Breeding Journal, Species: Centropyge bispinosa

General
Species:  Centropyge bispinosa
Social Structure:  we shall see.....
Size of Individuals:  male approx 3.5", female 2.75" ( second female 2", added 9/26/15)
Age of Individuals:  Unknown.  Just purchased the female today, have had the male for > 1 year in the display tank.
Date added to Tank:  female in QT tank as of today.  Male probably added early 2012 or late 2011.

Broodstock Tank Details
Size of Tank:  125 gallon mixed reef tank.
Substrate Details:  aragonite
Filtration Details:  75 gallon sump with skimmer, GAC, GFO, lots of live rock (typical reef setup)
Water Changes:  25% monthly with Reef Crystals
Water Temperature:  79 degrees F
Lighting:  LED mixed blue and white
Lighting Cycle:  blue on 0900, white on 1000, white off 2130, blue off 2230
Other Tank Inhabitants:  yellow tang, pair of perculas, scooter blenny, 2 Barlett anthias, 3 chromis, cleaner shrimp, several peppermint shrimp, and other inverts I am forgetting at present...

Broodstock Feeding Details
Food Types:  Variety of frozen (mysis, brine, krill, omnivore), nori several times a week, Ocean Nutrition flakes, pellets.  There is tons of grazing to be had on the reef (sponges, algae (unfortunately), tube worms, etc.  I have seen the male occassionally take a nip off a coral (most of my colonies are large and well established), but have never seen anything that appears damaged by him.  I know this has been a concern with other reefers.
Feeding Schedule:  dry food on timer with small snack twice daily (midmorning and mid afternoon).  Frozen fed early evening (1800-1900).

Spawning Details
Date of First Spawn:  11/24/13
Spawn Time of Day:  Approx 5-10 minutes before lights out
Dates of Consecutive Spawns:  They go about there spawning routine almost every night that I am around at that time.
Courtship Details:  About a half hour before lights out, the male usually begins with swimming around the tank and displaying in the center of the tank.  The female often ignores this for a long time and just grazes around the tank.  SHortly before lights out she will then begin following him up to the middle of the tank (they seem to like the area right under the return nozzles).  Lots of nuzzling and nipping by the male, and then the female darts off releasing eggs.  I have yet to see a sudden rise & release that I have read others report.
Egg Size:  700 micron spheres
Egg Color:  Silvery/translucent, with central oil droplet
Egg Count:  Appears to be several hundred
Hatch Details
Hatch Date:  First hatch on 4/2/15
Hatch Time of Day:  Approx 4pm (16-18 hrs post spawn) pro larvae are found
# Days after Spawn:  16-18 hrs post spawn
Larvae Description:  Silvery 2mm pro larvae with speckled dorsal stripe. To the naked eye appear as very thin 2mm grey line in water that occasionally "twitches"
Consecutive Hatch Dates:       4/3/15

Larval Tank Details
Temperature:  79 degrees F
Size of Larval Tank:  Small round 4x4x3" clear plastic container
Substrate Details:  None
Other Tank Decor:  None
Filtration Details:  Rigid airline with very slow bubble rate
Lighting:  Frag tank light (led 50w) on 9a-9p, then 13w cfl indirect on overnight
Lighting Cycle:  As above
Water Changes:  None thus far

Larval Feeding Details
Food Types:  Plan to add parvocalanus and t-iso
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: 



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I have always wanted to try breeding a dwarf angel, and finally found a suitable size female (hopefully) today.  She is in QT for now, hopefully will eat good, and be introduced to the main tank with the other in about a month.  The female was hard to get a picture of today, very shy, hiding in the back of the QT. Hopefully I'll update this journal with good news in a month or so.  I know it's a very long shot for anything close to success, but what the heck!  Just wanted to get it started...
 
Male (my Regal tang always tries to hog the pictures!)

