black ray gobies.

[kizanne]

Love all your plankton. My phyto crashed and I'm fighting that. When is your babies due?

 

[gogo7]

Paracalanus crassirostris from algagen , they are working with apocyclops also yet I don't know if they marketing yet. Those nauplii are smaller than rotifers. I too have a pair of black banded shrimp gobies . I just don't have time to try rearing. I don't have time to culture algae repeatedly. That's the key to copepods. I had been seeing reports where they try to keep the larval fish rearing chambers as clean as possible to avoid negative effects of hi populations of bacteria. I too think they can be reared in not so relatively clean tanks but that takes trials to prove it.

well you've got me thinking of the second rearing vase. clean fresh water as opposed to the swamp i'm going to be using. it's not really a swamp, more like a microscopic jungle. splitting the larvae and setting up a control like that is something i really didn't consider. possibly a drip in drip out system.
i'm willing to setup a second vase tomorrow. i've gotta pick up a new heater for it. i've got a seasoned vase ready to go, no sandbed, just needs the detritus removed and scrubbed and rinsed with fsw. i've got a sponge filter going for it. it's a good idea.

i hit the algagen site, and wished hard. i have a hard time convincing my lfs to order any algagen products....they're always hummnhawing about it.
i gotta pm rayjay about some other pod species i can get hold of here in s.o. canada.

thanks for the positive input louis.

 

[gogo7]

Love all your plankton. My phyto crashed and I'm fighting that. When is your babies due?

hey kiz, sorry to hear about your phyto. i hope you can get some more soon. i started keeping backups in the fridge in small batches. next to the wine.

as for the gobies...i'm not holding my breath, just keeping my eyes open.
everything in the display seems to be expecting as well... i've never seen so much activity...

 

[gogo7]

it's saturday, may 2.
caught about seventy gobie larvae this morning before light's on.
i've placed them in the rearing vase, with two sponge filters.

i've been cycling ciliates into the vase daily and harvesting excess rotifers and copepods and feeding them to the display. last night the rv had a fifty percent fresh water change and a good thirty mils of dense euplotes culture added. there's about three hundred ciliate (+-) per mil in there right now. the rotifers are about five to ten per mil, copepods (harps) are really dense at the bottom 'cloud' and are all sizes.
the rv has a 'cloud' of living planktons hovering over the sand for about two inches. it's mostly ciliates. i've been gently puffing it around the vase with a turkey baster to keep the cloud in suspension.

so my routine is gonna be daily thirty percent fresh sw change, about fifty mils of ciliate culture three or four times a day.

the goby larvae are active. they're eating and hunting. i've witnessed the larvae do short chases to very small prey items. i witnessed one individual pick rotifers off of the side of the glass. they're less than twelve hours out of the nest.

i've set up a drip system that drops five hundred mils of live phyto over a six hour period. i'm feeding the vase dunaliella, nannochloropsis, tetraselmis and my phyto-yeast blend.
the temp is eighty fahrenheit.
i'm sticking with the one rv for now. just for maintainance sakes. but....


on anther note, my pompom crab female is preggers again. so i'll be setting i'll be needing another soon.

 

[kizanne]

Awesome picts!!

 

[Louis Z]

I hope y succeed . I will call it the Gogo7 method. It's hard to tell in the picture but Are most of the fry attached to the walls or floor . Just curios if the fry like the bottom as well as the parents or are they all over the water column

 

[gogo7]

Awesome picts!!

thanks kiz... just from my cellphone. i wish i could get better pics of the fry.

 

[gogo7]

I hope y succeed . I will call it the Gogo7 method. It's hard to tell in the picture but Are most of the fry attached to the walls or floor . Just curios if the fry like the bottom as well as the parents or are they all over the water column

i haven't succeeded yet, but eventually with some fine tuning, i will.
thanks louis.
the fry hang in the water like their parents... bobbing, almost vertically in the column. they make short burst at the prey items. about five millimetres at a time. the prey item is definitely ciliate A, euplotes. small rotifers have been eaten... which gives us hope that plictallis is a useful plankton.
the fry seemed bigger this time. i feel that as the parents mature, their larvae seem to be bigger.


as for the batch.... read on.

 

[gogo7]

so this morning i awoke to an empty rearing vase.

i have two suspicions as to why....

firstly..... i think i added too much ammonia from the ciliate cultures. dosed a full ten mils of full bloom ciliates. i went to bed wondering about it and getting those test kits.
so now i've got to get on top of that ......

secondly, i had an air pump fall and knock out the power bar. my dv heater and the rv one are on that bar... my dv is fine, nothing affected by the seventy four degree temp. but the rv, well it's crystal clear except for the rotifers and copepods.
i can't even find any dead fry. they've disappeared.

so i had a few long sighs and now committing myself to cleaning up the back of the display, to house every thing properly.
i'm not a big fan of my noisy peristaltic pumps. and all those bloody timers... but i think i'm gonna have to recommission them again.

