Breeding Journal, Species: Synchiropus sp. "Ruby Red"

The larvae were quite numerous this time, and the results of two days of spawning. They are keeping the damsel larvae company in the pretzel jar. Today is days 2 and 3.

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Excited to hear you got a pair of Ruby Reds Kathy!

Thanks, me too.  Excited that they are getting along so well .
 
 

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So funny you mention that Kathy. I noticed this species is particularly peaceful among dragonets. I have been thinking of possibly putting together a group of 2-3 males and several females. Finding females has been my biggest challenge.

I was lucky to find a pair so enamoured of each other.  They were flirting in the store I got them from.

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Are you quarantining with any meds or just hyposalinity or what?

I have had mixed luck getting these through quarantine. Several males have died on me, eating very well and still losing weight rapidly. I'm afraid to just throw them in with my quarantined and conditioned mandarins, I'd hate to lose the fish I've put so much work into already but establishing a set of these has been a real challenge for me.

I got these from a store that had kept them for a couple of weeks in their coral reef tank.  They were flirting at the time. They appear perfectly healthy and are eating the pods in my tank, and I saw them snick at some frozen food I put in there.  They are sharing the tank with a couple of peppermint shrimps. This evening I witnessed the female make an enormous poop, so I know she's eating and digesting. Her belly is round like she could be gravid.  The male is quite healthy looking as well, and is certainly interested in the female.  I see no reason to medicate them.
 
I have several small tanks in my basement, so I will often QT new purchases in the tank they will end up in. I have very simple systems, and I've made a choice not to connect them, so each tank is individual and doesn't share water with its neighbors.
 
I think I just got dumb luck with these, but I haven't had them very long, so there's no telling what will happen.

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Thanks for sharing! My systems aren't connected either but I do group my projects by compatibility for the sake of space and presentation. It's a small apartment so I'm trying to make the best of it, and the only rule is everything except what's in my culture station (storage closet) has to be presentable lol

I'm so jealous you're going to crack these way before I will at this rate lol good luck!

Who knows what will happen.  You have as great a chance as I do.

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Today I saw the new broodstock eagerly eat some frozen mysis, just the eyes...
Larval eyes were clear this morning, pigmented this evening. I added phyto and parvo nauplii as usual.  The jar could likely be siphoned, but I'm afraid of sucking up larvae, so I'll wait a little.

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More active darting by the dragonets.  I added 200 ml live ISO as the jar seemed a little clear for the first time today. I sampled 100 ml and found lots of parvo juveniles, nauplii and eggs, still , so I'll just keep on doing what I'm doing by adding nauplii and eggs twice a day.

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This evening I took these pictures a couple of hours after a feeding:
 
and this one with a full gut!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 
We have eating! Eating is good.
Happy Kathy!
 

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That first picture could be of the ones that were hatched a day later than the others. Remember there was a spawn on the fourth and one on the fifth that got mixed together.  So today is day 4 and day 5.  Day 7 is the day they always die, so I have to wait 3 more days to find out if I am doing anything right.  Still, I am thrilled at this milestone.

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Just to clarify, this group is only being fed parvo at this time?

Great photos as always!!! Keep it up!

I'm sure there are ciliates in there, but yes, parvo is what i feed them.  It's the only thing I can culture that is small enough.

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Is there any info on the gape of their mouths right now?

Not that I know of, but the size of the larvae is less than 2mm in length, by looking.  They are so tiny.

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It is great news that they are eating and have full stomachs.  

Good job this is so neat!

Thanks guys! next milestone in a few days.  I wonder what tomorrow will bring.
Broodstock were doing the paired rise dance that mandarins do, this evening.  No eggs, though the female sure looked gravid enough.  I hope the tank is tall enough for them.  If not, I'm freeing up some 20 gallon tall tanks in the next few weeks.  It would be worth it to put them in one, if they have not spawned by then.

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today is day 5 and 6, and there is still a goodly number of larvae in the jar, though they might be a little decreased.  The next two days will tell if I've made any progress.
 
