Breeding Journal, Species: Pseudochromis tapeinosoma

After many false starts and failed spawning attempts, this pair of the "old" female with the "new" male seem to have finally worked things out.  Successful spawn today!  Male is tending the egg ball in his PVC cave.  His colors were as bright today as I've ever seen them!

The male ate the eggs yesterday.

This pair has has a bit of a hard time getting their act together.  Very often, when the female is quite gravid, I'll let the gate open, and one of two things will usually happen:  1)  The male enters her side, and she starts attacking him, or 2)  She enters the male's side, but instead of leading her to his PVC cave, he goes round and round in circles around the various PVC structures on his side, and she follows him and follows him, but he never leads her to a spawning spot, and eventually one or the other gets tired of these shenanigans and starts attacking the other.
 
About two weeks ago, I finally decided to remove all the PVC hiding places from the male's side except for the one capped PVC pipe that is my designated nesting pipe.  This worked!  With only one pipe to choose from, they went into it, and spawned.  Sadly, at the time, my rotifers had crashed, so I decided to just let him raise this egg mass to hatch without intervention, to help build his confidence.
 
The next couple of times the female was "ready" after that, they still did not get together, and she ended up laying eggs on her side of the tank without them being fertilized.
 
Today, she looked really gravid, so I let the gate open and #1 above happened.  I separated them, but within minutes, they were both at the tank divider, and looking really ready to breed, so I opened the gate once more, and immediately she went into his cave this time, and they spawned.  The male is tending the eggs.  This time, my rotifer culture is doing well, and so as long as he doesn't eat the eggs, I might finally have another chance with this species again in 4 days!
 

Good luck, Jim. I have to say that dottys sound like way the heck too much work but I sure admire those who take the time with them.

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

Sad to report that today, at the ORA booth, Dustin Dorton showed me their captive bred P. t....

Why sad?  Another species being raised commercially is something to rejoice!  There is still a lot I can learn trying to raise these larvae.
 
Besides, there's still P. cyanotaenia....
 
 

P. cyanotaenia I believe was done by Wittenrich already?  I was really pulling for you to have a first on this one!

Thanks for the support, Matt!  I'll check with Witt about P. cyanotaenia.  Meanwhile, I'm still working with these fish, and hope to learn much in the process.
 
Turns out my rotifers had such an extreme O. marina contamination that it was seriously affecting the ability of the rotifers to reproduce.  As a result, I again simply let the male take the most recent nest to term without attempting to raise the larvae.  I wouldn't have had enough rotifers for them, and would have wiped out my rotifer culture in the process.
 
I've since managed to (this time for real, I think) salvage my rotifer culture by sieving them and doing a couple of 100% water changes.  I'm ready for the next spawn, which I expect in about a week.
 
Today, I knew she was ripe, (I've learned how to tell from both the appearance of the egg mass in her abdomen, and also the behavior of the pair), but whenever I opened the gate, the male was so anxious, he would go on her side, which just pisses her off and makes her attack him, even though he is frantically trying to "lead" her over onto his side of the divider.  Like several times in the past, I come home from work to find she has released the eggs on her side, without him.  She does seem to prefer to spawn in the early afternoon hours, rather than late morning or midday, which makes it challenging for me, given my work schedule.
 
We'll see what transpires next week.  She should be ready to spawn again sometime mid-week.
 

I know I haven't been doing updates on these fish much lately.  For one, I've been distracted by all the attention I've been giving my pipefish project.  For another thing, I seem to just not be able to get the timing right with these guys, and miss hatches quite regularly.  They will look ready to spawn, and I'll let the gate in the divider open, but I get no spawn, just frustrated, aggressive fish, so I'll get everybody back on their own side of the divider and close the gate, only to come back a few hours later to see that the female has laid her eggs on her side without the male!
 
Anyway, this last week has been a lousy week of losing different fish for different reasons in different tanks, and today was no exception.  The female of this pair was simply dead in her PVC this morning.  She seemed fine yesterday.  The male is fine.  I have no idea what happened.
 
I do have another female P. tapeinosoma in the 210, but trapping her will be quite a challenge.  I'll probably just put the male into the 65 gallon, and re-purpose the tank this pair has been using for something else.

Jim, when the female lays on the other side of the divider, have you watched the eggs to see if the male has fertilized them through the divider? Some very aggressive FW fish are spawned this way....

Sorry for the losses, I've had some random freshwater deaths as well in the last week...stuff dying for no outwardly apparent reason.