 

[kizanne]

Sorry to hear that

 

[gogo7]

clutch number thirteen arrived today at lights on. i actually witnessed the bloom. it was quite incredible... a big silvery cloud emitting from the tunnel entrances. my peppermint was due to let her zoa go last night so i was expecting something this morning. no shrimp zoa, but something else let go last night. no sure what it is until i get it under the scope. captured a few mils of whatever these tiny white round things are. lights came on ... then all of a sudden, gobie larvae.
i've got about three hundred so far.... i'm gonna separate a few batches into other containers to experiment. i'm gonna do some scope pics as well. i've gotta figure out what the heck they're eating, and not eating.
i've got today and tomorrow off, so i've got the time to play with it.
i'm used to failure with this, so i'm not expecting much again.... four days seems to be my max for rearing little thingies. i've gotta succeed on of these days.
stay tuned.

 

[kizanne]

Congratz.

 

[Auston]

Good luck.

 

[gogo7]

got up at five thirty to feed the larvae and there's still a very large amount of larvae left.

here's a pic 2 hph.

i'm feeding a ciliate mix at about five or six mls every few hours.
it seems to be working.
there are very few rotifers in the rv. the gobie larvae aren't interested for the most part. so i'm restricting the amount of rotifers in the rv. i'm increasing production of rotis for that moment. i'm starting fresh bbs tomorrow. they'll be ready for fri-sat.
i've fished out stray artemia in the rv. they eat ciliates. i'm confident i've got them all.
i've noticed a few hydroid stems on the glass. little buggers get in no matter what you do. i hand picked everything from the dv, into the recieving container, then handpicked into the rv. and i still got 'roids!

i have a link to a video i made for it.
sorry if the titles sound pretentious... there's some gratuitous time lapse.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0oXKRuifUE





i did snap a pic of that unknown bloom. i've noticed it before but didn't give it any attention. here's a single shot. if anybody recognizes it, let us know.
i'm thinking its a veliger. i've got a few of those black winged oysters in the sand.

 

[kizanne]

love the video. Keep up the good work

 

[gogo7]

well folks... here we go again.
clutch number fourteen happened today. i was off early to work today. so i missed lights on. i should have seen it coming with all the new tunneling and reopenings. the pistols let off a batch a few days ago. i wondered if there's a synchronicity with the two species timing. the temps have been varying with this spring weather here in southern ontario. there have been lots of different invert spawns this month. i'm currently battling hydroids and a worm spawn. there were millions of tiny worms swimming above the sand this morning. i've been good with daily feedings of everything. even the starfish has been chowing down alot lately.

so i caught about a dozen larvae and am using kiz method of rearing. using small containers, with fewer in more.
i'm going to go low water in a few, more in others. with the intention of daily water change.
i'll be feeding the usual ciliate copepod nauplii and the usual phytos. much less swampy conditions. i'm also keeping them at room temp. not the 79-80' i had them at before. these new methods might yield some results.
but who am i kidding. batch number fourteen and i've still got no results.

 

[gogo7]

an update.

so i'm using the kiz method. i've put the rv aside, left half full...i've got about a dozen or so goby larvae separated in two 6" wide candy containers with about one litre of dv water in it. no filtration, no air.

i'm going to rely on water from the dv. daily water changes. i'm have to pass the water through the 56 sieve before adding it. bloody hydroids. i've already sucked out one that made it in from the harvest. they're a pain, but i'm living with them.

my euplotes culture is dense and i've summarized that there's about 200 per mil. after 'washing' it. i've added about 4 mils of them to each container. there's lots of young copepods and i've kept the rotifer population down. although i've seen the larvae lunge at the rotis, i don't think they're eating them. i've added tetraselmis and duna. about 10 mils of mature culture of each. my nanno is recovering.


here's euplotes and a copepod nauplii.

here's a sub adult copepod. it's not hard to see that these copepods are probably out of reach of the goby larvae. the copepod is almost as large as the larvae.

this is a larvae at 24 hph. it's easy to see that eupotes is about the only candidate that i can offer right now. as far as size is concerned.

you can see the devoloping pectorals.

the tail fin also grew fast.

i think this method might be better, and after this many tries, i'm game for anything.

there's a local fw river nearby, and i'm thinking of seeing if i can find anything interesting in the waters edge. anything new that might be of value here.

so wish me luck, and thanks to kiz.

 

[gogo7]

here's some pics of the adults out feeding together.
you can really see the wounds she's acquired.

here's the male. a rare glimpse of him. we probably won't see him again until next weds. hopefully.

i've got some ideas regarding nesting. the adults seem to move the nest frequently.
the shrimps are constantly reconstructing the entrances and the pair reassemble in different locations around the vase after each hatch.
there are many inverts in the dv and i suspect nervousness.

i'm considering setting up another vase with a glass counter that i can put a camera under. the tunnel systems the shrimps have built are fascinating.

 

[kizanne]

I love how everything in your systems spawns. I'd be having a field day. I went to doctor yesterday and got a Z-pac so hopefully I'll be back at it with you this weekend.

What is the oldest you've gotten the babies to?

 

[ichthyogeek]

Any updates so far?

What's the hatching size of the larvae? The mouth size of the larvae?