Breeding Journal, Species: Amphiprion percula (onyx x picasso)

General
Species:  Amphiprion percula
Social Structure: 
Size of Individuals: Female about 3" Male about 1 3/4" 
Age of Individuals:  unknown
Date added to Tank: Female onyx (June 2006) Male Picasso (December 2009)

Broodstock Tank Details
Size of Tank:  200 gallon
Substrate Details:  Live sand, live rock, and a terra cotta pot that they lay eggs on
Filtration Details:  Sump with live rock, chaeto
Water Changes:  We need to do water changes?
Water Temperature:  80F
Lighting:  two 400W MH 20000K bulbs and T5 blue supplementals
Lighting Cycle:  T5's turn on at 11am and turn off at 10pm; MH's turn on at 12am and turn off at 9pm
Other Tank Inhabitants:  Hippo tang, yellow tang, scoapus tang, purple tang, pajama cardinal, bristletail filefish, copperbanded butterfly, yellow watchman goby with a tiger pistol shrimp, sea cucumber, spiny urchin, hermit crabs, columbellids, cowry, serpent star and a brittlestar.  Ocellaris clown and a hybrid onyx perc x ocellaris in the sump

Broodstock Feeding Details
Food Types:  Homemade frozen mash, New Life Spectrum Marine formula pellet, Rod's food, leftover rotifers and copepods, Nori
Feeding Schedule:  About three times per week.

Spawning Details
Date of First Spawn:  8/16/10
Spawn Time of Day:  Late afternoon
Dates of Consecutive Spawns:  Every 13 days
Courtship Details: 
Egg Size:  unknown
Egg Color:  orange
Egg Count:  hundreds

Hatch Details
Hatch Date:  8/24/10
Hatch Time of Day:  after lights turn off
# Days after Spawn:  9 days
Larvae Description:  tiny and black


Larval Tank Details
Temperature:  80F
Size of Larval Tank:  10g filled with 6g of new water
Substrate Details:  none
Other Tank Decor:  heater and airstone
Filtration Details:  none until meta then a seeded sponge filter
Lighting:  I have four 10 gallon tanks under a four foot PC fixture but I block most of the light until the larvae are old enough to handle the light
Lighting Cycle:  turns on at 4:30am and turns off at 8pm
Water Changes: 

Larval Feeding Details
Food Types:  Apocyclops and rotifers
Feeding Schedule:  twice a day, in the early morning and late afternoon.  If I'm home I'll feed them again.

Metamorphosis/Settlement
Date of Settlement Start:  9/1/2010
Days after Hatch: 
Date of Settlement End:  9/5/2010
Description of Fry:  Oval shaped with a head stripe

Grow-Out Tank Details
Temperature: 
Size of Grow-Out Tank: 
Substrate Details: 
Other Tank Decor: 
Filtration Details: 
Lighting: 
Lighting Cycle: 
Water Changes: 
Size at Transfer: 
Age at Transfer: 

Grow-Out Feeding Details
Food Types: 
Feeding Schedule: 

Additional Information
Miscellaneous Information: 



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Came home after work and all the eggs had hatched out but most were on the floor of the aquarium, still alive but I don't like it when they are on the bottom.
 
Used a 53 micron sieve to strain out a gallon of Apocyclops and 1/3 gallon of rotifers to the larvae tank and also added some RotiGreen.
 
These guys look blacker than normal unless it's just my aging memory.

Question, you are the second person doing a cross between an onyx and pico.  What's the draw to this versus straight onyx or pico?

Rook

See? Mine were really dark, too. Good luck with getting them going, Gale.

--Andy, the bucket man.
"Not to know the mandolin is to argue oneself unknown...." --Clara Lanza, 1886

This is the pair that Andy got his eggs from.

http://www.fishtalpropagations.com/#!home/mainPage
"Making captive breeding easier."

Rook,
I'd rather have straight onyx or straight picasso.  My problem is that I have two female onyx and one picasso   I have some onyx/picasso juveniles that are starting to get the onyx and picasso coloring.  I'm going to take one of those and pair it with the non related onyx female.
 
Sooner or later I'd like to get a male onyx and another picasso to get purer bloodlines but I was under the impression that picassos were originally spawned from onyx percs.  Either way though, they are still both just percs.  I've already sold some that I had to sell as regular percs because I couldn't guarantee the onyx or picasso traits.

