Apogon leptacanthus - Breeding Log

[mwp]

Oama, has someone raised this particular species through meta already? If so, who? Where's the documentation? I'd LOVE to hear exactly how they did it!

(BTW, I know I'm not the first to have this species BREED...it happens all the time - I can find MANY accounts of them breeding, but nothing about them being reared).

Matt

 

[mwp]

Just sat down to look at the larvae - the largest ones, when backlit, show dorsal and anal fins starting to develop - that's 12.5 days roughly.

Matt

 

[mwp]

Early this afternoon (4 PM) I harvested more SS Rots, L Rots and misc copes, enriched with selcon, and around 9:00 PM they were fed in. Nothing much else to write or say...things just look to be going fine for now!

Matt

 

[mwp]

Nothing much to say this evening - other than some 500 ML at most of phyto being dripped in I was not around all day and didn't have to the opportunity to do squat. We still have baby leptacanthus, that's all that really matters anyways! We're an hour or so away from 2 WEEKS POST RELEASE! Tomorrow night I'll sacrifice (if necessary) a larvae for some scope pics. Looking like a water change is in the future too.

Matt

 

[mwp]

OK, in anticipation of a clownfish hatch and the fact that the tank is now filled to capacity, I'm currently in the process of removing about 4 gallons of water & rotifers. 2 gallons worth have already been seived for the rotifers (which are going to get an overnight enrichment of Selcon)...2 more to go and we're set.

I'm going to take the larval pix tonight, but I've had an extremely long day (4 hours of sleep, up at 4:30 AM) so I may not post until Friday.

Looks like the leptacanthus are going to get new neighbors in true perc larvae...Renee couldn't allow me to simply "let them go"...her first fish's offspring deserve the fighting chance.

FWIW,

Matt

 

[FMarini]

Matt- outstanding job.
BTW I gave you huge props at the MACNA conference for your hard work on the cardinals, and since I talk you up so much- i thought you would mind if i used the video of your A. margraphtus cards passing the eggs from female vent to males mouth. I even broke it down in frames.

BTW- do you really think the SS strain is the magic here. your mixture contains alot of stuff, and Im not clear on whats making the difference

 

[mwp]

Frank, I DO believe that having the slightly smaller SS Strain available in significant numbers when the larvae start feeding can make a difference in SOME of the fish I'm rearing. I really can't say on the A. leptacanthus because this is only perhaps the 2nd time I've had enough larvae to even attempt rearing - I usually miss every release (i.e. there's one due tonight I think...I'm not even worrying about it!) It'd be a LOT easier to work with these guys if they were in dedicated broodstock type setups vs. all my full blown reef tanks that "happen" to have lots of reproductively active fish My main reason for using SS with the Leptacanthus as well as adding in the copes was to take a shotgun approach considering how rarely I get to work with the actual larvae! If rearing is ultimately successful, ALL of the food sources offered ARE available and easily cultured at home; later attempts can determine what's necessary and what isn't.

I thought that might be the vid in question! I'm sure you caught that the female margaritophorus eventually died of eggbinding! Thanks for the props - I hope to have a little school of leptacanthus soon - that'll blow my mind!

Matt

 

[mwp]

What the heck, I'm still up waiting on the clownfish larvae, so HERE are PICS of Apogon leptacanthus larvae at 361 hours post release - basically 15 days post release at this point! It is worth noting that again, the larvae harvested was only out of the tank for a couple minutes, and was NEVER out of the water, yet upon returning it to the tank it sank to the bottom, twitched a bit and doesn't appear like it's going to make it. Due to this, and the fact that the headcount is now closer to 25 instead of 40 (unless they're getting more crafty at being overlooked) the earliest I'll do another round of microscope shots is 20 days, and then maybe 25 and 30, maybe. I need to conserve larvae more than I need to get daily pics at this point.

Finally, I don't think I'll need to shoot at 200X anymore..the larvae are "huge" at 60X already!

