black ray gobies.

[gogo7]

Gogo, I wish you luck. But....I'll have to pass on living close to you, Canada is too cold for me! You could move to the US, and have Algagen pods a plenty though...Kiz and I live relatively close together (Arkansas, and Tennesee, it's like a day's car drive at most). Come to the South, we have fried chicken .

I was rereading an old thread, and saw something about adding iodine daily to replicate sea concentrations of iodine. Perhaps something to consider? What's your salt mix by the way? Trace element levels?

Or...maybe the eggs aren't healthy in some way? Maybe try evaluating the nutrition you're giving the fish again to see if there is something you're missing?

Hmm...let's take this from the bottom, shall we? Starting with adult nutrition, moving to eggs, and finally larvae(since this is the end stage)?

Oh...and I'll have to decline on the larvae. As an incoming freshman in college, I won't have enough time to balance raising live foods and college life together. I'm going to try and get a pair before the end of this summer, leave for college, and start my own project the summer before junior or senior year probably...

hey congrats to you my friend. get a good education... lest you end up like me....no, just kidding... i live a good life here in southern ontario.... putting up with winter and the silly politicians is the price you pay for national healthcare. we're experiencing a bit of a heatwave at the moment... nothing like florida hot...i love florida... been quite a few times..but that's as far south as i went, volusia county.
i've paid for algagen pods at my lfs. tangerines. my wife gave me pocket money to spend at the store. two twentys... when i got to the cash, i laughed at myself. i can't remember exactly how much, but i definitely didn't have the cash...( one thing to remember ichy, save your cash, at your age, 10%. take it from a guy my age.)
i ended up getting the smallest pouch. twenty odd dollars. i'm still struggling to keep a couple of cultures alive. their calanoid pods are expensive here. i've got harps out the whazoo. i could sell em.

i'm feeding the adults mostly live food and the female eats salmon/shrimp pellets daily. i presoak the pellets in live phyto before hand. i hand feed my linckia starfish, and she eats most of what the star drops.
i culture and feed the display live brine cultured in live phytos, nanno, duna and tetra. rotis, ciliates and harp copepods. everything is air driven and i don't own a test kit yet......oh boy.
i also read about iodine supplementation. i've been using instant ocean 'reef accelerator to put in my fw top off. i think it has iodine in it.
i use instant ocean and do daily water changes on my display.
i recycle old tankwater, but carefully and filter it. i haven't had a hydroid outbreak in quite a while.

i've got the new gobie larvae in new setups i'll post the pics late of what i've got most of them in. the ciliate and rotifer counts are high. i cut back on the phyto.

i love fried chicken too....

 

[ichthyogeek]

i've paid for algagen pods at my lfs. tangerines. my wife gave me pocket money to spend at the store. two twentys... when i got to the cash, i laughed at myself. i can't remember exactly how much, but i definitely didn't have the cash...( one thing to remember ichy, save your cash, at your age, 10%. take it from a guy my age.)
i ended up getting the smallest pouch. twenty odd dollars. i'm still struggling to keep a couple of cultures alive. their calanoid pods are expensive here. i've got harps out the whazoo. i could sell em.

i'm feeding the adults mostly live food and the female eats salmon/shrimp pellets daily. i presoak the pellets in live phyto before hand. i hand feed my linckia starfish, and she eats most of what the star drops.
i culture and feed the display live brine cultured in live phytos, nanno, duna and tetra. rotis, ciliates and harp copepods. everything is air driven and i don't own a test kit yet......oh boy.
i also read about iodine supplementation. i've been using instant ocean 'reef accelerator to put in my fw top off. i think it has iodine in it.
i use instant ocean and do daily water changes on my display.
i recycle old tankwater, but carefully and filter it. i haven't had a hydroid outbreak in quite a while.

i've got the new gobie larvae in new setups i'll post the pics late of what i've got most of them in. the ciliate and rotifer counts are high. i cut back on the phyto.

i love fried chicken too....

Daaaang. Your fish eat better than I do! And they eat all of that? I would've figured that rot's and ciliates would be too small, but I guess not! In my (not so educated) opinion, I'd add some squid to their diet. Salmon~=~squid in fatty acids, but squid's got lots of lipids for egg production, and (I'm assuming) for energy in the eggs themselves. I'm also not so sure about the whole phyto-soaked pellet deal, but I see where you're coming from. Also, there're a couple of other things I'm theorizing here:

Maybe lacking in chemical in water? ----If you're using IO, then that's water for FOWLR and FO, not reefs. You're inverts seem to be doing well though, but that might not be the case for larval fish...

Maybe transfer shock? ------Wittenrich's book does say to account any deaths for the first two days after transfer to shock from the move. This might explain why you have so many deaths early on. Do you have a larval snagger? I bet it would help to concentrate the baby fish larvae as well as any other plankton in the vase, allowing for higher feeding rates.

Have I asked about other sources of prey yet? Urchins are relatively cheap, and if you can get a male and a female, and some potassium chloride, you have a good supply of trochophores to try feeding the babies as well. Additionally, Parvocalanus crassirostris is available from Algagen, and the pods seem very small, maybe smaller than your Ciliate A cultures, maybe you can get some of those in as well? Good job on the Tangerines by the way, MOFIB may have something on keeping your cals alive. Your harps on the other hand...culture and sell to some mandy keeper, they'll probably be really happy.

Additionally, you may want to try a "starvation trial", where you isolate a batch of larvae and see how long it takes them to starve to death(I feel so cold-hearted typing that); this way you know if the larvae post-trial are surviving past the starvation date, that they're definitely eating something. Have you thought about looking at the larvae post mortem to see if they have any signs of trauma (such as having their stomachs ripped open), or signs of food (aside from the tetra which I'm pretty sure you said the fry were eating at one point)?

 

[ichthyogeek]

Hello from college! How're the spawnings going?

 

[gogo7]

Hello from college! How're the spawnings going?

i've kinda given up on trying to rear the larvae.... the pair have also stopped spawning for a while.... i think they've produced about thirty clutches without any success in rearing.
i've done a bit of rearranging in the display. the good thing about the pair ceasing spawning is that i get to see the pair regularly now. when they're spawning i only see the female.
life has put my hobby on a hold pattern for now. i have a few important things in my life to take care of. so i'm a bit grateful that they've stopped spawning.
i'm really excited that kizanne has yashas spawning. hopefully she has some success that i can draw from in the future.