August 25, 2010
     Added another half gallon of Apocyclops and 1/3 gallon of rotifers late this afternoon.
     Noticed that there appear to be hundreds in the water column now instead of on the bottom.
August 26, 2010
     Added about 2/3 gallon of Apocyclops and 1/2 gallon of rotifers this morning.  Added RotiGreen also.
     Added about a gallon of Apocyclops late this afternoon.  Added RotiGreen also.
August 27, 2010
     Added about 2/3 gallon of Apocyclops and 1/2 gallon of rotifers this morning.  Siphoned bottom of tank.  Changed the siphoned water with new water and RotiGreen.   
     Added about 1/2 gallon of Apocyclops late this afternoon.
August 28, 2010
     Added about 1 1/2 gallons of Apocyclops and about 2/3 gallon of rotifers this morning.  Added RotiGreen with a gallon of fresh saltwater to increase the volume to about 7 gallons.
     Larvae seem strong and seem to be eating but we'll see in a couple days.
     Added about one gallon of rotifers.  I don't know if it's just coincidence but it seems there are less larvae hugging the sides of the larval container and more are out in the open swimming around.
 
Sorry about adding all this mundane information but I really want to come back and see what I did if something goes wrong...or right for that matter.

Sorry about the quality of this video but I have to post it to show that my fish hatched.   I need a camera!
 

fOK it's day five with these little guys and I guess if they make it till morning that they are eating because their starvation period is about four to five days. 
 
August 29, 2010

• Fed the larvae some crushed up Otohime B1.
• Waited 15 minutes then fed them a few BBS.
• Added about 1/2 gallon of Apocyclops and 2/3 gallon of rotifers.  Added  the rotifers to try and clear up the RotiGreen that was still fairly green in the tank.
• Late this afternoon I added about 1 1/2 gallons of Apocyclops.  Added some BBS about 15 minutes later.

  
 
August 30, 2010

• Fed larvae some crushed up Otohime B1
• Waited 15 minutes then fed them some BBS.
• Added about 1 2/3 gallons of Apocyclops.
• Performed a two gallon water change.

 
 
 
August 31, 2010

• Fed larvae some crushed up Otohime B1
• Fed about 2/3 gallon of Apocyclops
• Fed about 1/2 gallon of rotifers
• Fed some BBS
• Performed a two gallon water change

Are they striking at the copepods? I'm sure they are, but I'm interested to hear your take on it.

--Andy, the bucket man.
"Not to know the mandolin is to argue oneself unknown...." --Clara Lanza, 1886

I think they are Andy.  The little guys were striking at the surface since about day two and I've noticed that some of the pods are right at the surface.  I've never seen them strike a the surface while feeding them just rotifers.  But...I'm not really sure either.  Next batch I may have to make a bunch of Apocyclops cultures so I can feed exclusively pods.  I figure if I make about 7 two gallon cultures I might be able to feed just pods....My wife's gonna kill me
Edited my feeding post above to confirm that the larvae were eating Apocyclops.  This afternoon the food density was so low I couldn't see rotifers or Apocyclops (these little guys eat really fast).  After adding the Apocyclops, the larvae were striking hard so I have to assume that they are eating the pods.

Cool. Good. You are probably right. I was figuring that 20 gals. (four 5 gal. cultures) would likely do it, but I usually try to figure pretty conservatively. But, if you are feeding four times per day and drawing a gallon to a gallon-and-a-half at each draw, well, I'd probably add a fifth culture in there. (I just realized that I don't know how much you are drawing.) Just to be conservative. I guess you can always keep other things on hand in case a copepod culture crashes or something. I did manage two gallon-and-a-half draws per day on 13 gallons of culture for a while early on, but I got really nervous after a while and cut back to just once a day.
 
Still, a week off from me pulling from them and the copepods are teeming again. It helps that I'm back to pretty darn good O. marina cultures again.

--Andy, the bucket man.
"Not to know the mandolin is to argue oneself unknown...." --Clara Lanza, 1886

That's excellent news!
I wish I could get my pods to reproduce faster hehe.