Matt

 

[FishGuttz]

Looks like they're developing a little red irridescence or is that the color of the gills?

 

[FMarini]

fishgutzz-
that red color is most likely hemoglobin carrying blood, if you notice the red coloration is contained to areas of high oxygenation. Gill structures and thoracic cavity.
I believe nature works to ensure Larvae remain as colorless as possible while their planktonic- else bright color formation early= food. Once the fish is capable it will start to color

 

[mwp]

Just a couple quick notes. First, on the morning of 9-29, I noticed that our most recent spawn (9-20) was gone, so released after 8 days ruoghly.

The main update - I did a quick headcount again this evening - came up with approximately 30. There's still a BIG size discrepency - the largest are at least 2X the smallest in size. IT apears that the front/first dorsal fin is starting to grown on the largest larvae, while those on the smallest end do not appear to even have their anal and rear dorsal fins at this time.

Still haven't added any fresh water, but I did add another shot of phytoplankton on the morning of the 29th as well as the rotifers I had selcon enriched overnight. Everything looks pretty good...they're constatnly hunting down rotifers. I'm still wondering if/when I should start adding baby brine......

FWIW,

Matt

 

[mwp]

We're basically at 16.5 days now...sweet...approaching the longest larval survival I've had on ANY species (GBG's, 18 days). The water was clear this morning - I'm draining out another 2 gallons (to bring tank volume to 4 gallons), again straining the rotifers out (for enrichment). 1 crisp new gallon will go in early this afternoon (basically a 20% water change), and I'll continue to re-add clean water as I deem necessary. The phytoplankton reservior was empty, so it's been refilled to 2L with 1L T-Iso and 1L Nannochloropsis...I'm going to slowly drip it back in as done before.

Not much else to say..things are simply progressing.

Matt

 

[mwp]

Just some more maintenance updates - the enriched rotifers were just fed back in, and new saltwater is being mixed up as I type this. 1 gallon will go back into the larval tank as soon as it's ready.

Matt

 

[mwp]

OK, so here's the word. We had a partial clownfish hatch tonight, and 16 Amphiprion percula larvae have been added to the larval soup!

I felt the following activity had merit as it would be greatly beneficial to the folks out there who've spawned clowns but haven't tried something like the Apogons yet. I pulled a 17 day (408 hours) post release A. leptacanthus larvae and shot it under the QX5 next to a NEWLY HATCHED (0 hours) Percula Clown larvae. Seeing as how many of you know exactly how big a newly hatched clownfish larvae is, I figured this would be by far the best reference to show! The clownfish larvae survived the treatment, but again, the Cardinalfish did NOT. The cardinalfish still had a heartbeat when returned to the tank, but sank straight to the bottom...the one I photographed on the 15th did the same and was still dead (and pretty well decayed) by morning.

Based on this ongoing failure of "survival" in the photographing process, I am going to reserve any future microscope treatments of the leptacanthus larvae soley for those times I notice a significant CHANGE i.e. in morphology or coloration that MERITS documentation. In other words, it's not worth risking the lives of the few remaining larvae simply to show daily progress, and as long as I don't pester them they seem to do OK!

So here we are, side by side, newly hatched Pecula vs. 17 day old Threadfin Cardinalfish.

FWIW,

Matt

 

[mwp]

Looking at everything I have going on, including another specimen cup of Mandarin eggs that need "heating", I'm going to drip in another gallon of clean saltwater right now - yup, just another "maintenance update" but I want to have EVERYTHING logged, especially if I get some through to "metamorphasis"/"settlement" - which, BTW, I really have NO CLUE what that will look like considering the adults are basically "colorless" just like the larvae!

Matt

 

[mwp]

Well, we're into day 18, by tonight we'll be at a new record for larval survival in this house! The water was clear this morning so I've dripped in another 1 gallon of clean saltwater + 1 L of T-Iso/Nannochloropsis. All seems to be going well.

Matt

 

[mwp]

Sorry, was a duplicate post.

