Breeding Journal, Species: Liopropoma mowbrayi

General
Species:  Liopropoma mowbrayi   
Social Structure:  Pair 
Size of Individuals:  M: Just under 3" F: 2.5"
Age of Individuals:  Unknown
Date added to Tank:  3/22/2011

Broodstock Tank Details
Size of Tank:  Biocube 14
Substrate Details:  1" Crushed Coral
Filtration Details:  Biological/Mechanical (Filter pad)/Chemical (Chemi-pure Elite)
Water Changes:  3 Gallons bi monthly
Water Temperature:  78-82
Lighting:  6W 453 Blue Stunner LED Strip, 6W 8K/453 Blue Stunner LED Strip
Lighting Cycle:  12 On / Off
Other Tank Inhabitants:  B/W "Darwins" Amphiprion ocellaris
Broodstock Feeding Details
Food Types:  Frozen: Mysis (Hikari & PC), Hikari Brine & Spirulina Brine, Rods Food (Original) Rods Eggs, Pellets, Copepods, wild zooplankton
Feeding Schedule:  Four to five times a day, no set time.

Spawning Details
Date of First Spawn: 
Spawn Time of Day: 
Dates of Consecutive Spawns: 
Courtship Details: 
Egg Size: 
Egg Color: 
Egg Count: 

Hatch Details
Hatch Date: 
Hatch Time of Day: 
# Days after Spawn: 
Larvae Description: 


Larval Tank Details
Temperature: 
Size of Larval Tank: 
Substrate Details: 
Other Tank Decor: 
Filtration Details: 
Lighting: 
Lighting Cycle: 
Water Changes: 

Larval Feeding Details
Food Types: 
Feeding Schedule: 

Metamorphosis/Settlement
Date of Settlement Start: 
Days after Hatch: 
Date of Settlement End: 
Description of Fry: 

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

(No Pictures or Videos in the Section Please)
Miscellaneous Information: 



You will be required to provide photographic or video evidence in this thread of each event submitted for the MBI Program.
If your thread does not contain these photos the MBI Committee will not be able to approve your reports. PHOTOS AND VIDEO S MUST BE PLACED IN ADDITIONAL POSTS, NEVER IN THE FIRST POST IN A JOURNAL.

 
First day in the tank - Male on top, female on bottom.
 
Today 4/10/2011
 

 

Pretty pair.

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

Nice! How did you pair them? Or did you purchase them as a pair?

Blake - I got them as a pair.  

Female has been getting a tummy around 5-6pm most days, I'd wager from starting to hydrate eggs.  There is a definitely something going on as the male is hanging out above the rockwork as the night goes on.   Interesting enough the female is pretty ravenous in the morning - and much thinner.  I'm sure I'm missing them spawn as I'm not watching the tank in the evenings. 

So just an update - they are spawning just about every night (Judging by the females "fatness" at night, and the following skinny in the morning).  Evidently the 14" or so inches in the Biocube isn't an issue for height.  Now to set the pumps to turn off for a couple hours at night, and an air stone to kick on when they go off.  I'll try to close up the top intake as well so they can't go into the filter.
 
 

Jealous - this was the species I wanted to try

Very cool! Please keep us posted!

Just an update (wow was it three weeks the last post? for now.  There is certainly a correlation between feeds and how quickly the female gets full in the evenings.  They would only eat frozen mysis at the beginning, went to eating frozen mysis and live grammus shrimp and pellets to really only attacking pellets now.  Even tho there are four kinds of pellets in the dry formula I give, the female is only getting gravid about ever four or five days now.  Starting this wednesday, I'll be going to an all live diet for all my broodstock for a couple weeks to see if that helps kick off the breeding.  Weening from pellets may be a challenge tho.

Happy that I stayed up past my bedtime to get this video.    
 

