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Breeding Journal, Species: Pseudochromis aldabraensis (Neon Dottyback)
Sunday, March 10, 2013 8:32 PM
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Breeding Journal DataSheet
This first post should be updated regularly to include new information as events take place or changes are made to your system General Species: Pseudochromis aldabraensis (Neon Dottyback) Social Structure: Pair Size of Individuals: Male @ 4", Female slightly smaller @ 3.5" Age of Individuals: Unknown Date added to Tank: Jan 2013 Broodstock Tank Details Size of Tank: 20g high, plumbed to central system of approx 250g Substrate Details: bare. Filtration Details: Central sump: 75g Rubbermaid tub with BM NAC9 Skimmer, 10g submerged bioballs, live rock, carbon in mesh bag. Water Changes: ~25% (80g) monthly Water Temperature: 80F Lighting: Ecoxotic Stunner directly over tanks, dual 4' shop light for indirect lighting Lighting Cycle: 1 hour shop light, 12 hours shoplight+Stunner, 1 hour shop light (14 hours total) Other Tank Inhabitants: Snails (astrea and 1 striped turbo), hermit crabs Broodstock Feeding Details Food Types: Hikari frozen mysis, Hikari frozen brine shrimp (regular and algae enriched), PE Mysis, Rod's Food blend Feeding Schedule: Once daily, as much as they will eat Spawning Details Date of First Spawn: Feb 24, 2013 Spawn Time of Day: Unknown. Sometime after the lights went out. Dates of Consecutive Spawns: 2/24/13, 3/6/13, 3/16/13, 3/24/13, 3/31/13, 4/7/13, 4/14/13 Courtship Details: Female was seen in the cave next to the male at one point but I've only seen this once. The mating is pretty rough on the female and the next day she has missing scales and torn fins. The male usually forces the female to stay at the top of the tank where she has her own PVC caves, but as spawning time nears the male lets her spend more time in the open (and lower in the tank) where she can feed without being harassed. Egg Size: approx 1.5mm Egg Color: white Egg Count: possibly 150 Hatch Details Hatch Date: 4/11/2013 Hatch Time of Day: started at 8pm, watched until 8:30 pm, lots of eggs hatched after # Days after Spawn: 4 Larvae Description: Active, "wagging" tail and swimming in place, occasionally darting quickly Consecutive Hatch Dates: 3/20/13, 3/28/13, 4/4/13, 4/11/13, 4/18/13 Larval Tank Details Temperature: 79F Size of Larval Tank: 10g, half full Substrate Details: none Other Tank Decor: none Filtration Details: none Lighting: screw-in type fluorescent bulb and reflector Lighting Cycle: 24x7 Water Changes: Larval Feeding Details Food Types: Rotifers ( Brachionus plicatilis (L-type) + RGComplete), mix in very small amounts of NHBBS to start. Increase NHBBS feeding daily until about day 25 where rotifers are stopped and only NHBBS are fed. Feeding Schedule: keep tank loaded up with rotifers at all times until roughly day 25. NHBBS fed 2x daily increasing daily with number fed. Metamorphosis/Settlement Date of Settlement Start: Noticed change in behavior on 5/16, slight change in color on 5/17 Days after Hatch: 35 days from 4/11 to 5/16 Date of Settlement End: 5/19 Description of Fry: Fully colored, but tail and dorsal fin started out mostly transparent but color after 5/19
Grow-Out Tank Details Temperature: 80 Size of Grow-Out Tank: 10g tank filled with 8g water Substrate Details: none Other Tank Decor: Marco Rocks rubble rock piles Filtration Details: None Lighting: clip on LED light Lighting Cycle: 14 on, 10 off Water Changes: weekly, 75% Size at Transfer: just under 1 inch Age at Transfer: 38dph Grow-Out Feeding Details Food Types: crushed flake, TDO-A, NHBBS. I only really see them eating the NHBBS, even though they did appear to be eating the TDO prior to settlement. They don't go up to the surface now like they did when they were larval. Feeding Schedule: 2x daily Additional Information (No Pictures or Videos in the Section Please) Miscellaneous Information: Tank has several 1" PVC tubes, mostly opened but two of approx 5" length have endcaps. Two more open PVC tubes are suspended from the top of the tank in the rear and provide a retreat for the female, and that is where she spends most of her time except when feeding. 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.