 

[mwp]

OK, I've been offline and will continue to be so for a few days (RCN is making me wait a WEEK for them to come out and fix a problem with THEIR service!) Here's a simple, quick update of maintenance notes on the cardinalfish for the last few days.

10-2-06
11:00 PM - removed 2 gallons including cleaned detritus off bottom. Adding 1 fresh gallon

10-3-06
11:30 PM - adding in another gallon of clean water to larval tank.

10-4-06
12:15 am - draining 2 gallons, seiving for rots for enrichment.

1:15 am - drained another 2 gallons, seived, and returned effluenct water, + 1 additional gallon of clean water. Fed rotifers from this seiving to the gorgonians

9:30 am - added enriched rotifers.

Life is good, we still have 20+ baby Apogon leptacanthus. It's safe to say that ventral fins are at least "budding" on the largest of them. They are active, feed well, curious (i.e. when I'm on the ground pearing into the tank they come over to investigate) and they seem to exhibit some loose schooling behavior.

We're at 20.5 days POST RELEASE - that's a big new record for me!

I just keep praying I don't "screw it up". Most of the larvae are definitely large enough to handle BBS, and I have decapsulated available from SHS. I'm going to put it off as long as I can, but I think BBS are going to have to come into the picture soon. Anyone care to suggest a good point at which to bring BBS onboard?

Matt

 

[BrianPlankis]

Matt,

Fabulous news! Keep up the good work, wish I could help with the bbs question, but I've never done that before.

Brian

 

[mwp]

Well, we're ONLINE today for a change...hopefully we'll stay on going forward (FWIW, if you have the choice between RCN and Comcast, go with Comcast...trust me as an experienced customer of both, I'd rather have one than the one I'm stuck with...).

Back to the larval tank and what's been going on...posting several days worth of notes again in one shot:

10-4-06 - I started working on the tank at 11:30 PM...my notes carry through into 10-5. I drained out 2 gallons of tank water, seived the rotifers out for enrichment, and discarded the water. I noticed that all the TIGGERPODS in the tank are gone!

10-05-06

12:00 AM - I drained out another gallon of water and seived it, returned the seived water (so no rots) + 1 gallon of new water to the tank.

12:30 AM - I drained out another 2 gallons, again seiving, and returing the seived water (2 gallons used water, no rots) + another 1 gallon of freshly mixed water. I also harvested 1 L of Tetraselmis and started it on a drip. Finally, I set up the brine shrimp hatchery with some decapped eggs.

10:45 AM - I fed back the enriched rotifers

12:30 - did a headcount - 9 Amphiprion percula, 23 Apogon leptacanthus.

10:00 PM - I fed newly hatched BBS. It appeared no one was eating it, so I concentrated and removed as much as I could (probably 80%) although there were still several hundred to several thousand nauplii in the tank.

10-6-06 - 11:00 pm - started up another phyto drip, 1L Nanno and 1L T-Iso, again freshly harvested.

10-8-06 - I'm back from a weekend of salmon fishing - the clownfish are all deep bodied and zooming aroudn the tank, mostly at the surface. One of them is start to have that "waggle" type swim that adults have. The leptacanthus just appear to be "bigger". There are NO MORE NAUPLII in the tank so someone is DEFINITELY eating them.

10:30 PM - removed 4.5 gallons of water and rotifers from the tank, replaced with 2 gallons of new clean water. Set up the BBS hatchery again!

10-9-06 - OK, were just shy of 25.5 days post release on the Apogon leptacanthus! The water is crystal clear, so I'm going to get a bit of phyto back in as there's otherwise no food! Going to harvest at least 1L T-Iso and 1L Nanno for the drip again. FWIW, the cardinals for the most part look good. There is one "runt" and one that looks like his jaw may be deformed (appears always open...thought this might be a sign of disease back when I fed the last feeding of Tetraselmis but now I think it's just a deformity).

That's the word...tonight more BBS will go on I think

Matt