliably every 7 days, with the exception of one week where it was 8 days apart. So now I think they usually spawn on Mondays instead of Sundays. Monday (about 6 PM or so) I pulled an egg ball, but it is possible that they spawned on Sunday. I rinsed in fresh ASW and sterilized using hydrogen peroxide, then washed again and then put them in an inverted 2L soda bottle (cut in half, with the bottom being used as a base). I drilled a hole in the cap just large enough for airline tubing to fit through and pushed it about 1/4 inch into the "tumbler." The egg ball stayed in pretty great shape and tumbled better than I expected. The morning of the 18th I woke up to a completely broken apart egg ball but I just left the eggs tumbling. I checked the eggs again around 7PM on the 18th and noticed several had hatched. By 10PM the majority of the good eggs had hatch and the larvae were put into a BRT with about 7 gallons of water in it (17 gallon capacity), an airstone and a strip light over it (left on 24/7 at this point). The tub had been running for about a week and has a great population of rotifers, and several different types of pods cruising around in it (just tisbe, psuedocyclops, tigriopus, and maybe one other that are cultured as a polyglot). The water was tinted with nanno and chaetoceros. This morning there were plenty of larvae cruising around and in the few minutes I took to check on them, I saw several striking at food I would say there are at least 100, but it's sort of a wild guess.
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Re: Breeding Journal, Species: Pseudochromis fridmani (Orchid Dottyback)
Friday, July 19, 2013 3:48 PM
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Congrats,Shannon! I am letting the father take care of incubation,but eggs vanish somewhere in the 1-3 days range.Wonder if I should start pulling/tumbling them
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Re: Breeding Journal, Species: Pseudochromis fridmani (Orchid Dottyback)
Monday, July 22, 2013 9:11 AM
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Originally Posted by luis a m
I am letting the father take care of incubation,but eggs vanish somewhere in the 1-3 days range.Wonder if I should start pulling/tumbling them If the eggs are disappearing anyway, then I think it's worth a shot tumbling them. Even when the egg mass broke apart I could tell there were still some good eggs and they still hatched. I ended up with over a hundred larvae to tinker with, which is far far better than none I have tried three different tumblers so far. The first "tumbler" was just a flask with an airline in it. It worked, sort of, but less than 50 hatched. The next was more of an airlift type tumbler made from parts of a sponge filter and I think that had the most potential, but I am pretty sure my plastic tumbler parts got contaminated with copper or something because the eggs always died a couple days in. This last attempt with the 2L bottle worked better than I expected and it's what I will likely do with the egg ball I should be getting tonight. I will likely try to build a new airlift type tumbler out of PVC and clear tubing sometime soon-ish, but not a priority at this point. The larvae are in Day 4 right now, and still seem to be doing well. I can't tell if there has been a lot of mortality since they are in the BRT and its difficult to see stuff on the bottom even with a flashlight, but it doesn't seem like the numbers have dropped significantly. Can anyone tell me when the starvation point is for these guys? I think I will be on edge until I know that that first critical point is passed. Or is every day a critical day with these? I see them striking at food, but they don't seem to have that peanut shape from the top that clown larvae get. Is that bad? I suppose I could pull some out and see from the side if they have silver bellies. I have re-read Moe's Orchid Journal book and on some runs he would feed nhbbs as early as a couple days, in small amounts. Has anyone tried that?
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Re: Breeding Journal, Species: Pseudochromis fridmani (Orchid Dottyback)
Tuesday, July 23, 2013 10:51 AM
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Another egg ball last night, spawned before 7PM. I pulled it, rinsed it, sterilized using 2.4mL of hydrogen peroxide in 475 mL of ASW, rinsed again, and put it in the inverted 2L bottle tumbler. This morning the eggs were on the bottom and the air seemed to have slowed down so I turned it back up and got the egg ball moving again. As of this morning it still looked like most of it was alright. The larvae from the first hatch are on day 5 now and *seem* to be doing well and eating.
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Re: Breeding Journal, Species: Pseudochromis fridmani (Orchid Dottyback)
Wednesday, July 24, 2013 9:24 AM
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Yesterday (Day 5) I did a water change/bottom siphon. It was actually pretty easy to avoid sucking up any larvae because none of them cruise around the bottom. I pulled out about two gallons (I estimate there is about 7 or 8 gallons in there) and only sucked up one larva. I did, however, remove a TON of copepods which is sad. So I ended up adding some more pods from the polyglot culture to hopefully make up for it. It would be great if the pod population was good enough to keep them going without having to add a lot (or any) BBS. I added 3 gallons of freshly mixed ASW back in via airline tubing (no dripping...just draining quickly). I saved the water that I removed so I can harvest the pods and rots from it and use it to seed a new BRT for the next hatch that I hope to get. The tumbling eggs still look good and I am hoping to see some eyes develop sometime today. If the eggs go bad, then I will try to get mainly just the pods out of the waste bucket and either add them back to the BRT with the dotty larvae or use them for the clingfish tub.
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Re: Breeding Journal, Species: Pseudochromis fridmani (Orchid Dottyback)
Wednesday, July 24, 2013 10:29 AM
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Hard to really see, but here are some of the larvae cruising around in their bucket:
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Re: Breeding Journal, Species: Pseudochromis fridmani (Orchid Dottyback)
Thursday, July 25, 2013 3:45 PM
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The egg ball looks shot. No eyes ever developed and nearly all the eggs look white-ish, so I tossed them. The larvae are on Day 7 now. They got a 5 gallon or so water change (of 7 or 8 gallons). I siphoned the bottom and then put the siphon in a 400uM sieve so I would pull out only rotifers and no larvae. I added back in ~5 gallons and also used chaetoceros to tint the water again. They seem active and strong and I would say that there are still maybe 100. My original estimation of the number that hatched was definitely way off. There were probably 200 or so, maybe more.