 
Female

 
 

Well, bummer.... First setback. Came home from work to find my new coral beauty dead in the QT. I noticed that she seemed to have a lip infection day before yesterday, gave a dip in metronidazole yesterday. She was eating good up till these symptoms developed. Back to the drawi board, trying to find another possible mate.

what are the differences ,male /female ..?
did'nt find anything about that .

To my knowledge, with dwarf angels it's all about size. The smaller, younger specimens are female, and can become males as they grow larger/older. In a small harem of 3 that are all same size & age, one will become dominant and transform to male, growing larger. This is opposite from clownfish.

Anyone with any more accurate or specific info, please chime in!

Btw- I'm still trying to find a healthy young/small female locally. It's been harder than I thought!

Finally got another one through QT. This one in about 2cm smaller than my male, Got it from a friend who couldn't keep it (his Darwin clowns were constantly after it). So far no aggression between the two. I've seen my male displaying, flaring his fins, sometimes in the evening near lights out. Nothing more than that. They have been together now about 10 days. We'll see what happens. Hopefully I don't have 2 males! Not a great picture, but hard to get them both in one shot without movement!

Great looking pair - I'm a little jealous!

I have two of C. bispinosa in my tank (90x45x45cm) for ten months. I have been getting the eggs from the tank for almost four months everyday. I collect them with the net set in the over-flow tank set beside the main tank. The number I collect count from 200 to 1400 eggs per day. Unfortunately, however, I never had eggs fertilized. Could anyone suggest how to improve the condition? I used to get the fertilized eggs of C. ferrugata a few years ago almost every night for two years.
 
Sabahi (Bandeng in MOFIB) 

I have read that exposing centropyge eggs to air can harden the shells and kill them, so maybe your collection technique is killing them.
Try to keep the eggs under water all the time.

If mine ever do spawn, I hope to devise something to accumulate the eggs at the surface before going down the overflow. I suspect that rough ride would probably be detrimental to the health of eggs.

Thank you for the comments. I once tried to collect the eggs from the surface of the spawning tank but they were not fertilized at all.
 
Sabahi

Saw some encouraging activity this evening after the lights dimmed. The pair were hanging out near the surface with the male kind of nuzzling the female's ventral area. They would then swim away around the tank separately for a minute or so, then repay this behavior. I never saw anything that looked like true spawning. I'll try to get a video next time.

It looks to me like you are close to a spawning.  They do a lot of muzzling and chasing, then in a split second they rush to the surface.  It happens pretty fast, in about the last 5 minutes of daylight.  I dont know if you have light dimming but somehow they are pretty good at keeping time if you don't.  

I caught a video of my coral beauties spawning last night, the first time I ever witnessed this. Right near the end of the video you can see the female release a cluster of eggs, and one of the chromis immediately go after it. The video is dark because only the actinics are on, very near lights out

http://youtu.be/D1Q9NfwgvDo

Congrats on the spawn!

Nice video.  The male behavior of nuzzling and nipping is classic, but the pair did not have the typical spawning rush, and I couldn't see very well the number of eggs released but it is usually in the hundreds, right on the surface of the water.  
 
Maybe your pair is relatively young, I think soon you will see them spawn regularly.  

Now to figure out how to collect eggs, and see if they are fertile. I might try turning off my main return pump to see if I can keep them from going down the overflow. Hopefully the chromis & anthias will leave me some!

Collecting isn't easy, everything in the tank gobbles up the free caviar as fast as possible.  My shrimp used to hang upside down at the overflow and urgently grab every egg.
 
One way to harvest is to turn the lights out quickly so the fish will not be able to eat the eggs, then use a larval/egg snagger which skims the water surface into a container while a powerhead pumps water out of the bottom of the container to create a flow.