I need a microscope....maybe my O. marina culture isn't pure.  I think the first thing I'll do though is add a heater to one of the pod cultures.

I'm having to change the O. marina vessels very often now to try to stay ahead of whatever is messing them up. I'm really tempted to think it's a bacteria, honestly. Unfortunately, that means that I can't filter it out. But changing the culture often seems to do the trick (for a few days, at least).
 
How long did you let the pods go before you started harvesting them? How are you checking the culture? I pull them out into a small glass jar and light them from the bottom. With a small random draw like that, I'm happy if I see 4-5 brooding females (and a bunch of others); ecstatic if I see more brooders than that. I also concentrate my draws for the larvae into a container and try to keep an eye on the density there, too, before I give them to the fish.

--Andy, the bucket man.
"Not to know the mandolin is to argue oneself unknown...." --Clara Lanza, 1886

I let the pods go for at least a couple weeks before harvesting.
I check the culture by taking about 200ml in a glass beaker and shining an LED light through the side and up a little so that I can see the pods swimming.  I don't think I could tell if they were brooding females even if I looked through my 10X loupe hehe.
When I draw some out for the larvae, I strain them with a 53 micron sieve then backflush them into a clear container so I can view them again.   I can tell by eye that my concentrations are way lower than yours, hence the reason I want to try and use a heater in the main culture

Well, I wonder now if your copepods made it. The brooding females are _really_ large and quite distinctive with those big ol' egg sacs. They are several times larger than rots. I can easily see them even in the active cultures with the air still bubbling with no magnification. Heck, if the conditions are right I can see them without a flashlight (and I'm about ready for bifocals ). In a little jar, there's just no mistaking them. Hmm. I'll be happy to put a sample under the scope for you if you'd like.

--Andy, the bucket man.
"Not to know the mandolin is to argue oneself unknown...." --Clara Lanza, 1886

ROFL....sure make fun of my eyesight.
The pods are definitely in there.  I can see brooding females with my 10X loop while in the glass beakers.  They aren't much larger than the rotifers that made it into the culture though.  I can definitely see two eggsacs on the female that I did see.  Fairly large bunch of eggs too.  I just put a heater in the tank...I'll let you know if they speed up reproduction.

That would be great.  I'd love to see both the O. marina and the Apocyclops under a scope.  Let me know what day is good.  I'm off work till Friday morning.
Thanks

Well, I think my lovely bride has plans for my labor today if work allows. First cool day in a long time and all. But two of my big editors took vacations in the last couple of weeks and it usually takes them a week or so for the lag to catch up to me. So I think maybe tomorrow or the next day should be good.

--Andy, the bucket man.
"Not to know the mandolin is to argue oneself unknown...." --Clara Lanza, 1886

Cool.....just let me know
You never know when last minute honey do lists come out

September 1, 2010

• After feeding a gallon of Apocyclops and Otohime B1 I noticed that one of the little guys has a head stripe.  This is a first for me.  Normal striping up time on these percs for the head stripe is 10 days....this is day 8.

Well, it looks like the rest of the little guys finally made it through meta.  First fish started meta on 9/1 and the rest pretty much all ended up on 9/5.
 

OK, it's day 15 and it looks like the little guy that got his head stripe at day 8 is starting to get his second stripe already.  He's extremely pale compared to the rest of his siblings.  They are very orange because I started feeding Otohime laced with Naturose at day 12.  The pale guy seems strong and is growing but he's a VERY light grey compared to the very orange fish around him.
 
Has anyone seen this before?  His stripe stands out from the shade of his body so I don't think he'll be a platinum, he's just pale.  Almost albino without the pink eyes.

I have one fish out of your bunch that turned out to be that yellow-orange. Every other fish in the bucket is the astaxanthin red-orange. The pale one is healthy and holding its own, but it is just not the same color as all the other fish.

--Andy, the bucket man.
"Not to know the mandolin is to argue oneself unknown...." --Clara Lanza, 1886

 

 

The colors are just as you see them, I didn't adjust anything.

Yeah, I noticed this morning that I actually have two of those. They've now found each other and are hanging out together. They've colored up more so that the yellow is more noticeable, but I think it's the same thing.

--Andy, the bucket man.
"Not to know the mandolin is to argue oneself unknown...." --Clara Lanza, 1886