 
 
 
 

Fixed link on the video - evidently I got to anxious and didn't wait for youtube to finish
 
The red lights are "night light" LEDS.   The spawning sequence went something like this:
 
Female starts appearing plump in the morning - swelling as it gets later.   About 30 minutes or so before lights out the male spends more time in the water column, the female cruises by every now and then.  She'll start to move up into the water column as well - but I did not witness any displaying, flashing, etc.   Lights go out (on timer, but I sped it up about 5 minutes).  Fish are instantly more active once the lights go out.  They normally hang out about 6-12" away from each other during the day, they started sticking close to each other.  Within six or seven minutes of lights out they did the deed.   Noticing the female this morning, she isn't as round as last night but that can change in the next 10 hours or so.  Now that I know what to look for, I'll turn the pumps off tonight and see if I can get some eggs.
 
Cheers!

Awesome!

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

Caught them again in the act - but turned pumps off this time
 
Egg shots:
 

 

Freakin' sweet

Nice! Did you have any that started dividing?

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

I pretty much just got 10-20 eggs out and put them under a scope within 5 minutes
 
Since they did have the nucleus I'd imagine they were good.   Trying to jump start my spawning system with 15lbs of live rock from a system that was up a year.  Much easier to collect ALL the eggs each night then scoop em out with a spoon and flashlight lol.
 
Hoping to get them into the system this weekend.

Well, what you are seeing there is mostly yolk. The big black dot is the oil globule that helps the egg float. If you leave them on the microscope stage for a while, you might get to see them start dividing. That's how you know they are fertile. Of course, the water evaporates eventually and the egg dies. But you can also see it if you float the eggs in a cup (yogurt container or something). Use a magnifying glass and light the eggs from below. That way, you can see the whole cell division and larval development without the water going away.
 
But if you look at them closely under the microscope, you can sometimes see the little crater that's the place where the sperm entered the egg. It's really small but easy to see once you've seen a couple. That'll tell you, too.

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

that's really cool shots!

RLTW

180 Gallon Mixed Reef

Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, "Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?" And I said, "Here am I. Send me!" Isaiah 6:8

So Jake Adams actually said that you have some sort of video or pictures of an egg collecting device that you're using?  I didn't see that here...care to add?
 
Regarding fertility, division happens pretty quickly...probably within the hour...

Yeah one second MP, let me upload some stuff of the system Ill be putting some swissguard into on saturday.
 
Youtube clip of v1.0 - (On 1.1 now)
 

 
 

So tonight will be day four or five in a row that they will have spawned.  It's looking like a ballpark of 50-125 eggs per spawn.  Since I do not want to interrupt the spawning sequence, I've done a little water change and saved that water for my ingenious plan:  Getting the eggs via suction.   I'll literally be hovering over the tank with night goggles on waiting for the spawn, pumps off.  Once they do the spawning "break away" I'll attempt to suck out as many eggs as I can into the hatching container.  Once they hatch, I've got to hope that my pod cultures  (Couple kinds) will be up to snuff in producing naups.  To help out I'll be doing a couple plankton tows per day to see if I can add ciliates and other fun stuff in there for the larvae to eat. The neat thing about this container is that I've got an outlet on it already so I can plug it into a system as they get older, hopefully keeping the water quality stable enough so I can hit the elusive meta mark.  (Heck if I can go a week on the first batch I'll call that a win!). 
 
The fun thing is since they do this every night, I'll continue to add eggs into the mix.   I really don't mind if there ends up being cannibalism either - its just more food!
 
Cheers, and may the Fish Lords of Liopropoma smile with me

Good luck! Now that they are going, expect them to continue. My cleaner wrasses got up to 3x/day at one point.

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

I did a pretty big clean up of the Biocube - with the amount of food I was tossing in as well as just well, being a stock biocube it needed it.   Good news is that it doesn't seem to have phased them - saw a couple eggs floating in there when I checked around midnight. 
 
