Breeding Journal, Species: Pseudochromis fridmani (Orchid Dottyback)

Yes,this is what I plan to do,daily baths when I pull the ball for examination.H2O2 or formalin.
Given these (preliminary,granted) results,one can wonder if the eggs die because they are consumed,or if they are consumed because they die...

Quick update: The egg ball from Sunday night remained intact this time for the entire incubation period, however, the eggs never developed.  I am not sure if this is because I somehow shocked the eggs when I first snatched them or what.  I will admit that there was more of a temperature difference than I would have like when I rinsed and sterilized the egg ball when it was first taken from the broodstock system, and I am wondering if this was enough to really damage the eggs.  I will hopefully get another spawn in a few days and I hope to actually have the new tumbler ready this time.
 
The larvae from the only good hatch I have gotten so far are still alive...at least a few of them are.  I am now down to about 5 on day 22.  I don't get to see their bodies on the bottom anymore since the Tisbe dispose of them rapidly (it's almost scary how they swarm the dead larvae and how quickly they dispose of them) so the larvae just sort of disappear now.  There are at least 3 that look to be "strong" and the other two look iffy.  I swear one of them sort of has a pinkish hue to it, but I think I am just hopefully imagining things. They have been getting nhbbs and 12-24 hour old enriched bbs.  There are also a few different pods cruisng around in there still, but I am not sure how much of those they are really eating.

Last night the egg ball from Saturday (I think it was from Saturday...can't remember off the top of my head, but pretty sure I found an egg ball Sunday morning, so either it was spawned Saturday or early Sunday morning) "hatched."  I would say 97% of this egg ball was dead, but it remained intact during the tumble and I could see a few eggs in the ball that were developing so I let it go.  I was rewarded with about 5 that hatched.  I just put them in on of the clingfish larvae BRT that I have going since starting up a new BRT for them seemed silly.  I had forgotten how hard they are to see; The last hatched I've had were clownfish larvae which seem HUGE and clingfish larvae which are so darkly pigmented and I forgot just how hard dottyback larvae are to see when they first hatch.  I don't hold out much hope for these guys and I won't be able to monitor them very well, but they will be fed at least.
 
The other run is on Day 28 (IIRC) and I have one left.  Just one lonely, lonely larva.  It does seem to be hanging out at the bottom more and more and I am pretty certain it is finally getting a pinkish/purple coloring to it.  I may try to catch it in a cup tonight and have a closer look, but I am pretty afraid of damaging it or killing it.  That would be my luck.

Haven't updated for awhile.  The one larva that made it to day 28 didn't make it past that.  So that is my "record" so far with these guys. 
 
I have had a couple spawns since then.  One I tumbled and it looked okay, but then the tumbler leaked and the eggs dried out before I noticed.  The next spawn I made a new tumbler for (similar to the one made from sponge filter parts.

 
Not all the eggs were fertilized, actually most weren't.  Perhaps 10-20% developed.  The egg ball remained intact in the tumbler, but for some reason never hatched out.  Perhaps it wasn't agitated enough to cause a hatch.  I tested the system the parents are in and it came in as having no copper, so I may let the male try incubating the next few and see how that goes.

I found an egg ball around the time the lights came on Thursday morning.  My guess is that it was spawned sometime on Wednesday then, although it's possible they spawned first thing Thursday morning.  I decided to let the male keep this one to see how the eggs do with the male and in this system that tests "0" copper now.  I checked this morning and he still has them.  They spawn in a cave that the male doesn't really hang out in all the time, but the male dives into the egg ball cave when he sees me coming and curls around the egg ball.
 

Well.  The male did a good job tending the egg ball, all things considered.  The egg ball got smaller and smaller until the day it was due to hatch, but the male was likely removing the dead/unfertilized eggs which lately seem to make up most of the egg ball.  The night I expected the hatch (Saturday, 8-31-2013) I put a little (dim) light on the tank to make collection easier and turned the flow way way down in the broodstock tank.  I had checked earlier in the day and the ball was still there, but after lights out it was gone and there were no larvae.  Perhaps he ate it at the last moment or I somehow missed every single larvae.  Regardless, I think the next spawn I will let him tend until the day of, and then pull it for an artificial hatch.  

Sounds like a planGood luck!

Quick update here.  I did pull the egg ball after I last posted for an artificial hatch, but there were only a couple fertilized egg and only ONE hatched.  So that egg ball was a dud.  I said out loud, near the tank so he could hear, that if he didn't shape up I was going to swap him out for a new male that fertilizes better.  
 
Earlier this week there was another eggball and at first I had little hope for it. But as of last night, it looked pretty large yet, the male was taking good care of it and there appeared to be lots of little eye balls!  It should hatch tonight if it makes it through the day...but the problem now is that I didn't really rejuvenate or ramp up my rotifers so this may be a toss away run.  I will do some rotifer work tonight any way for the next egg ball.
 
Also, just wanted to make a note that around the time of the last craptastic egg ball I did a larger than normal water change.  Maybe that made a difference, maybe it is totally unrelated.