<message edited by joel1234567 on Monday, May 27, 2013 8:43 PM>
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Re: Breeding Journal, Species: Pseudochromis aldabraensis (Neon Dottyback)
Sunday, March 10, 2013 8:36 PM
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Re: Breeding Journal, Species: Pseudochromis aldabraensis (Neon Dottyback)
Sunday, March 10, 2013 8:41 PM
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In both spawns so far the egg ball is gone the next day 
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Re: Breeding Journal, Species: Pseudochromis aldabraensis (Neon Dottyback)
Sunday, March 17, 2013 6:51 PM
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New egg mass this morning, the biggest yet. The first one was the biggest, the second was about half as big, but this latest third one is about 50% than the first. I'm hoping third time is the charm... They seem to be settling into a 10-11 day breeding cycle. The eggs were laid sometime between just before lights out last night and 11am this morning. I still haven't caught them in the act...
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Re: Breeding Journal, Species: Pseudochromis aldabraensis (Neon Dottyback)
Monday, March 18, 2013 1:14 PM
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Went to check on the eggs at lunch. Looked like there was only just a tiny mass of maybe 15-20 eggs left in the cave. I was kinda bummed and assumed the male ate them. Then as I was walking away I saw the mass floating off in the front edge of the tank. Looks like a big chunk of the eggs broke off and left a small group behind. If it was close to the male's cave I would've left it alone in hopes that he pulled it back in, but it was far away from the cave. It was bobbing in some filth in the corner so I snagged it with a specimen container and hung the container in the tank. I ran an "Aqualifter" pump to the specimen container and the egss are bobbing around gently in the container now. They all still look healthy and I can see tiny dark dots in them so I think that means that they are viable. It's pretty awesome to see the egss close up. I've only seen them hidden at the back of the cave before. Seeing the little mass inside the egg is really exciting. It's not a great tumbler but I had to make do with what I could on a lunch break  I hope it doesn't matter that they bump into the sides and bottom of the container. I guess it can't be any worse than the male continually bashing into them inside the cave. If the male doesn't eat the eggs in the cave it will be interesting to see if I have better luck with the "cave-eggs" or the "tumbled-eggs". I'll try and snap some new photos or a video tonight!!
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Re: Breeding Journal, Species: Pseudochromis aldabraensis (Neon Dottyback)
Monday, March 18, 2013 10:21 PM
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I've seen some mention of the eggs turning "white" when fungused. Does the whole egg turn white or just a white ball inside the egg? Most of the eggs in my eggball have a grayish dot, but others have a large white dot. Are the ones with the large white dot unfertilized or fungused?
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Re: Breeding Journal, Species: Pseudochromis aldabraensis (Neon Dottyback)
Monday, March 18, 2013 11:26 PM
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I had a couple pictures too but I haven't quite figured out yet how to post a pic that isn't hosted at an external url...
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Re: Breeding Journal, Species: Pseudochromis aldabraensis (Neon Dottyback)
Tuesday, March 19, 2013 8:16 PM
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Tonight I could see the embyos moving around inside the eggs. Doing quick little darting motions and flips. The egg mass seems to have gotten heavier, as it's not really floating any more. Or maybe my Aqualifter is getting clogged a little.
Unfortunately I'll be out of town this weekend so there's not much I'll be able to accomplish with these other than potentially getting them to post-hatch. But if that happens it will be a first for me so I'll be excited just to see that happen.
