Breeding Journal, Species: Priolepis hipoliti (Rusty Goby)

General
Species:  Priolepis hipoliti (Rusty Goby)
Social Structure:  Pair
Size of Individuals:  ~1 inch
Age of Individuals:  Unknown
Date added to Tank: 10-29-2013

Broodstock Tank Details
Size of Tank:  Mesh breeder basket in a 40g "breeder" on a 200+ gallon system
Substrate Details:  None in the basket
Filtration Details:  Live sand, live rock, protein skimmer, bioballs       
Water Changes:  Infrequently
Water Temperature:  ~80F
Lighting:  Fluorescent strip light
Lighting Cycle:  6AM to 9PM
Other Tank Inhabitants:  None in the breeder basket

Broodstock Feeding Details
Food Types:  Live blackworms, Hikari mysis, frozen mash
Feeding Schedule:  Two or more times a day

Spawning Details
Date of First Spawn:  1-16-2014
Spawn Time of Day:  Unknown, sometime between 7AM and 5PM
Dates of Consecutive Spawns:  1-21-2014
Courtship Details:  Not witnessed
Egg Size:  Very small, ~0.5mm, maybe less
Egg Color:  clearish yellow at first
Egg Count:  Not counted, but at least 300

Hatch Details
Hatch Date:  1-15-2014 from spawn of unknown date (I wasn't checking for eggs before I caught the larvae)  
Hatch Time of Day:  Very shortly after lights out    
# Days after Spawn:  5th night after spawn
Larvae Description:   Very small at ~2mm, pigmented, likely attracted to light since they were caught in a larval snagger otherwise by dumb luck hundreds ended up in the snagger (also very possible)      
Consecutive Hatch Dates: 1-20-2014             


Larval Tank Details
Temperature:  80F
Size of Larval Tank:  10 gallon
Substrate Details:  None
Other Tank Decor:  Heater and airstone
Filtration Details:  Live phyto
Lighting:  Fluorescent strip light
Lighting Cycle:  6AM to 9PM
Water Changes: 

Larval Feeding Details
Food Types:  Gymnodinium, Heterocapsa triquetra dinoflagellates 
Feeding Schedule:  constant

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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Pic of the adults:

Pretty sure the female is the one closer to the PVC pipe since that one is a bit more plump around the middle
 
This morning I checked the snagger expecting to see some snapping shrimp larvae and found these instead!  




 
About a week ago (maybe two) they were moved from the QT tank into the 40 breeder.  I had checked for eggs (at least I thought I did) and have peeked with the flashlight a couple times but never saw anything.  Must not have been looking hard enough!  I will have to check more thoroughly in the future.
 
There were at least 100 larvae! They are so so tiny though, ~2mm.  I put them in a 10 gallon tank and with some rotifers and added a bunch of 53uM and larger Euterpina copepods.  I added some tetraselmis (not the best alga nutrionally, but it was all I had at the moment) to tint the water green.
 

They must have spawned today and holy moly. Here is a pic of the eggs in the PVC tube:

And they must have run out of space because there were also a whole bunch of eggs on the clam shell:


Hundreds and hundreds of eggs I would say, and they are TINY. The larvae are still swimming around and they also are just so TINY.

I pulled a couple to take some pics last night to hopefully see if they are eating

This one not eating?  I can't really see any food in there...
 


Eating? Or just a little bit of yolk or oil globule thing?  I have no idea.  All I know is that this morning there were still some alive.  I left the light on over them last night and will probably continue to do so as long as they are alive...Which may only be through today! I can't get over how small they are

By the morning of day 3 they were all gone. I pulled some on the evening of day 2 for some pics:



One of them looked like it had something green in its stomach, so perhaps it ate something:


The current nest seems to be developing nicely and if a 5 day incubation period is accurate, it should hatch out tonight.

