Breeding Journal, Species: Doryrhamphus excisus

General
Species:  Doryrhamphus excisus (Bluestripe pipefish)
Social Structure:  One mated pair
Size of Individuals:  2-3"
Age of Individuals:  Unknown.  I've had them for a  little over a year.
Date added to Tank:  A little over a year ago.  The earliest date I have documented is 8/8/2010.

Broodstock Tank Details
Size of Tank:  210 Gallons
Substrate Details:  Aragonite sand
Filtration Details:  Skimmer, chaeto in sump.
Water Changes:  Varies with my enthusiasm for doing it.  I've been trying to do 5% daily recently.
Water Temperature:  Diurnal range from 78-82F
Lighting:  4 x 39 watt T5 actinics + 3 x 250 watt MH.
Lighting Cycle:  Actinics are on 12 hours a day.  MH are on 6 hours a day.
Other Tank Inhabitants:  Many other fish and inverts.  1 Yellow Tang, 1 Flame Hawkfish, 1 Coral Beauty Angel, 1 Clown Goby, 2 Ocellaris clowns, 2 RBTAs, 1 Coral Banded Shrimp, 2 Cleaner Shrimp, several Peppermint Shrimp, assorted snails and hermit crabs, various soft corals, lots of live rock arranged to provide as many caves and hiding places as possible, a bunch of halimeda I'd like to get rid of, some aiptasia..... you get the idea.

Broodstock Feeding Details
Food Types:  Various frozen meaty foods, which they take freely.  They also hunt copepods, and probably the mysids in the tank, too, all day long.
Feeding Schedule:  2-3 times a day.

Spawning Details
Date of First Spawn:  8/8/2010 or thereabouts.
Spawn Time of Day:  Not seen, I've heard it is in the morning, right after they wake up.
Dates of Consecutive Spawns:  Roughly every 4-6 days or so.  He is perpetually pregnant.
Courtship Details:  They seem to always hang out together.
Egg Size:  I've never seen them well enough to determine size.  They are hidden in the male's skin flaps on his abdomen.
Egg Color:  Orange
Egg Count:  Perhaps 50 or so

Hatch Details
Hatch Date:  9/1/2011.  After the 9/1/2011 hatch, there was another hatch on 9/5/2011.  They have hatched ever 4 days since then, quite reliably.
Hatch Time of Day:  Evening, after lights out, about 10:00 PM
# Days after Spawn:  Appx. 4
Larvae Description:  Like tiny cute copies of the parents, appx. 3/16" long.


Larval Tank Details
Temperature:  Ambient room temp, low 70s F
Size of Larval Tank:  Initially, a 2 gallon fishbowl kriesel.
Substrate Details:  None
Other Tank Decor:  None
Filtration Details:  Live phytoplankton (Isochrysis and Thalassiosira).
Lighting:  13 watt fluorescent aquarium strip light placed over the fishbowl, later changed to a 6500K CFL in a clamp-on reflector fixture.
Lighting Cycle:  Appx. 18 H on / 6 H off.
Water Changes:  Small and frequent.  As I turkey baste out waste, I top off the fishbowl with clean salt water.

Larval Feeding Details
Food Types:  Rotifers, Acartia tonsa, Apocyclops pamanemsis, Parvocalanus crassiostris, hermit crab larvae.
Feeding Schedule:  Just keep food items of all types present at all times.  Most of them reproduce by themselves, once the tank is seeded and fed live phyto.

Metamorphosis/Settlement
Date of Settlement Start:  9/17/2011
Days after Hatch:  12
Date of Settlement End:  9/17/2011
Description of Fry:  Small versions of parents, more orange coloration than the larvae.  More opaque than the larvae.  Still don't have adult coloration yet.

Grow-Out Tank Details
Temperature:  74 F
Size of Grow-Out Tank:  5.5 Gallons
Substrate Details:  None
Other Tank Decor: A few Black ABS Pipes
Filtration Details:  Small HOB filter
Lighting:  Fluorescent strip light
Lighting Cycle:  Manual, appx. 16 H on / 8 H off
Water Changes:  Irregular, weekly.
Size at Transfer:  Various -- from 1/2" to 1"
Age at Transfer:  Various -- from 2 - 3 weeks or so.

