430gal., L-shaped display

["Umm fish?"]

I just found a fun little paper this evening (Seishi Kimura and Takanari, "Development of Eggs, Larvae and Juveniles of the Labrid Fish, Halichoered poecilopterus, Reared in the Laboratory," Japanese Journal of Ichthyology, Vol. 39, No. 4, 1993). Assuming that sixlines have a larval stage that are roughly similar to these other wrasses, the prolarvae should be roughly halfway round the diameter of the egg by about 10.5 hours after spawn. I should be seeing _some_ development in there, at any rate. So, probably infertile.

But, I collected 81 eggs tonight! Already in the antibiotic bath. We'll see.

 

["Umm fish?"]

Sixline wrasse embryo, 15 hours post-collection and somewhere between 15 and 18 hours post-spawn!!

 

[melev]

That's amazing.

So how do you not hurt your little embryo taking these pictures? It isn't like you've got tons of them to waste. Are you able to get a quick shot and put it back in the water?

 

["Umm fish?"]

Thanks, Marc!

They are in a petri dish right now. I'm pipetting them out and into a drop of water on a slide. When done, I wash the drop of water back the petri dish (or just wipe it off if there's nothing interesting).

 

[dtech]

Those are amazing pics.

 

[murfman]

Andy that is so cool!!!! Thanks for sharing!

 

["Umm fish?"]

Thanks, y'all!

 

[jnarowe]

sorry, there's an avatar on this page that is distracting me...what were we talking about??

 

[murfman]

"sorry, there's an avatar on this page that is distracting me...what were we talking about??"

Oklahoma????

 

["Umm fish?"]

We're talking about 151 eggs tonight! But I spilled some of the water out of the petri dish, so I may have lost some.

 

[murfman]

Too many Gin and Tonics?

 

["Umm fish?"]

Must be. Or, I'm just an idiot and bumped the dang thing.

I went for the martini last night. Very nice. Hendrick's is no slouch of a gin.

 

["Umm fish?"]

Elkhorn coral, plus guest:

Who couldn't love a face like that?

 

[murfman]

I noticed my Starry and my Tomini getting in to it today. I wonder what that was all about.

 

[EnglishRebel]

Great shots of the Six Line embryo Andy. Also love that Mandarin.

 

["Umm fish?"]

Herbivores. Who can say? I don't relate to them very well, despite having been a vegetarian for a while.

Thanks Alan! Check this out:

Sixline wrasse prolarva!!!

This is killing me. I thought I was taking a bunch of video, washed the little one back into the petri dish, and then found out that the microscope hadn't saved any of it. So, this photo is the only one I have right now. Details: the prolarva is looking close to 2+ mm. Measurements were one of the things I was going to use video for. The yolk sac looks pretty depleted at this point, though still present. The larva looks pretty close to Figure 2, B ("1 day, 2.44mm TL") from the Kimura & Kiriyama paper referenced above.

 

["Umm fish?"]

111 eggs tonight. I made a new egg incubator this afternoon, so the eggs went in there. That's a water pitcher from Target.

And here's my egg collector with pipette.

 

["Umm fish?"]

Well, there was also a green mandarin spawn tonight:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FC7oiotlQPs

And I managed to catch one single egg. As you can see, it's also very small but it's quite a but different from the sixline eggs. It's also much, much more buoyant than the sixline eggs.

 

[EnglishRebel]

Andy
I love these posts. It's great to see someone with the patience and devotion to rear these little fellas. hope they all survive. New business opportunity??

 

[jnarowe]

That egg colector looks like the screen out of my dishwasher.