They still drift a lot, striking occasionally.  I've tried to get pictures but the ones I can catch are not the biggest ones, and perhaps not the smartest ones, since they will allow me to catch them….I haven't been able to really confirm stuff in their guts.  They do have color in their bodies and the halo of fin fold stuff is disappearing or disappeared.  
This morning I siphoned out 2 liters to remove some of the grown up P. crassirostris and supplement my cultures.  Still lots of nauplii, and I continue to add nauplii and eggs once or twice a day.  When I added in the new saltwater to replace the 2 liters, I dripped it in along with about 200ml dark isochrysis.  I really should siphon the bottom of the pretzel jar, but I don't want to disturb things too much at this critical time when they have been known to die en masse.

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Kathy,
 
You mention adding parvo eggs.  Do you have a link (or other info) on how you collect the eggs?  I've never even looked at my parvo cultures for eggs.

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

They collect on the same filter as the nauplii, about 37 microns.  You have to filter your whole parvo culture container, because when the eggs are released, they sink to the bottom of it.

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I was home from work today, so I did some work in the fish room. I siphoned the ruby QT, because the shrimps are also in there, and they are messy.  Cleaned the sponge filter and partitioned the tank so the Rubys are on one side of a perferated partition and the shrimps are on the other side.  Everyone is getting along really well, but I feel the shrimps are taking all the non living food, and I want the train the Rubys to eat frozen stuff. They eat pods just fine right now, the tank is full of them, but it won't last forever.  I added a sponge filter that has been residing in the sump of my most prolific source of pods, to supplement whatever is still there in the tank. I have a feeding jar, and the rubys go in it with some regularity, but I have yet to see them eat anything there. 
From the stuff I siphoned out, I let it settle and decanted the water into a 37 micron filter to recover any pods that might still be there.  They like detritus. I suppose I ought to order some tisbe.  I have too many cultures….
 

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Another 2 liter water change, returning the nauplii to the jar.  The larvae have some die off, but there are still a lot of them in the jar.  Some are "thin" and others look as though they are bigger and beefier.  Most spend a lot of time just drifting, punctuated by a darting movement. Tomorrow is the day when some may live, or they all will die. See you tomorrow.
 

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You have us sitting on the edge of our seat!!!

They did not die at days 7 and 8.
 
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!Huzzah!!!!!!!!!!!!
 
Happy Kathy.
 
Looked at 3 under the scope and they are active, 2 had full bellies, all open their mouths, and their gape seems almost as wide as their tiny bodies.  They have color on their bodies, with spots. 
 
In my sampling and scoping, I have yet to see a damsel larva. Either they are too fast to capture, too out-numbered by the Ruby population, never at the jar's surface where I'm sampling, or dead.  Hard to see how they could die, when all these Rubys are alive, unless the broodstock gave me bad eggs, and the larvae were just weak.  There were not a lot of damsel eggs, so I'm hoping I just can't capture them at the moment.
 
Yay!  Rubys at 7 and 8 days, alive and eating! Yay!

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A happy problem: doing a water change, and siphoning up larvae because they cannot be avoided.  I rescued these from the 120micron filter along with a high concentration of P. crassirostris adults:

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https://youtu.be/s27Y28QzUNI

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Nothing like being utterly surrounded by your food!  Those adult Parvos look great.  You must have some nice Iso cultures running at full steam.  Thanks for the pic and the video of the larvae.   I can't wait to see them go through meta.
 
Chad

Thanks Chad, those are actually too big for them to eat.  They try, though. They are still feeding on nauplii.  
 
The adult P. crassirostris are from the 2 liters I siphoned out of a 2 gallon jar, and concentrated on the 120um filter to about 10 ml. You are looking at a drop of that.
 
Chad, can I grow parvo without light in a covered bucket? would be most convenient...
 

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Nice vid.  Those little guys seem to have a good sized mouth (the larva on the left is easily seen opening its mouth).  Are they still only about 2mm?

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

 
Yeah, I understand that they aren't eating the adults; I can see from the photo that they don't quite have the mouth gape to handle the job of eating mature adult Parovs.  I was implying that all of those adult females are releasing eggs that are hatching as nauplii and getting consumed by the larvae. 
 