Grow-Out Feeding Details
Food Types:  Copepods of various species (mostly Apocyclops and Tigriopus), Moina, Frozen BBS, Frozen Cyclops
Feeding Schedule:  Several times a day.  Fewer times when trying to wean onto the frozen foods.

Additional Information
 
 
We originally got two males and two females.  They were placed into a 29 gallon species tank, originally.  They seemed to be two pairs that got along nicely together.  One of the males died almost immediately (within just a couple of days).  As soon as that male died, the larger female became very aggressive toward the lone female.  I moved the lone female to the 210 gallon tank to protect her.  The pair in the 29 gallon started mating within a few weeks.  After a couple of months, the female in the 29 gallon then died.  I put the lone male into the 210, and the female who had been living in the 210 and the newly introduced male found each other within about 5 minutes, and have been inseparable ever since.  They have been mating continuously for the last several months.  I did not record the dates of all of the events just described, but I know that these two have been together at least since the first of this year.  I've not yet tried to raise their fry, but am going to attempt do so now.
Miscellaneous Information: 

Here are some pictures of the parents.  I'll try to get better ones and post them later.  The male is really hard to get pictures of, as he is very shy.  In the 210 display where they live, there is quite a bit of live rock, and it is arranged so as to make as many caves and hiding places as possible, which the male exploits adeptly.
 
EDIT:  I don't know why the images didn't upload the first time.  I hope they work this time.
 
Here is the male holding eggs back in August, 2010:
 

 
Here is the female, taken Friday, 9-2-2011:
 

 
Here is the pair of them together, but a very poor quality image:
 

 
 
 
 

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OK, moving on from lousy images of the parents, to lousy images of the fry, taken on 9-4-2011 (Day 3, since they hatched the night of 9-1-2011):
 

 

 
 

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So cute! Go Jim, go!

He released again last night, on 9/5/2011, just four days after the last hatch!  Again, I set up Chad's snagger.  Again, there are something like at least 50 fry.  Pipefish fry are a lot harder to count than seahorse fry -- they are more translucent, and hard to see, and are a lot "jumpier", and don't hold still as much as seahorse fry do.  Plus, you can collect seahorse fry in the daylight, and count as you collect them.  Pipefish parents are fry eaters, and you have to get the pipefish fry out of the tank under cover of darkness.
 
I did notice a couple of really ugly, mutant pipefish fry in this particular batch, though.  Thicker than normal, with no snout to speak of.  I got some blurry images of them this morning.  There are at least two, possibly more of these ugly pipefish in this batch :
 



 
 
 

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Like the ugly duckling? Those aren't pipefish.  You got clownfish in that broodstock tank...

I was gonna say...

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

LOL!  I've been waiting all day for somebody to catch on and comment!  You win the prize, Kathy.  Looking at them now that I'm home for work, there are a few in there, hard to tell how many, but probably 5-10.  I guess I totally missed out on a nest of occelaris eggs.  I know those clown had spawned a week or two ago, but hadn't seen any new eggs.  They didn't nest in the same spot, that's for sure, since I've been checking that spot.  Now I get to try to co-culture pipes and clowns!

Yeah, those are hideous. Congrats on the clown hatch.

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

I'm always the one to say that the emperor has no clothes….Glad I wasn't being stupid.

Congrats Jim! On the pipefish and 'mutant' fry. LOL!
The pipefish are very pretty!

Doni Marie~

The male finally let me get pics of him!
 



 
 

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The oldest fry I have now is 17 days old, hatched 9/5/2011.  Pics below.  There were 0 survivors of the first batch hatched 9/1/2011.  I had 6 of them that got to 6 days, and then too abupt a water change killed them.  I have only this one left from the 9/5/2011 hatch.  There are two alive from the 9/9/2011 hatch.  The 9/13/2011 hatch was few in number, and they all looked weak, and I chose not to attempt to raise them.  The 9/17/2011 hatch has probably about 20 or so left alive now, at day 5, and I'm also raising yesterday's hatch.
 