Now here is the dilemma.  I picked up a 34G Solana 20x20x20 tank and stand/filter for next to nothing.  I'm tempted to put them in there as well as the Pygmy Wrasses, and move L.rubre into the Biocube.  I've got the pelagic system up and running (neon gobies) and its looking good.  Here is the catch though - I want to actually look at my fish!  I think designing an egg collector for the back would be fairly easy (although I'm thinking I might need to expand the water intake, which really shouldn't be all that hard).  I know the corners aren't the best for flow (unlike the biocube which has the rounded edges), but I'm hoping if I make the intake or build a surface skimmer for the tank it could work. 
 
I'm torn, because I know that the system will work - but I don't have room for both (Solana / Pelagic system).  And I'd like to see my fish

I'm confused... Neon gobies as pelagic spawners?

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

Neon gobies as ammonia producers (And the 30lbs of live rock from other tanks).  I moved them in a couple days ago.
 
That and I'm trying to see if I can get them to reproduce without me fiddling.  

Ok, I see.

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

Some interesting new developments... I'll have more later

So I've got an exam tomorrow and what am I doing at midnight?  Looking at cell division.  So if my hunch is right (missed the pair in the act tonight) then well... lets just say there are captive bred candy basslets right around the corner.

Forgot to add - I've built a mini photo collage of the first hour of life via microscope.  I'll get those up tomorrow evening.  Maybe even show off some more stuff too

Sounds great!

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

Cool! Now you are about ready to start the hard part.

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

Taken from about 20 minutes to about 1.5 hours post spawn.
 

 

 

 

 
Realllly slow development.  On the latest batch I'm coming up on 48 hours tonight.  I need to put a heater in the BRT (temp is about 77/78 now) to see if I can't bump it up to 80 and hopefully increase the growth rate a bit.  After working with some other fish in school one or two degrees can make a week or more difference on growth.  I might  even try 81/82 to see if that helps. 
 
So thats about an hours worth of pics above, I might have screwed the order up a bit.  For some reason my microscope never keeps the date/time right. 
 
Oh and here is a new spawning video...with the smaller female nudging the male... possible sequential hermaphrodites?   Also the male got the "I swallowed a marble" belly two days ago.  Without actually seeing who can do what it will be a guess as to whats going on.
 

Nice work Brett! How did you keep the egg wet for that long? Did you keep adding water, or was it on a covered slide?

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

Kept adding a drop or two of water every couple minutes.  I figured that was the easiest way with what I was working with. 

Its getting better - egg counts are going up.  105 collected tonight.  Not bad from three weeks ago when there was 40-60 per night!

Had a HUGE spawn tonight.  I shattered the old mark of 105 with close to 300 tonight! Interesting to note, they didn't spawn for the past two nights.  Probably because I moved some rock around, reducing the amount of "open" space for them to have a rise.  Fixed that issue earlier today and poof - they spawned.
 
Trying a new method of raising the eggs, hoping to break the 72 hour mark.  I've got first foods lined up, so there is no issue there.  (100k of parvolacanus and 50k of tonsa).
 
Thanks Algagen!

So I've been letting these guys go for a couple months now.  I'm still stuck on the 72 hours, I just can't get them past this period of time.  I've tried Kriesels, BRTs, Tanks, cups, fish holders, the works.  The'll hatch then I'll just find the prolarvae on the bottom of whatever dead.  I've tried UV Sterilizers with a super lol flow (for bacteria control), fresh ASW, old ASW, broodstock tank water and still nothing. 
 
So I went back and looked at the feed the parents were getting.  4-5 of different types of pellets, live shrimp (various kinds) frozen mysis, brine, clams.  Enriched with selco and unenriched.  That magic 72 hour mark is driving me insane. 
 
Any ideas?

Could try various lighting scenarios?

Your story sounds similar to my pigmy angels drama.And probably solutions will be also similar.I was also thinking to try UV or O3 against bacteriae.Or trying NSW,just in case some unknown factor was missing.