You can definitely grow Parvo without a direct light source and a cover over the bucket.

Nice!Holding our breath here
What size/shape is a pretzel jar?.Same as pickle jars?.Or flat sided,like those godfish bowls used for kreisels?.
Why you favoured a jar vs a larger vessel,like a BRT?.For ease of observation?.Or you plan to run many jars as replicates for experimental work?.
I find hard to scoop something out of jars,since my arm thru the mouth blocks most of the sight...

Luis, nice to see you here. You are allowed one breath, since we are over the first hurdle: starvation.  My excitement is only tempered by the sure knowledge that there will be more hurdles.
The pretzel jar:
Why a pretzel jar? Ramon Villaverde raised the angelfish eggs from his public aquarium Rising Tide leftovers in a pretzel jar. Yes he did. He showed us how at MBI Workshop 2015.
I had a pretzel jar saved from my failed attempts to raise Reidi seahorses some time ago. I have 3 fishbowl kreisels I obtained from the IMAC raffle some years ago.  They were used to hold raffle tickets. They were going to be thrown away, when I snagged them.
 
I've been trying shrimps, and currently have one with L. boggessi and one with L. wurdemanni larvae.  The third one I couldn't find until recently.  I found it because we are clearing out our basement so we can get a perimeter drain installed and a sump pump.  Because we are clearing out out basement, I don't have the space for a BrT and I needed something I could move, should I need to.  I thought, Ramone raised tiny larvae in a pretzel jar, so I thought I should try it.
 
It is a clear plastic 2 gallon wide mouth jar, 6.25 inches in diameter, and about 12 inches tall.  It is cylindrical.  As far as I know, it can only be obtained by buying bulk snack foods from a discount club store like Sam's or Costco. Remove the snacks, and don't dispose of the disposable jar!
 

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I know, right? I love it when they yawn.  I should measure them next time I fish some out for pictures. 

check out Kathy's Clowns, llc website:
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To further answer Luis' question:
It requires less numbers of P. crassirostris nauplii to keep 2 gallons supplied than it does to keep 6-12 gallons supplied.  My parvo cultures were not ready for that kind of production, though I am working on it.  My friend, Tom Priscu, here on MBI, gave me the eggs, which I was a bit reluctant to take, because we are working on the basement, but I had a pretzel jar set up for the damsels, which I did not collect many eggs from, so I just put all the Ruby eggs and larvae from Tom's 2 days worth of collection into the jar, ramped up and fed Parvo nauplii, and here we are today.

check out Kathy's Clowns, llc website:
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Hey Kathy!
Ramon uses less than 6 L pickle jars and you use 2 gals pretzel jars
I am not familiar with any of them.I use clear PET gal jars which hold 3 L.Mouth opening is 10 cm.I´ve used them for culturing lots of things other than fish larvae,which according to the until now accepted knowledge,can only be raised in large volumes,the larger the better.Finding that they can be raised in jars is a nice unexpected surprise,which provides us with a convenient experimental tool.

Luis is correct (again!). The pretzel jar is 6 liters. It is also PET, but twice as big as yours.  It is a nice experimental tool, and lets us do replicates without a warehouse.  I only have one jar at the moment, but after our basement is fixed, I may get just a little more room to do stuff.
 
I've been so fixed on getting through this starvation part, that I have given little thought to what may be next.  At some point, they will need a bigger food.  There are lots of parvo adults in the jar at the moment, and that's good, because I've managed to let my cultures become less productive, though I think I still have enough, it's not an abundance, as I would like.  They can eat the juveniles in the jar right now, probably, should I not be able to provide from cultures, or soon, perhaps, and the adults later, but what after that?  Should I let them have rotifers, or should I keep to the copepod diet I've started so successfully?

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My two cents is to give every live food you have that is an appropriate size.  Get a larger copepod plus give them rotifers.  In one of your recent journals you were giving 4 or 5 different foods.  Would you guess that this is the major factor in your success or would you guess that have an appropriately thick density of parvo is the major factor?