Each hatch is approximately 30-50 fry.  I've been using goldfish bowl kriesels (full to the top, with a rigid airline halfway down one side, with very gentle bubbling from a rigid airline with no stone), with live phyto green water (a mix of Isochrysis and Thalassiosira), rotifers, Apocyclops, and Acartia.  I've been having a problem with the combination of live phyto + nitrates in parent tank water + ammonia produced by the fry + light + the aeration by the airline = lots of Oxygen, making lots of little bubbles by the end of the day.  The earlier batches had very high mortality on days 1 and 2 from the bubbles clinging to the fry, making them float and die due to starvation.  The younger batches have had less early mortality, because I have used less live phyto and less light, reducing the bubble problem.  Time will tell whether this will result in more of them surviving to 60 DPS.  Here are a couple of pictures of the 17 day old fry taken a few minutes ago:
 


 

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beautiful!

+2. Congratulations, Jim!

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

I wonder what role, if any, the low temperatures may be playing in your survival rates?
 
Nice first fish through!  I'm thinking we have less than 60 days to go now?

Thanks, Matt for the food for thought.  I'll take that into consideration.  If I get that one to November 17th, I'll have 60DPS! 
 
By the way, I've had notably better success with one subsequent batch.  Appx. 15-20 fry from that batch still alive at day 13 now.

Why no reporting on that batch Jim?  Let's learn about what you're doing differently!  Keep us in the loop!

You are right, Matt.  I alluded to the change in post #13 in this thread, but have not followed up.
 
It appears that the greatest mortality with these is in just the first couple of days.  While there are many benefits to the live phyto approach, one serious downside is that if I use too much phyto and too much light, I end up with too much DO in the water, which manifests as tiny bubbles on many of the fry, which causes them to float to the surface and die.  The greatest success I have had so far is with one batch, where I used a more moderate amount of live phyto, and no direct lighting, but only indirect lighting from the south-facing windows with the translucent white blinds for the first 4 days or so.  I have somewhere around 15-20 fry still alive from that batch.  The next batch, hatched 4 days later, was treated similarly, and was looking really good, except in this case, the rotifers bloomed on about day 4, and I had massive dieoff, with only 1 fry remaining, I suspect from ammonia from the rotifers eating all the live phyto, thus killing off my ammonia control, and creating more ammonia in the process.  I'm still working this all out, and the last two batches of fry have been small and weak.  I don't know what is going on with the broodstock -- if they are petering out, or what.  Time will tell.

OK, I've taken some notes, in addition to the information listed above, on each batch, and here is a summary of each:
 
Hatch 9/1/2011:  6 made it to 6 days before operator error killed them (too large a water change too quickly).
Hatch 9/5/2011:  Only 1 has survived.  Bubbles from too much phyto + too much light killed most in the first couple of days.
Hatch 9/9/2011:  Only 2 have survived.  Primarily, the same phyto+light bubble problem, plus competition from numerous peppermint shrimp larvae that hatched the same night did most of these in.
Hatch 9/13/2011:  Very few, very weak fry.  I chose not to raise them.
Hatch 9/17.2011:  Dialed back the light on the fishbowl for the first few days.  Basically, very indirect ambient light only.  Much better success.  About 20 still alive at day 4, and about 15 still alive now.
Hatch 9/21/2011:  Same treatment as the 9/17 batch, and more or less the same results.
Hatch 9/25/2011:  These were doing well until about day 3 when the rotifers somehow took off and bloomed, and for some reason, this killed off all but 1 of these.  I still have only the 1 from this batch.
Hatch 9/29/2011:  Another very weak batch.  I only snagged about 10 or so, and only 4 were alive the first morning.  These have been fed ONLY Parvocalanus (Chad from Reed wanted to know if fish were eating the Parvo, so I indulged him).  So far, 3 of the 4 are alive and well on day 7.
Hatch 10/3/2011:  A nice, large, normal batch.  These have also been fed only Parvocalanus.  It is only day 3, and so it is too early to tell, but preliminary results are very encouraging.  I still have > 20 still alive today.
 
The technique of keeping a moderately dense culture of live copepods in moderate greenwater made up of live phyto with subdued light for the first few (4 or so) days in a 2-gallon goldfish bowl kriesel seems to be working very well.  To me, the keys seem to be 1)  Keep copepods always present in decent numbers, 2)  Keep the water lightly to moderately tinted with live phyto -- never clear, and never too dense, and 3)  Keep some light on the container, but not too much too close -- if you see small bubbles forming on the upper surfaces of the glass fishbowl sides, you have too much light, and need to back it off, or you will lose fry.
 