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Re: Breeding Journal, Species: Pseudochromis aldabraensis (Neon Dottyback)
Wednesday, March 20, 2013 9:40 PM
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Re: Breeding Journal, Species: Pseudochromis aldabraensis (Neon Dottyback)
Friday, March 22, 2013 9:20 AM
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Yesterday I wasn't able to do any fish work until 7:30pm. But I thought that would work out perfectly- from what I've read, the eggs should be hatching on the 4th night after spawning, just after lights out. So I figured I had time to get there, settle in, remove the pump to where the eggs were, and watch the hatch occur. However, when I got there, all the eggs were hatched out and it looked like it hadn't freshly occurred. Based on this info, and my earlier statement on March 17: " The eggs were laid sometime between just before lights out last night and 11am this morning", this would lead me now to believe that the eggs were laid on March 16th before lights out, and not the morning of March 17th as I had assumed. If the eggs were laid on March 16th, with a 4 day hatch time, they must have hatched the night of March 20th and I missed witnessing it by about 22 hours. This would seem to be the case, based on the condition of the remaining egg sack- it didn't look very "fresh". Either this, or they hatched in under 4 days. My heart sank... However- there was still ONE very active larva in the container! YES!! HOORAY! I took photos and video and will post them up later today. Thankfully I picked up a magnifying glass, I don't think either of my cameras would have been able to document anything of value without it. It will be my first larva ever! It is the most exciting and rewarding thing I think I've ever done in keeping fish! Now that I know that I can get some fish to hatch, I need to get some BRT's and some food cultures revved up for the next batches... EDIT: So, to summarize this: * Last viewed eggs on Mar 20 @6pm. Eggs still in tact * Checked eggs again on Mar 21 @7:30pm; * The eggs had already hatched out, unwitnessed. * The egg mass did not look freshly hatched. * Based on appearance of egg mass and other reports that the eggs typically hatch after dark, I am assuming that they hatched the night of March 20, after 6pm, 2-3 hours after I last viewed them.
<message edited by joel1234567 on Sunday, March 24, 2013 6:15 PM>
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Re: Breeding Journal, Species: Pseudochromis aldabraensis (Neon Dottyback)
Friday, March 22, 2013 12:11 PM
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Hooray for your first larva!
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Re: Breeding Journal, Species: Pseudochromis aldabraensis (Neon Dottyback)
Friday, March 22, 2013 12:38 PM
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Are you going to try to keep the loner alive or are you just going to wait for a bigger batch?
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Re: Breeding Journal, Species: Pseudochromis aldabraensis (Neon Dottyback)
Friday, March 22, 2013 12:57 PM
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I'm going to wait for a bigger batch- one that I can refer to as "larvae" instead of "larva" I've been holding off on setting up some food cultures until I had a reason to do so, so I don't really have a support system in place for this round, and I'll be out of town this weekend. I probably won't be ready for the next round of eggs in about 5 or 6 days (if all goes accroding to plan) but hopefully the next round after than, in a couple weeks, I'll be more prepared.
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Re: Breeding Journal, Species: Pseudochromis aldabraensis (Neon Dottyback)
Friday, March 22, 2013 11:06 PM
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Re: Breeding Journal, Species: Pseudochromis aldabraensis (Neon Dottyback)
Tuesday, March 26, 2013 8:08 PM
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New batch of eggs discovered on 3/25 @ 5pm. Spawn occurred sometime between 7pm on 3/24 and 5pm on 3/25. Still not sure if the act is occurring the night before after lights out or in the morning. I need to make more time to observe prior to the spawning. I can tell pretty much the day or day before it will occur by the size of the female.
I've been researching what I need to get a rotifer culture going. Going to order up a batch of rots tomorrow. Not sure if I can raise this batch on something else like Rotifeast in the interim, if I can get that at my LFS in the meantime.
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Re: Breeding Journal, Species: Pseudochromis aldabraensis (Neon Dottyback)
Tuesday, March 26, 2013 8:32 PM
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My P. fridamani would spawn in the evening before dark.