Another failed attempt to collect eggs last night..... I staked myself out in front of the tank near lights out, and watched the pair go through their usual chase around the tank for about 15 minutes. Then as usual they stopped just under the return nozzles for the actual spawn. As soon as the eggs were released, the chromis and anthias were on them in less than 1 second. By the time i went into the fish room (less than 30 seconds after the egg release) and looked around in the water and on the surface, I couldn't find any remaining. This is definitely going to be more of a challenge than I initially thought! Now I can see why my efforts to collect some eggs in the overflow haven't yielded any - none are getting the chance to make it into the overflow box

I don't know that you have an easy solution.  You could stand in front of the tank until they spawned with one hand on a switch that would kill every source of light in the room.  I don't think the anthias and chromis will forage in complete darkness.  Or you could remove either the angels or the chromis/anthias to another tank.  Neither one is an easy choice.  And even if you removed the fish eating eggs, the way would be clear for your shrimp to come to the surface and take their place.  Sorry, I wish I could help you with a better solution.

I think switching the lights will have to be my solution. Removing the other fish would require dismantling the whole reef since my corals are so large. I can run the actinics with a switched extension cord and sit in front of the tank. Then we'll see who is faster.... me on the switch, or the fish!

Any luck yet?  pumps off should help too.  You mentioned it took you 30 seconds to get into the fishroom...I assume that means you're watching from the front, but have to access the tank from the rear?  Perhaps try just being there standing overhead and watch and wait...vs. out in front.  They're reef fish..they're probably not that averse to you watching from overhead....not like there's herons on the reef...

I forgot to ask this earlier, but how are you going to get the eggs out of your overflow box?  Is there a net you'll stuff in there? Or is there standing water in the overflow box where you can get a cup or something down there to skim eggs off the surface?  
 
I'm sure you've handled the egg collection issue but don't remember if you said how.  I'd highly recommend a larval snagger.  In this case, just a tub with a little vertical height, a variable flow powerhead at the bottom, and something to hold it steady just under the water level (or with holes at water level) so that it will skim the eggs off the surface.
 
 

Still working on egg collection. I have sat in wait for the spawning, and then tried to shut off the lights immediately after egg release. I still haven't been able to isolate any eggs. I gave up on the overflow system (I did place a 120 micron screen in there over the durso inlet, which I had extended to near the bottom of the overflow to minimize eggs getting pulled into the screen - this kept my water level high in the overflow for the eggs to float, with the water being pulled from near the bottom of it. Nonetheless, I never collected any in there, most likely due to the anthias & chromis). It's frustrating to see the eggs released and immediately be eaten by the others, who now hang very near the pair at spawn time. One question I have for those of you with centropyge spawning experience - I have never seen my pair do the rapid rise others describe. They just hover & quiver together near the surface, and then the female will dart off as she releases the eggs which are in somewhat of a cluster. Usually one of the other nearby fish immediately swallow the whole cluster in one chomp.

I need to get another video of them spawning to demonstrate their "technique". Does anyone have video of a pair showing the "rapid rise"?

I don't have a video.  In my experience there usually isn't a classic rise from the bottom of the tank to the top.  The male spends the evening chasing and nuzzling, they do some shimmying, and in a split second they get to the top, release gametes and go back down.  The last part of the rise may only be 6", or it can be several feet.  But I've seen a lot more short rushes than tall ones.

That sounds like what my pair consistently does.

Then they are a normal married couple and now you don't have to pay a marriage counselor to see if they're doing it right.  Whew, that saves a lot of money!

Eggs? I was down by my tank at about 10pm last night, not really paying too much attention to it, when I noticed the anthias and chromis seemed to go into a feeding frenzy. I turned out all the lights and shut down the pumps. Looking with a flashlight, it appeared that there were some of the tiny silvery eggs still drifting around. I ran my fine net around in the water and think I collected a few of them. Anyone with experience with centropyge eggs please chime in as to whether this is an actual egg. I don't have any Isochrysis or parvocalanus cultures yet, so these are just for observation. The image is at 10x with the scope, looks like a tiny fried egg! I estimate size between 0.5-0.75mm. Watching some of the eggs in the tank, I noticed that they did not seem to head straight for the surface as I thought they would; they seemed to be very slowly rising. Again, my experience with these is very limited, so I'm not sure how fast they should rise to the surface.