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Re: Breeding Journal, Species: Pseudochromis fridmani (Orchid Dottyback)
Wednesday, July 31, 2013 2:59 PM
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Shannon,this is a very interesting subject as many breeders are having problems hatching dotty eggs and it is not clear if we must blame egg quality,parent eating them or poor artificial incubation technique. I have started working on that,but dont mean to HJ your thread : http://www.marinebreeder.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=211&t=11853
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Re: Breeding Journal, Species: Pseudochromis fridmani (Orchid Dottyback)
Wednesday, July 31, 2013 3:24 PM
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It's not a hijack at all, since I always have to artificially incubate these eggs...the more information the better! Are you sterilizing the egg ball before you start tumbling? This last egg ball (from Monday evening) I did not sterilize (it was late when I pulled it and I was lazy. Tsk tsk to me) and it fell apart more quickly than previous attempts when I did sterilize. So far, I prefer the hydrogen peroxide short term bath over the methylene blue during incubation/tumbling. I plan to make a new (definitely never exposed to copper!) tumbler out of a sponge filter again to try that method next week with the new egg ball.
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Re: Breeding Journal, Species: Pseudochromis fridmani (Orchid Dottyback)
Wednesday, July 31, 2013 3:53 PM
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I had no problem getting eggs from my original pair to hatch. The male tended to them and I pulled and hatched the eggs when they were ready. Getting them to settlement was more difficult.
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Re: Breeding Journal, Species: Pseudochromis fridmani (Orchid Dottyback)
Thursday, August 1, 2013 4:07 PM
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Originally Posted by Fishtal
I had no problem getting eggs from my original pair to hatch. The male tended to them and I pulled and hatched the eggs when they were ready. Getting them to settlement was more difficult. Tal,some breeders brood their eggs until hatching,while others don´t.Perhaps a matter of luck?
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Re: Breeding Journal, Species: Pseudochromis fridmani (Orchid Dottyback)
Monday, August 5, 2013 9:54 AM
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I am artificially incubating because there is copper in the system, otherwise I would be happy to let the male keep them until hatch. I also have another pair of dottys that spawn occasionally, but the male eats the eggs within 15 minutes of spawning. So, if I get lucky enough to catch them in the act again, I will steal those eggs and artificially incubate them too. A brief update...the pair spawned yesterday. The female was HUGE during the morning feedings, and by the last feeding of the day was slim so I checked the male's den, and sure enough, he had a nice size egg ball in there. I stole it, sterilized for 15 minutes with hydrogen peroxide and put it in the inverted 2L tumbler. I had planned to make a new tumbler, but the spawn came early and I wasn't prepared, so the egg ball went into the old tumbler. I turned the air up a bit higher than I normally would to make sure the eggs wouldn't settle on the first night (like I've had problems with before) and luckily this morning they were still tumbling around and intact. Fingers crossed that they will make it to Wednesday for a hatch. The larvae from July 18th are still going, although the numbers have decreased down to 20 or so. They are on day 18 now. The temperature in my house has been lower than I would like (around 74 for much of this run) and the BRT has no heater, so I am sure development has been slower. They seem to be taking nhbbs and most are quite active, so I am hoping they continue to do well. I saw one chomp down a copepod, so hopefully they are also eating lots of those up (there are tons of tisbe in there...the bottom is just crawling with them).
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Re: Breeding Journal, Species: Pseudochromis fridmani (Orchid Dottyback)
Monday, August 5, 2013 2:59 PM
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Shannon,following your advice,I began stealing/tumbling the egg balls,and indeed eggs were at least partly fertile.But for some reason they die at some time short before hatching.See pics in my thread linked above. If this is a bacterial issue,there are two ways to explore;keeping the eggs in an antibacterial treated medium or else give them short baths.As I am tumbling with a running system flow,the 2nd choice is the only possible.
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Re: Breeding Journal, Species: Pseudochromis fridmani (Orchid Dottyback)
Monday, August 5, 2013 3:50 PM
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Originally Posted by luis a m
Shannon,following your advice,I began stealing/tumbling the egg balls,and indeed eggs were at least partly fertile.But for some reason they die at some time short before hatching.See pics in my thread linked above. If this is a bacterial issue,there are two ways to explore;keeping the eggs in an antibacterial treated medium or else give them short baths.As I am tumbling with a running system flow,the 2nd choice is the only possible. I would at least give them a short (15 minute or so) hydrogen peroxide bath before you start tumbling. And if you are tumbling using system water, maybe pull the eggs for a short bath every day as long as the egg ball is intact? I always plan to do this, but then forget to, and once the egg ball busts up there isn't much that can really be done. Would it be possible for you to tumble in a separate container? I'm not sure if that would help or not. Have you looked at this thread http://www.mbisite.org/Forums/tm.aspx?m=82843 particularly fin farm's tumbler set up? I've looked at your thread, but it won't allow me to see the attached images and I can't remember my log-in info. I sent a password request but didn't get it yet. Once I do get it, I will look at the images
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