black ray gobies.

[gogo7]

just an update.
i've cleaned up the rearing vase. cleaned out so many hydroids that i'm embarassed to mention how many. but i gotta tell you, those bell hydroids look super cool under the microscope.

.

i removed most of the live rock without disturbing the sand too much. kicked up quite a lot of crap that i seived through the 56 screen, and looked at under the scope. there's so many different looking things in there there's gotta be something the gobies can eat. lots of different ciliates, so many i'm doing frame captures and gonna put an id thread up.

a new rotifer..?
discovered that i've still got iso growing in there!
i've got both shrimp and gobie larva in two pop bottles that i've cut the tops and bottoms off of and glued a scrubbie disk to act as filter-gate. they've got pin ***** holes in the sides to facilitate circulation. the gobies are contained in their container and they're doing okay. i sacrificed one to check it's gut. it had phyto in there. i am kicking myself over loosing the video. i'm still getting used to the software. the gobie larva are eating ciliates too. i couldn't quite get a good image of the internals though. there was defnitely different types of prey items in there. i'm not sure if it was the added ciliates, c-02, or ciliate a, or if it was the natural fauna already existing in the vase. the sandbed in that vase has been alive for a few years. they've passed the forty hours faze. i'm not expecting the remaining six to still be there tomorrow, if they are, i'm going to sacrifice anther and try and get a good image of the gut. also compare growth to other images i have.

the pistol shrimp zoa are doing well, considering i didn't expect any to get passed the 24 hr stage. my other species of carribeans didn't get the attention they probably should have gotten. but this time i'm devoted. they look good and healthy, feeding on rotifers and phyto. i think that the tetra is a good first food. it's active and evokes a feeding response. i've gotta pick up some nanno.
i'm getting fully prepped for the next batch. considering rearing methods and done a heck of a lot of reading on everything i can find.

back in a few days

 

[Anna LR]

Vases? This is very interesting....

 

[gogo7]

Vases? This is very interesting....

yep, vases....
hey anna, are you the lady from kw that's breeding gobies in the area?
the guy at my lfs mentioned an anna that is breeding them.
if you are, i've got lots of questions for you.

 

[gogo7]

expecting a batch of baby gobies sometime within the next 24 hrs.
i'll post as soon as i get them.

 

[Auston]

did the last batch make it?

 

[Anna LR]

yep, vases....
hey anna, are you the lady from kw that's breeding gobies in the area?
the guy at my lfs mentioned an anna that is breeding them.
if you are, i've got lots of questions for you.

No, I am a different Anna, but I've bred gobies, Elacatinus oceanops, before, lots of them, and recently.

 

[gogo7]

No, I am a different Anna, but I've bred gobies, Elacatinus oceanops, before, lots of them, and recently.

hopeful thinking on my part, but it doesn't hurt to ask, and i'm glad i did.
i need help and i'll take any i can get.
how small are the oceanops larvae? what were their first foods?
i'm having a bugger of a time finding the right foods. the last batch of babies i had lasted about four days. i think my problem on the last batch was when i finally turned the lights out for a night, woke up the next morning and they were all gone.
i'm really interested in your effort. could you give me some details on how you went about it?

 

[gogo7]

i haven't seen any yet... i'm expecting any moment now... the dominant pistol is fanning the tunnel entrances as well as the female goby. this has been going on for two days now. i saw the male out for two seconds yesterday after a feed of live adult brine shrimp.
he took a few then disappeared back into the basement.

so i thought i'd show everyone what prep i've been doing for the passed few days.
i've had a couple of days off and can get on top of it, but of course, the gobies aren't ready yet!

i've been 'isolating' some of the ciliates i've got, their cultures are not pure and at least one has crashed. i've stayed away form using the cabbage water method, and have moved to using dried seaweed as a food source for some of the ciliate cultures. i just put a few pieces in some of the culture bottles to get some blooms. the best cultures i've got are ciliate C-02 and ciliate A. these are the cultures i've stabilized and are my standards.

one is a euplotes for sure, the other looks like an ostracod, although i'm not sure. i need to get some slide covers and some deeper well slides so that i can get a higher magnification without dipping the higher lens into the drop.

here's a pic of both.