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Ken

Yes that certainly looks one and you've got the size estimate correct.  I never looked at fresh eggs under the microscope so I can't help you for certain, but I believe you're right.  
 
I've heard that the eggs float better and collection is easier at full salinity, which makes sense.  Some people keep their salinity on the low end on the theory that its less osmoregulatory work for their animals, which also makes sense.
 
 

Here's a pic from today, at 12 hours post spawn.  The above pic was essentially at 0 hours after spawn.  Maybe a slightly larger embryo pole on the egg?  The s.g. on my tank is at 1.025.  I'll have to pay a bit more attention to the eggs in the future to see how buoyant they are.
 
 I have to work until late tonight, so I'll check tomorrow to see if there is any more development. 
 

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Ken

If the eggs still seem alive tomorrow, I'll try to get some better images, larger magnification. My apologies for the quality, I'm taking these by holding my iPhone up to the ocular of the scope. I need to buy an adaptor!

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Ken

do you have a culture of parvo started?

I've been waiting till the weather warms up a bit before ordering starter cultures.  This winter has been brutal here in Indy!  I plan to start isochrysis, chaetoceros, and parvo.  Everytime I go into my fish room, I try to imagine where I'm going to put all these new cultures!  I think I need to build a new rack.

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Ken

if you do a rack, do it right.  put sterile water on top, phyto next, copepods in the middle and larvae at the bottom. then automate it with a controller and solenoids or dosing pumps.

Absolute total rookie mistake on my part, so dumb I had to laugh at myself. I have had the eggs in a small plastic container floating in my frag tank , uncovered. I went to look at the eggs today, and noticed it looked like less water in the container. I checked the s.g., and it was about 1.045! I started lowering the s.g. slowly, but suspect the eggs are totally pickled. I'll try to get the s.g. back to normal by this evening and look at the eggs. I still have 3-4 that I can see in the container. Next time I will keep the container covered to prevent evaporation. Wow, somewhat embarrassed to forget the most basic saltwater parameter!

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Ken

You're in good company, I started saltwater keeping in 1985 and still make rookie mistakes!

Interestingly enough, the eggs appear unchanged as of today (3 days now) from the last photo. I'm surprised they haven't been eaten by ciliates, which I do see when I look at them with the scope. I'm sure they are no longer viable since there is absolutely no further development, but I'll just wait until they disappear on their own, or I get some more to observe. I may try to grab some eggs again tonight if I get home in time.

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Ken

Thought I would scoot over to your thread now that we both have dwarf angels spawning
 
Based on what I have seen with the eggs I've gotten and the ones that hatched, if by the morning after the spawn you don't see some development, you can probably assume the eggs are not good/not fertilized.
 
Maybe you could put a small piece of plexiglass or even plastic wrap over top of the container with the eggs to reduce evaporation. I've been using a scrap piece of plexi myself. 

 
I found this.  Pg 111 of the document, there are pictures of eggs and various development/egg quality categories
https://www.library.umain...s/pdf/CallanCK2007.pdf
 
The first egg pic you posted looks sort of like a fertilized, but inviable egg to me.  The second egg pic you posted looks more like an unfertilized egg (I can't see that darker ring around the oil globule).  That pdf also has some variations on egg collectors.  I may try making one myself this weekend...

Shannon,

Thanks for that article. I think I mostly need to work on egg collection at this time. I've been losing the vast majority of eggs to the chromis & anthias. I have tried the stalking technique, shutting off all lights as soon as I think I see them spawn, with only marginal success. I have collected up to 20 eggs, and kept them in a small covered container in my sump, but have never seen any significant development. My fish are pigs, and well fed, so brood stock nutrition shouldn't be a problem. I recently got one of those large 200 micron sieves (designed for a 5 gallon bucket) that I need to plumb my overflow through. if I can start getting viable eggs, my next step will be getting a parvocalanus culture running. If only my day job didn't interfere with my hobby so much!

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Ken