Grrrrrr.  I missed catching the larvae last night!  The egg ball looked GREAT before lights out...the best I have seen in a long long time.  So I decided to put the snagger in that tank and turn the flow down low so I could let everything happen "naturally."  Well I woke up to no egg ball and no larvae!  I guess next time I will have to just remove it for an artificial hatch.  The good news, though, is that now I have time to get my rotifer cultures nice and strong.

I finally got a decent egg ball again. I pulled it last night--the night it was due to hatch anyway--and put it in an inverted 2L bottle in front of a bright light with rigorous bubbling. It took about an hour for most of them to hatch. I put the larvae in a BRT that had about 3-4 talking of broodstock water I put S and L strain rots and also some apocyclops in. Tank is heated to 79F and bubbling with an airstone.

This morning I started dripping in new ASW (about a gallon) and also added some tetraselmis to the chaetoceros that was ready in there.

Day nine for these guys.  On day 7 they got a decent amount of Euterpina copepods and on day 8 they got nhbbs for the first time.  They also got some again this morning.  I saw a couple with orange guts, so I know that at least some of them are chowing on the brine shrimp.  The water remains tinted.  I have been trying to focus on using nanno and Iso, and use the other three phytos (Rhodo, Tet, and Chaeto) when I have to.  A couple additions of rotifers were enriched first (with algamac or selcon boost) but for the most part I just rely on the live phyto since I don't have a great rotifer enrichment routine and need that space to enrich artemia.  Several more gallons of ASW has been dripped in and I will probably add another gallon today.  
 
I have no idea how many are in there and I don't really know how many I started with...but it looks there are still a pretty good number of them alive.
 
There was another egg ball that looked good that hatched over the weekend, but I let it go.  I will likely try to get the larvae off the next one if it looks decent.

Whopping big egg ball from the pair yesterday.  Can't say yet if the male did a good job fertilizing and how much of it will die/not develop...but holy moly I can't believe that thing came out of the female fish.  It would be due to hatch on Friday night...however I will be essentially unavailable from Friday at 3 PM until Sunday at 3PM so if I want to catch these guys I will have to rig something for the hatch and teach my house sitter how to do some basic larval care.  We will see how it plays out!
 
Still have some larvae alive and cruising around from the last hatch I collected.  They have been getting nhbbs morning and night and rotifers are added as I think they are needed.  They got another dose of Euterpina this morning and will probably get as many as I can scrounge up again on Sunday (which is around day 15--the day Wittenrich says is a great time to add copepods if you have them).  I still have no idea how many are in there.

I snagged one out yesterday to take a few quick pictures of.  This is of a Day 17 larvae (approximately 8mm long) and it was one of the more pigmented looking ones:

 
I would estimate that I have between twenty and thirty (as of yesterday)...

Good job!  You're almost there, and with 20 or 30 of them at 17 dph I would say you just may have the ticket this time!
 
Fwiw, my male Orchid isn't consistent either.  Sometimes he keeps a nice big egg ball to hatching, sometimes he eats it.  If he has a good egg ball I can remove it, look at it, and put it back and he will continue to incubate it.  So I don't think it is a stress thing.  I'm not really sure what the cause is...poor fertilization?  I don't know.
 
I haven't tried raising the Orchids in over a year, but I'm going to pull the next good egg ball on hatch night and give it a go.

Don't let fear and common sense stop you! =]

 
I hope so!  The last time I got a solid attempt at these guys I had three make it to 28 days and then just disappear.  Ugh.  I did a pretty large water change (4-5 gallons) on the larval tank last night to remove a lot of the partially grown brine shrimp.  Then I added about 2-3 gallons of new ASW back in with some nanno (and this morning I used Rhodomonas).  I counted at least 14 during the water change and several are really starting to look like real fish and have a nice pink hue to them.
Here are a few of them:

 
I had a really nice egg ball that was due to hatch on Saturday night.  I had to work late Saturday evening, so around 5PM I pulled the egg ball to do the light induced artificial hatch.  It didn't work.  I let the egg ball vigorously tumble well into Sunday, but only about 10 hatched.  I just dumped it.  Hopefully next week I will get another awesome egg ball to work with.

Did a water change to remove partially grown brine last night and counted 8 larvae yet.  Two were super duper close to settling...looked like fish, were getting purple-ish....and I found those two dead this morning.  I wonder if I over fed the nhbbs last night.  I didn't have any enriched at the moment and I accidentally got more in there than I intended.  So now I am down to 6 and they aren't nearly as close as the first two were.  UGH.
 
There was a spawn on Wednesday so I should get a hatch this weekend.  Fingers crossed it goes well since the last time it definitely did not.  If I get a good hatch out of this egg ball I will run with it.  

The older batch is day 30-something today (32?) and I am down to three.  They keep dying during or right after settlement.  This is incredibly frustrating.  Not sure exactly what the problem is.  I have been feeding enriched bbs and add phyto as I can to keep the uneaten artemia in the tub enriched.  However, there are still rotifers in there and I think they devour most of the phyto before the brine does.  And with only three larvae, perhaps the bbs I am adding just lose nutritional value before they are eaten and the larvae just die.  
 