 

Hatch last night! And it was very shortly after lights out (within 30 minutes probably!)  I think I sort of messed things up by going down there with a flashlight and trying to get some out right away.  They seem mildly attracted to the light (or perhaps just was random?) but they are incredibly evasive and can swim surprisingly well, so I hardly got any with the baster and just gave up.  This morning there were very few in the snagger...Next time I am going to try an artificial hatch perhaps 
 
Anyway, I did get a few larvae.  I don't have anything to really offer them in terms of food, but I decided to do a starvation trial and a "let's see if this works" trial.  I have two small cereal containers (ummmm....will have to check the actual volume. I would estimate 1.5-2 liters).  One container is just some larvae in broodstock water and I added nothing.  The second is larvae in broodstock water with tetraselmis (the largest phyto I have currently) and this morning I sprinkled in some of the smallest golden pearls I had (50-100uM).  I think those will still be too big, but hey, why not try?  I am not aerating the containers and they are placed on a germination mat controlled by a finnex heater controller thing (the probe is in a one gallon fishbowl that is also on the mat, not directly in the P. hipoliti containers).  They seem to have no problem staying in the water column.  I wanted to count and put equal numbers in both containers but I started doing it in the dark and then this morning I didn't have time to tinker around.  So it's not very scientific, but I should get an idea of how long they can go without food before starving/dying.
 
Eggs hatched on the 5th night.

New spawn yesterday.  Busy little fish!
 
Some larvae still alive in both containers.  I was able to get my hands on a small amount of 5-50uM golden pearls yesterday (a local club member had some, hooray!) so I drizzled a small amount of that in last night.  This morning I swooshed around in there a bit with a turkey baster since a couple larvae seemed stuck at the surface. I put in a drop of Prime (due to the GP being in there). I also put lids on (just loosely resting) to keep dust and other gunk from flying in there.  If I get a chance today I may pull one or two to look at under the scope.  
 
The best pic I could get of the larvae without the microscope

All dead again (in both containers) the night before day 3 (none spotted yesterday).  New hatch should be tomorrow night, and I may try artificially hatching.  My Gymnodinium order was supposed to be here yesterday but didn't come and will hopefully come today.  Given that it has been quite cold here again lately, I am concerned that they will arrive dead :/

I never managed these...good luck Shannon!

I estimate the size of these guys to be about 1.8 mm.  I got a stage micrometer but I haven't finished tinkering with it, but based on what I did this weekend, 1.8mm is about right for a Day 1 larvae.
 
I had a hatch Friday night.  Before lights out, I pulled the clamshell with eggs and put it in a 1 gallon fish bowl that was clamped into a 10 gallon tank (that was filled and heated).  The water was new ASW. I put an airstone on the eggs (well, not exactly...I tried to, but it didn't work as well as I wanted) and had it set to a low-ish aeration.  The larvae started hatching nearly immediately and by the next morning I would say over 95% had hatched.  So these guys do GREAT with artificial hatching.  I added some  gymnodinium culture water straight out of the bottle before the eggs were put in and added more the next morning.  I have NO idea if there are actually gymnodinium in there...I didn't get a chance to do a microscope check that would tell me anything.  I peeked quick and saw some things swimming, but that could have been tetraselmis since I was using that to feed the gymno.  I also added (Friday evening) some Euterpina naups between 53-120uM.  Probably much too big, but figured WTH.  Saturday evening I pulled some for pics again and also added a small amount of S rotifer culture (IIRC...) but like 10 rots.   
 
Now, usually they die the night between day 2 and day 3, so I expected to see nothing but dead ones this morning, but they were still alive!  New record!! (For me )  I even siphoned the bottom and thought I would at least pull up some dead ones, but everything I bastered out of that soup was alive...so back in they went!  There is also nanno, Iso and tet in the bowl.  This morning I thought about adding more rots or something, but decided to wait until I got home today to try to sieve out ciliates or dinos from any of my cultures (I have a 17uM mesh that I lay over other sieves).  I wouldn't have had time to size sort this morning and be sterile about it.  
 
On to pics!
Day 1, AM-ish


 
Here is day 1 in the evening (I had a second person helping with the pics and think they turned out much better for it! Easier for me to focus and have someone else hit the "click" button):


Zoomed in a little bit (10x objective):

Way zoomed in on the yolk (what's left of it, at least)?  I don't know my larval anatomy as well as I should...