I think that a mixture of copepod species is probably preferable to a monoculture, but I must concede that these two recent batches being fed only Parvocalanus are doing very well!
 

Jim,
 
I was able to get some to around day 14 in greenwater with populated L strain rotifers. I found that they liked good circulation and floating plastic plants to take a rest and hide under .
 
Good luck,
 
Nick

Live and Learn

The oldest right now is on Day 32!  Two more at day 28, a whole bunch more at days 20 and 16, and they're all looking good, strong, and active.  Thanks for the tips, Nick.  I haven't tried giving them any hiding places, and they do seem to congregate in the corner of the fishbowl kriesel at around the 7-8 o'clock position.  Maybe I should give them some fake plants now.  I know I really need to move the older ones into something more natural and less incubator, I just haven't figured out exactly what to do and still keep them fed well.

Hatch 10/7/2011:  This was a weak batch, and they hatched the same night as my Ocellaris clowns hatched.  They are being raised along with the clowns for now.
 
Hatch 10/11/2011:  This was a large, healthy batch.  The only other things snagged tonight were some copepods (probably Tisbe) and also some more hermit crab larvae.  I'll feed these fry a mixture of copepods, and keep them in a 2-gallon fisbowl kreisel with a moderate amount of live phyto and moderate light.
 
There has been a request that I start a thread on the Hermit Crab larvae.  I can't say much about them.  I'm not sure what species they are, since I have both blue-legged and also red-legged hermits in the 210 display that houses the pipefish broodstock.  I'm not even 100% certain that they are hermit crab larvae, but it does make sense, and the appearance of them is consistent with images others have posted of their hermit crab larvae.  I'm not really trying to raise them, but, rather, am keeping them in the pipefish culture as a potential food item for the pipes.  What I observed from the last batch of the hermit larvae, a few weeks ago, that happened to hatch the same night as my pipes, was that the hermit larvae survived for many, many days in the fishbowl kreisel (I think I saw them in there even after 2 or 3 weeks, but did not document this).  I assume that they were eating the live phyto, but perhaps they were feeding on copepod nauplii.  Eventually they disappeared from the kreisel.  I assume that they eventually got eaten by the pipes, after the pipes got large enough.  This particular kreisel did have the 4 UMPF (Ugly Mutant Pipefish Fry = Ocellaris clown larvae), too, and maybe it was the clowns that ate the hermits.  Then again, maybe the hermits simply died of starvation.  I don't really know.  I will add that there were several shrimp larvae (I think peppermints, but they might be cleaner shrimps, since I have both species in the 210) that were also companions with the pipes and the clowns in the kreisel.  Quite a few of the lysmata hitchhikers (freeloaders?) have survived for around a month now without starving or otherwise succumbing to things that might kill larval shrimps.  They have even survived the transfer from the 2 gallon fishbowl to a 5.5 gallon rectangular tank, when transferred along with the pipes.  FWIW, the clowns are now in their own 5.5.
 

The parents continue to hatch every 4 days, without fail.  I got complacent for a couple of batches, and didn't pay enough attention to them in their 2 gallon kriesels, and lost a couple of entire batches to either A) too much phyto + too much light too early on creating too many bubbles, and causing them all to float to the surface, or B) too little phyto causing either B1)  the copepod supply to crash, or B2) ammonia to spike, killing the fry.  My most recent batches have done very well.  The two things I'm doing differently are 1)  Feeding them Parvocalanus only, and 2)  Providing only ambient light, and no direct light, for the first few days.  While my observations are merely anecdotal, with great consistency, I find better survival rates when the pipefish fry are fed only Parvocalanus, and no Apocyclops or Acartia, during the first few days.  The problem with too much light combining with the live phyto to generate tiny O2 bubbles is a big one for this species.  I have found that the bright indirect ambient light is sufficient for the phyto to do its thing, and for the copepods to grow, and for the fry to see their prey, all without causing the O2 bubble problem.  In fact, my most recent batch has well over an 80% survival rate at 4 days!  They are hard to count, but I estimate over 30 fry still alive from the 11/12/2011 batch tonight, and examining them with a magnifying glass, I see full bellies on every single one of them!
 