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Re: Breeding Journal, Species: Pseudochromis aldabraensis (Neon Dottyback)
Wednesday, March 27, 2013 1:50 PM
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 Originally Posted by My P. fridamani would spawn in the evening before dark That seems consistent with the prior batch of eggs, assuming a 4 day hatch time. If these eggs hatch tomorrow then they were most likely laid on the evening 3/24. Just ordered up my rotifers, a couple batches so I can try to get in an early feeding before the culture gets going and hopefully enough to start a couple cultures in case on crashes. Also hoping they arrive in time for this hatching, but that might be too much to ask for... The father is still watching the eggs and hasn't eaten them or pushed them out of the tube yet. This is the longest he's left them to develop on their own. I'm debating about removing them tonight, or leaving them in the tube until tomorrow. I have been feeding the parents a little more food than usual lately, and leading up to the spawn. But he doesn't really come out to feed much since the spawn- he just stays in the tube with the eggs all the time, occasionally nipping at a piece of food that floats by, which is different than his usual behavior as well. I guess now after a few attempts he is becoming a better dad.
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Re: Breeding Journal, Species: Pseudochromis aldabraensis (Neon Dottyback)
Thursday, March 28, 2013 4:14 PM
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Got my order of rotifers this morning. Got some extra for immediate feeding and some others to get a culture going.
Pulled the eggs from the pvc tube on my lunch break and put them in the specimen container again hanging on the side of the tank with some flow going in. The male was doing a great job of watching over the eggs this time. He would not leave the tube even as I raised it above the water level and poured the eggs into the container. The eggs came out without a single bad one in the batch, and a couple larvae popped free during the transfer.
Going to set up my hatch tank shortly and get the rotifers settled... woohoo!
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Re: Breeding Journal, Species: Pseudochromis aldabraensis (Neon Dottyback)
Saturday, March 30, 2013 6:16 PM
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On the early evening of 3/28, I siphoned ~5g of tank water into a 10g tank. I removed the specimen container with the eggs from the broodstock tank and placed it into the new 10g tank and set it up with a heater and airstone (with the specimen container submerged in the 10g tank so that hatched larvae could swim out). There were 2-3 larva that had hatched, and I didn't want to put the pump (aqualifter) output moving water against the eggs in fear of sucking some larva into the pump input. I didn't really have an adequate tumbler, so I just put a small airstone in the specimen container in the vicinity of the eggs. Not sure exactly where I went wrong, but I think the airstone near the eggs was insufficient. In the last egg mass, there were a number of "dead" eggs in the mass, but when they hatched it was obvious that the there was a hatch. In the new mass there was no noticeably dead eggs. However, very few of them ever hatched. Only about a dozen ended up hatching. Since a few had hatched out during the day, and I'd read some people left the lights on 24x7 for the larvae, I left the lights on all night on the 28th. I think either having the lights on all night didn't trigger them to hatch, or I didn't have enough flow on the eggs after I removed them from the cave. Those are really the main two things that I did differently. In any case, I've got about 10 larvae and they are healthy and swimming around and eating. I was hoping for many more to hatch, but it is still positive personal progress. I've added a large amount of rotifers and add several drops of RGcomplete 2-3x per day to tint the water green. I've also got two half-full 5g batches of rotifers culturing that get RGcomplete 2x/day.
<message edited by joel1234567 on Tuesday, April 2, 2013 1:03 PM>
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Re: Breeding Journal, Species: Pseudochromis aldabraensis (Neon Dottyback)
Monday, April 1, 2013 9:15 AM
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Discovered a new egg mass this morning just after lights on, which leads me to believe that they are probably spawning the prior evening. That would make this latest spawning cycle only 7 days.
Checked the larval tank this morning (4dph) and I could only count 5 larvae, but they still appear active and in good health.
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