Zoomed in on gut...food in there I think...just a few little pieces

I think those green spots are about 10uM, maybe slightly larger, which is right in the size range of Tetraselmis.  Perhaps though, they ate something that ate the tetraselmis...not sure, and I wasn't able to get it any more in-focus than that. 
 
So...that's that for now!  I won't be surprised if I get home and find them all dead, but here's to hoping they aren't!  The parents laid a new nest, so I will get another chance soon enough

Oh, and I wanted to add that these larvae are VERY sensitive.  No matter how fast I am, every one that I pull for pictures dies.  So now I know going into it that any larva pulled for pics will be sacrificed.  
 
And the aeration in the one gallon fishbowl is minimal--just enough to keep them from getting stuck on the surface.  The reason for this is two fold.  First, the larvae seem sensitive and they don't appear to have too much of a problem staying in the water column even with no air.  Second, gymnodinium is supposedly sensitive to aeration and handling as well.  

They made it through day 3!  I pulled two for pics last night:






They (well, at least that one) seem to have more green stuff in the gut...but what is it???  This morning there were still some alive, new record for me! Haha  There were some dead on the bottom though and I turkey bastered those out.  I also added some more gymno culture (if there is gymno in there...) and caught whatever I could from anything I was putzing with (dead cultures, live cultures) on a 27uM sieve (after it have already gone through a 53uM).  I also put in some from a Euterpina culture between 53 and 120uM, just in case.  

They made it through day 4, but died during the night (I've been having lights out at night; I will likely try a 24/7 lighting run soon).
 
Here are the pics from last night:




 

I pulled the PVC pipe that they are now spawning in last night for an artificial hatch.  These guys are very very tolerate of artificial hatching, which is great since they don't seem to be very attracted to light.  They also will hatch even with light on, which is also nice because then they could start eating right away if the light is left on.  I say could start eating because I haven't really found anything they will eat yet.  
 
I ordered parvo nauplii and they arrived yesterday.  I added a maybe 1/4 of my 50k nauplii order to the fish bowl...but I honestly think they may be too large for them to be interested in.  Hopefully, that won't be the case.  We shall see!
 
Here is an image with the parvo naup added to a larval photo at the same magnification.  Looks like it would be a tight squeeze, but some of the naups are probably smaller (hopefully, at least).  The paper I read about another species in this genus said that they don't utilize as much of their mouth gape as you would think, so I am not too hopeful.

Ha...I just posted in the report "have access to parvo"?  Shannon, where did you order specifically only NAUPLII of Parvo?!

I think you can order parvo nauplii from Reed Mariculture.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Ken

Yep! I got them from Reed. $45 or 50k nauplii

New record for me!  I had a handful make it through the fourth night and into the fifth day, but not very many and I don't think that they look very good. I've had rotifers show up in the bowl, which is not ideal.  And I also suspect that the parvo I got died...I found one alive (the one I have the pic of) but I just checked the cultures yesterday and didn't see anything moving....Hmmmm

The last of them died during the day today.  

Their last spawn was so impressive, I just had to post a pic:

 
I didn't collect the larvae from that nest, but the next nest I hope to have a few different foods to try so I plan to collect those larvae

I pulled the nest today around 2 PM and some start hatching in the bowl right away.  I wonder if these start hatching out during the day naturally.  In any case, I have them in a giant wine glass type thing I got from Walmart that is about 1.5 gallons.  I added some gymno but I think there is also some tetraselmis in at least one of the gymno cultures.  I hope to add H. triquetra in a couple days as well once those cultures come back up since I just split them.

On Monday I pulled a nest thinking they would hatch that night.  They started to hatch the following night (5-20) instead.  I put the eggs in a BRT with broodstock water and aerated them with an airstone.  I added Heterocapsa triquetra (dinoflagellate) as a potential food.  This morning I saw a few larvae swimming around, but not as many as I had expected.  There are still many unhatched eggs, and I am sure there are lots of larvae I can't see due to how small they are and because they are black--same color as the tank.  There is a bunch of gunk on the bottom, likely from whatever settled out of broodstock water.  I probably should have sieved it first, but was a bit rushed.  I may do a small bottom siphon tomorrow.