an interesting observation is that protein in the culture water makes the population explode. i'll explain. last week i ridded my 2.5 gallon vase of its hydroid population and removed most of the detritus and live rocks that were in there.
i kept the mass of hydroids and detritus in a bottle. hundreds of medusa that i let die in there. the resultant bloom of ciliates from the bacteria in there was incredible.
i've yet to get it under the scope, but there are at least four different types of 'ciliate' in there. that's next weeks project. the problem with it is that it stinks like sewage.

after narrowing down my cultures. i've got them sorted and organized for some serious observation. i'm really thankful that i've got the microscope.

so i've got the vase full of phyto and rotifers, and i'm dropping the ciliates into the gobies raising pop bottles that i've suspended in the vase. i've got three on the go, with a homemade sponge filter in the vase itself.

this pic has about three different species swimming around in this phyto detritus from my detritus collection dump. i've considered putting this green detritus in one of the modded pop bottles for the baby gobies.

it's also full of these nematodes that i'm not sure of.
decisions decisions...

until i can get a few fry that have been eating under the microscope, i'm just guessing.

the vase is also full of these harpactoid copepods in various stages of development. these were taken from the rearing vase

i hope to be posting some good news soon

 

[gogo7]

just got in from an afternoon at the pub, and the vase is full of baby gobies.
taking pics and doing what i need to do.

 

[kizanne]

How's the babies?

 

[gogo7]

How's the babies?

they're doing good... i'm going to sacrifice one tonight and have a look at its gut under the microscope. i've been feeding the ciliate mixes, rotifers, (although i don't think they eat them) and all my differing phytos.
i think tetraselmis is the key phyto.... although i've gotta confirm with the microscope.
with my track record, i'm not keeping my fingers crossed. i just got in from work, so it'll be a bit before i hook up the scope and go fishing.
i really enjoy this microscope.... how's it going with yours?
hows your mandys?

 

[gogo7]

i've been reading moes ciliate write up and think i'm gonna try the veggie juice method for rotis and ciliates.

 

[gogo7]

here's some microscope pics of larvae at 24 hrs from nest.
i had better pics, but like i said before, i'm not used to the softeware.

watching the heart beat as the red blood cells race through it is quite fascinating.
i had to sacrifice three to get to these pics... three survived the ordeal, although i lost the video. these images are frame grabs.

i can see green in the gut and in the intestines. ( i think)
anyone else wanna help me figure out what we're looking at, i'd love the input.

 

[kizanne]

The images are awesome. I would think the green indicates they may be eating the tetra. though the ciliates and rotifers would have some green too. How are they today?

 

[gogo7]

The images are awesome. I would think the green indicates they may be eating the tetra. though the ciliates and rotifers would have some green too. How are they today?

oh kiz, i don't know what to say, but i had about a dozen left yesterday, woke up this morning to the rearing vase full of bell hydroids. it was my most successful clutch to date.
i had started typing all sorts of profanities about hydroids, but had to remember where i was....i hate hydroids.


so, you know how we like things to not be sterile, everything living to it's fullest in our displays.... well i dismantled the rearing vase after being set up for a few years and nuked and bleached the whole lot.
i bleached the sand, scrubbed and bleached the vase and bleached the modded pop bottles. i set it back up with just regular tap water saltwater, and added live nannochloropsis to get it 'cycling'.
tomorrow i'm picking up another heater, and gonna start another rearing vase as well. the current heater is sitting in a bleach soak over night.

i've built a few new sponge filters that i'm going to use and nothing other than cultured plankton and sterile fsw. my problem was that i was using old water from my daily water changes on my dt to cycle through the rearing vase. i have to stop doing that now.
i've had a few problems in the past with hydroid outbreaks in my artemia and rotifer cultures, but they were localized and dealt with without much hassle.... the heartbreak i had over this was the last straw, i could almost see the larvae in the bells of the hydroids...