I have a new batch of larvae from last Wednesday's spawn.  These hatched over two days.  The early hatchers are in a one gallon fishbowl with nearly all copepods (Tisbe, Apocyclops, and Euterpina).  I have added a small amount of rotifers, but hardly any. This fish bowl is currently not heated. The later hatchers were first in a 2.5 gallon bucket (I didn't have enough water for a real BRT when I realized the rest of the egg ball had actually hatched out...I was going to toss it and realized there were LOTS of larvae swimming around) and were moved to a heated BRT in about 5 gallons of water last night.  They have Iso and Rhodomonas for phyto and have gotten rotifers, Apocyclops, Euterpina and some Tisbe.   This entire run I am really going to try to focus on using copepods as the main food source and only use rotifers when absolutely necessary.  I will bring the water volume up over the next couple days as I get a better idea of how many larvae are in there.

The most BEAUTIFUL color!



Just the one right now. Another settled, but I found it dead this morning. There is one larva left that I can see that is slowly turning reddish/purple.

Unfortunately, I didn't have any enriched bbs available yesterday so they got fed nhbbs. I feel like so many of the deaths I see are after feeding nhbbs, so I've been trying to avoid them, but yesterday I didn't have much choice.

I have a batch that is about a week old that had a large die off (not surprising considering how long guys were in the tumbler). The male has been guarding an egg ball that I would normally have pulled yesterday, but since the tanks have been a bit cooler and the last egg all hatched a day later than I anticipated, I decided to leave it until today. I haven't checked to see if it is still there or not.

Turns out I have two settled and alive for a week-ish post settlement.  This week/weekend I hope to move them to a different tank where they will be easier to feed and watch.  I also hope to get some better pics when I transfer them
 
I have some eggs due to hatch tonight, I believe, but the egg ball was pretty small so I'm not sure how many will really come out of it. The last batch of larvae was a flop :/

Missed the hatch...must have happened a day before I was expecting it (seems like sometimes it is on the third night, and sometimes it is on the fourth).  Oh well!
 
I was able to get some better pics of the settled fridmani last night.  Turns out there were three hiding in the tub
 


 

YES!!!!  Well done Shannon!  I told you this batch was the one.

Don't let fear and common sense stop you! =]

Thanks, Mindy! I'm not ashamed to admit that I did a funky dance when I saw the first settled fish. It was so exciting!

Now I just have to get better at it...

At what?  The funky dance?!!  :p

Don't let fear and common sense stop you! =]

This weekend the little fridmanis (only two now, one of them was found dead about a month ago) are 60DPS, and it seems like they are pairing up.  They had the entire bottom rack of the growout that is separated by two pieces of acrylic that have slits in them that the little fish can squeeze through.  For the first month or so they were in cubes on opposite ends, but the last week or so they have been sharing the same cube.  One is a bit larger than the others.  I can't wait for them to spawn since I recently lost both fish of my spawning pair
 
The pics aren't that great because of the odd lighting over the growout tank and the glare on the acrylic (plus, the acrylic was a little dirty)


 

Great story! Congrats.

check out Kathy's Clowns, llc website:
http://kathysclowns.com
Captive bred clownfish and more
(Wholesale to the trade.)

Today I decided to peek in some of the grow out tubes and I found my little juveniles are all grown up and spawning! The little male was guarding a little egg ball. It is just the cutest thing!


I also have a new pair in QT that I am hoping will start spawning in short order.

Mini eggball is gone this morning.  I think I spooked the mini male with my excitement and flashlight shining.

Another mini egg ball from the juveniles (now adults ).  It was spawned on Saturday and I didn't check to see if he still had it this morning or not.

Eye spots started to develop last night.

 
This morning he still had the egg ball.  It's so cute because when I check on him, he's usually just laying on top of the eggs like they are a pillow.

So the other night I pulled this egg ball (Tuesday night) and then I knocked the container over and the eggs went SPLAT on the floor.  I scooped the larger clumps of eggs back up and set them to tumbling anyway.  A few of them actually hatched!  I just threw them in with the clingfish larvae since there weren't enough to bother setting up an entire BRT for.  Hopefully the next egg ball will go better...

I found another egg ball this evening. I scared the crap out of the male when I was moving pipes around and the egg ball zipped right out of his den. I bastered it back in and he eventually checked back in with them (and didn't immediately eat them) but he wasn't hanging around the egg ball either. They are in a spot that allows them to sort of gently sway in the pipe due to the water inflow, so even if he abandons them, they may be fine. Hopefully he won't eat them.

The few larvae from the last hatch didn't make it long, just a few days. This isn't terribly surprising since I essentially made scrambled eggs with them shortly before the hatch :/

Am I missing something? My first hatch was last night and, looking at the size of the 3 that hatched (I think I under tumbled) I don't see how they're going t eat the rotifers in there.

Am I supposed to be using S rotifers? I am using the regular ones I've been using for my clownfish but my fridmani larvae look smaller than clownfish larvae.