The main reason for this post, though, is to document reaching 60DPS for this species.  Please find the pictures below.  The first one was taken a few days ago, of the growout tank.  I can count 21 pipes in this image, but there are probably twice that number in the tank.  The next two pictures were taken tonight, of the 4 largest ones I could catch tonight.  One of them, I'm not sure which, was hatched on 9/5/2011, and settled on 9/17/2011, making today 60 Days Post Settlement for them!
 

 

 

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My last couple of batches of fry have done extremely well, so I'm optimistic that I've actually developed a decent protocol for raising these.  Here it is:
 
Since the broodstock are in a 210 display, I have to use a Chad Vossen larval snagger to catch the fry.  Of course, I turn all pumps/powerheads/wavemakers off while snagging them.  I find that about 2 bubbles per second in the snagger works best.  I have an LED light that I use (http://joby.com/gorillatorch/original).  I've taken the parts from two legs, and made one long leg out of them (they are like Loc-Line), so I can hook one leg over the tank, and position the light right where I want it near the trap entrance.  It works best when I turn the LED light all the way down to the lowest setting.  Turning all other lights in the room off is important.
 
Every 10 minutes or so, I siphon the snagged fry with a 6' length of 1/4 ID vinyl hose into a 2-Gallon glass fishbowl.  After an hour or so, all the fry except a few stragglers will have been snagged.  I've learned the best way to catch the stragglers is to turn the LED light up all the way, and then siphon them with the hose, but it is important to approach them from the side -- hose pointing past their tail, come at them from the side, and then veer in front of them at the last millisecond.
 
Once they are all snagged, I fill the bowl up to just 250 ml shy of the very brim with parent tank water.  I then set the bowl where it will be for the next two weeks or so, and place a rigid airline at the 3:00 o'clock position, with about 6 bubbles per second.  I take 1 liter of a dense Parvocalanus culture, sieve it through a 54 micron sieve, and backwash the copepods into the bowl.  I take 250 ml of a dense live Isochrysis culture, and drip that at 1 drip per second into the bowl.  I give very weak light immediately the first night -- a fluorescent strip light from a 10 gallon tank on top of some eggcrate on top of the bowl, with about 3-4 layers of paper towel between the light and the eggcrate to filter the light.  I then go to bed.
 
The next morning, I remove the light, and give no more direct light for the next 4 days, just ambient light from the nearby windows, and from other nearby tanks/bowls.  After 4 days, I replace the strip light/paper towel/eggcrate combo, and leave it like that for the next 4 days or so.  After 8 days, they can take more light.  Aside from the very first night, they get dark at night.
 
Maintenance consists of dosing with about 5 drops of AmQuel Plus every day or two, monitoring the copepod population and augmenting it if necessary, and monitoring the phyto density, and augmenting it if necessary.  Usually the copepods bloom, and I don't need to add any for the first whole week at least.  The phyto may get depleted, depending on how intense the copepod bloom is, and how much light the bowl gets.
 
Truth be told, I have been doing no water changes and no bottom vacuuming at all for the first two to three weeks with these guys most recently.  The main problems I have to watch out for are, in order of likelihood and severity:  1)  Too much light making too many tiny bubbles, especially in the first 4 days, which makes nearly all the fry float and die.  2)  Copepods bloom and eat all the phyto, requiring more phyto or else either the copepods will crash, and/or requiring more AmQuel Plus, or else ammonia will spike and kill the fry.  3)  Copepods fail to bloom, and I need to add more copepods after about 4 days.
 
After about 12 days or so, they start to settle, and begin hanging out near the bottom instead of the top.  At that point, I move them into the community tank.  It's getting to the point where I'm going to be starting another community tank for the younger fry now, though.  I've not experienced any dieoff later than about a week with these guys.
 
The last two batches have been by far my most successful.  They are 7 and 3 days old today.  The both of them have well over 30 fry still alive -- I'd say about an 80% survival rate, if not higher!  The two previous batches, 15 and 11 days old, have 15 and 10 fry alive, respectively.  The 15 day old batch was fed Apocyclops instead of Parvocalanus, as was the 11 day old batch, and the 11 day old batch was looking really good until problem #1 listed above happened to them.
 
 

Excellent news and work! Can you elaborate on this: " 1)  Too much light making too many tiny bubbles, especially in the first 4 days, which makes nearly all the fry float and die"
How is the light making more bubbles?