Well, this evening I couldn't spot a single larvae. I don't think it was a great hatch. I will attempt the Heterocapsa for food again since I can't yet rule it out--the problems from this last attempt weren't likely food related. Next time I will go back to hatching them in a smaller container and won't use an airstone. I think I will also use more diffuse light. This last time the lights may have been too bright. Before I would tint the water with phyto, but the Heterocapsa doesn't grow that dense/dark that it would work for brown water.

Luckily these guys spawn frequently

I pulled the nest for hatch last night. They had spawned on the half clam shell this time since I hadn't returned their spawning PVC to them in time. I put the clam shell in a 1 gallon fish bowl and put an airstone near it, turned down pretty low. There were just enough bubbles to slightly move the eggs. They started to hatch right away, under bright light. I got a short video of the hatch that I will try to upload/post tomorrow. I let about half of the nest hatch in the fishbowl, then I put the shell back with the parents. There are still A LOT of larvae. Hundreds of them.

Before I put the eggs in the bowl, I added Heterocapsa dinoflagellates. I covered the sides with a hand towel and put a sheet of paper towel over top to dim the light a bit.

This morning I added some Oxyrrhis marina, a drop of RGOmega and a drop of Prime. I also took the paper towel off for the day. Still plenty of larvae.

Shannon, I'm just pulling at straws here and speculating, so please take this with a grain of salt.  If the larvae survive until around day 4 it might indicate that (even though they are eating) dinos and tetraselmis may not be an appropriate diet at this stage and this is just the point that the yolk sack is depleted.  The parvo naup (which I believe is around 60 um) looked a little on the big side so 30-40 um ciliates might be an appropriate food.  When you write that you sieved several miscellaneous cultures for 27 micron to 53 micron food, do you think you harvested much?  Did the batches fed ciliates live as long as the dino batches?  
 
While common sense says to add every type of food you have so the larvae can choose, you may also want to culture something like euglena or euplotes to see if that size works on the larvae.  I think carolina supply has both of those.  Also, this is getting a little farfetched, but you might mix an algae like pavlova with the ciliates for better digestibility.
 
Perhaps none of this will help and will just be a lot more culture work.  In that case, sorry if it doesn't help.

I agree tetraelmis is not a good option, but they do actually eat it. The longest survival I got was day 5 or six and that was when I added some nauplii that I ordered (that were already too large, I would imagine). I never confirmed if they were eating or not with that run.

There is a paper, by Wittenrich and others, about another species in this genus. They were fed wild plankton, yet the only thing they ate were gymnodinium dinoflagellates. That is why I want to give a few attempts where I try that, at least for the first week or something. The starvation trials also had them lasting until day 5, which makes me think that my deaths may be more environmental than food related at this point. I am working with a different species though, and I can't say that they are going to be the same.

So I want to try the dinos for a first food, then try Parvo. The Parvo just isn't ready to use yet. I also want to try Oxyrrhis marina and ciliates.

I just pulled two larvae and got these pics



Looks like they are at least eating the Heterocapsa

It looks like you are making good headway.  Very interesting that they are taking dinos over ciliates given that ciliates probably move more and would elicit more of a strike response.  But you can't argue with results!

Well, who knows if it will sustain them, but they seem to be ingesting more than just incidentally.  Today I added some Euterpina, 53 to 180 microns. I still don't feel ready to feed Parvo, which would be more ideal.  Or perhaps the Colurella rotifers I am trying to get going.  But not quite there yet...

Not sure if the video uploaded right. Photobucket is a real pain with videos lately.

I also can't remember if I linked to the Priolepis paper already, so here it is:
http://www.sciencedirect..../pii/S0044848607002839

And here is an article about fish larvae (snooks) eating dinoflagellates at a first food:
http://www.stockenhanceme...f/Wittenrich_snook.pdf

Any news with these guys? Was considering getting a pair soon.

Nope.  I haven't attempted for awhile.  I fed less this summer so they didn't lay for awhile, but now I'm feeding more again and hope to give them a go again soon.