i'm concerned a little with the cycling part of this, knowing that there's another clutch on the way. the parents are hiding in their tunnel system and i'm lucky to have them.. there's definitely another batch on the way. i think that the bio load will be minimal, but i might get concerned about ammonia. because i do daily wcs, i don't own test kits, or really care to test for anything. so i'm just going to go for it on this next clutch.
in the next few days, i'm planning on innoculating the rearing vases with rotifers and tetraselmis.
one observation i made, is that the larvae that were living in the vase outside of the modded pop bottles, seem to grow much larger... leading me to believe that there was much more food available. i know it seems obvious, but at the time, i feared that there would not be enough plankton in the rearing vase. i felt concentrating it in the modded pop bottles allowed for a higher plankton count. i also wanted to protect the larvae from the stray hydroids that were lingering in the rearing vase. one thing for sure, there are no more hydroids in my rearing vase.
so now i think i'm gonna just use the rearing vase without the bottles. i'm contemplating using the bottles in the other rearing vase...not sure...yet.
my goal this week is to get the plankton count high and diverse.
i'm feeling much closer to success and i'm pulling out and setting up my homemade ato using freshwater nanno as the top off.


so i'll just keep plugging away and try this new approach and hope for the best.... trial and error is the only way....

on another note, i had a crustacean let off some babies this week, but did't catch them in time... they weren't pistol shrimp larvae, looked more like crab larvae... i didn't catch them in time so i lost them... was ether porcelein crabs or pom poms, not sure. i've got pairs of both in my four gallon display vase. hopefully my gobies ate them all.

i'll update when i can... take care

 

[gogo7]

so today's monday, i've been expecting for the last 48 hrs...
my inverts have also been expecting... my porceliens have moved to the top of the display, and the pom pom crabs have taken to hanging out in front of the goby lairs front door.
the gobies themselves have been in hiding for a few days, moving from the sandbed tunnels into the tube structure i specifically built for this purpose. i know this because the female came out of hiding yesterday and is feeding heavily. the male came out briefly while i was home and managed to get a few pictures. this is usually an indicator of the imminent release of larvae. the pair seems to move house every once in while. i've got a few theories about that...the sandbed is rife with living things that are probably preying on the eggs, the adults choose to move because the wallpaper is getting old........ i'm not sure.
i haven't seen the pistols in a over a week and think there's something up with the whole scenario. there was a clicking war last week that was most annoying, but nothing since.

here's a pic of the male with attending pom pom crab, lybia edmondsoni

after bleaching the life out of my rearing vase and its sand, i've innoculated it with everything i could that would be a prey item for the goby larvae.
the resultant phyto bloom is quite impressive and i'm sure the ammonia levels are through the roof, although i haven't tested for it yet...gotta get some test kits i guess.

the initial innoculation was with nannochloropsis, 24 hrs later adding dunaliella and tetraselmis.... and a 2" square of dried seaweed, nori. i also added a few artemia nauplii that are sub adult now.
yesterday i added an astarina and some worms, spaghetti and bristle. they are all still alive, which i find kind of surprising.

this is the set up as of this afternoon.

i spent the morning taking microscope pics of the life that's in there.

the nori from the vase produced the best cultures that i've isolated further and will carry on working tonight and so on.

i'm not completely sure if this is a species of ciliate or not. it does have fine hairs running down its side and is not the 'worm' that i posted earlier on this thread. it has rotating cilia on its mouth. it moves extremely fast under the micrcoscope and is abundant in the sand at the moment. this the ciliate C-02 that i've been eyeballing.

this is a pic of some stentor ciliates and acanthocystis sp. amoeba that originally came out of a very old artemia rotifer culture. this example is from the vase.

here's a clearer shot

splitting

euglnia sp.

euplotes, tetraselmis and some very small paramecium types

L type rotifer, plictallis

i feel confident that the larvae might survive the conditions here, but have no idea of ammonia that might be there. gotta get a test.
i've started some intensive euplotes culture, now knowing that cliate A is actually a euplotes species. i feel confident that euplotes is a key prey item on the menu for stonogobiops larvae.

hopefully i'll be posting a new clutch in the next day or two...

 

[gogo7]

this is a link i found interesting.

http://www.plankton.jp/PBE/issue/vol47_2/vol47_2_093.pdf

http://pdf.gaalliance.org/pdf/gaa-decamp-oct01.pdf


http://www.plankton.jp/PBE/issue/vol47_2/vol47_2_093.pdf

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1023%2FA%3A1004094825739#page-1

 

[Louis Z]

Thanks gogo7

 

[gogo7]

Thanks gogo7

you're welcome louis, i find this hobby to be quite rewarding, despite the ongoing failures.

 

[Louis Z]

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.