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

A general equation for photosynthesis is 6 CO2(gas) + 12 H2O(liquid) + photons → C6H12O6(aqueous) + 6 O2(gas) + 6 H2O(liquid).
 
The way I like to put it, live phytoplankton + ammonia + light = more phyto + O2.
 
What I've found to be very consistently true, is that with my fishbowl kreisel, if I provide too much light too early on, two things WILL be observed: 1)  Tiny bubbles on the top edges of the bowl later in the day, and 2)  Many, many fry will be bobbing at the surface, and either already dead or unable to escape the surface, even when "helped" by pushing them gently down with my finger.  If the only change I make is to use less light, then neither of those two things happens, in my experience.
 

Cool! Thanks for explaining that for me. Makes sense now.

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

Great thread. Awesome work Jim!

These parents continue to pump out the fry every 4 days, like clockwork.  Another hatch tonight.
 
One note on my protocol detailed above that I left out:  I have a diffuser on the Gorilla Torch that consists of a paper coffee filter strapped on with a rubber band that I neglected to document.  That was an important detail to leave out!
 
Another few bits of information I'd like to document:
 
1)  If you wait too long on hatch night to turn the lights off, Dad will NOT wait for you!  I lost one batch recently due to waiting too long to turn the lights off and set the snagger up.  The fry had already hatched, and most had gone over the overflow.
 
2)  I have, to myself at least, reinforced that the young fry do better with Parvocalanus at first than with Apocyclops.  Don't get me wrong -- if all you have is Apocyclops, then by all means, use it!  The fry will do very well.  They just will do better if you have Parvocalanus for the first few days instead.
 
3)  Having tamed the "too much light makes too many tiny bubbles that coincide with the fry dying" problem, I now find that my biggest problem is having the supply of copepods peter out on me.  Since I have a larger number of fry surviving, I have literally more mouths to feed.  I an discovering that if I don't pay close attention to the copepod density in the fry fishbowls, then I will lose fry to starvation.  I generally need to augment the copepod supply with extra Parvocalanus if I have them, and Apocyclops if I don't have Parvocalanus to spare.
 
My next big challenge is to get the older pipes weaned onto frozen mysis.  I'm finding that it is relatively easy to get them, even the younger ones , to eat frozen baby bbs, but I'm dubious about the nutritional value of that feed.  Fewer of them, but still many of them, will eat frozen cyclops and/or Cyclop-Eeze.  When it comes to frozen mysis, I find that they take better to chopped mysis.  The larger pieces are rarely taken.  If I use a cheeze grater on the frozen mysis, the tiny particles that result are too small, and entirely ignored.  It helps a great deal to be really, really mean, and hold off any live copepods, and really starve them.  They are MUCH more likely to take the frozen foods when they are REALLY hungry.  Still, I see some of the largest ones just swimming around frantically from food item to food item, and rejecting each one.  I feel awful.  I hate starving them.  So far, I always cave, and give them some live copepods.  I guess I'm just not mean enough.
 
 

These are beautiful fish. So happy you're having success with them.

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

 
x2.

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

Excellent work Jim! It tempts me to try Doryrhamphus dactyliophorus (Ringed Pipefish). Tagging along...

 
Do you have a pair of those yet?  If so, where did you get them?

No not yet.  I have seen them regularly on Saltwaterfish.com, but they move quick.

KudosVery nice thread and acomplishment.Such nice fish!.
I keep a pair of D.dactylophorus.Larger and more finicky eaters than excisus.Mine still refuse any food other than live copepods.This species could be captive raised in an Oz facility.
And I recently obtained a pair of D.baldwini,the Hawaiian endemic red pipe.They are already taking bbs and Cyclops.Gorgeous glowing red fish!.Wonder how come they´re not more popular?
Excuses for off topics!

Congratulations Jim!

Hi Jim, great stuff. I notice that the parvo being fed is about the same size as rotifers? Do the young eat rotifers at all? Luis, I'm so jealous I've been hunting for that species!

Jim, those babies are completely awesome!

@FuEl, actually, I think they are eating mostly the Parvocalanus nauplii, which are much smaller than rotifers.  I think that might be what makes the difference.  They do OK with Apocyclops, but do better with Parvocalanus.  They tend to do horribly with rotifers, BTW.
 
Thanks to everybody else for the support.  I am very pleased with my success with this species!