Dottyback Daddy

[David M]

OK, I am getting WAY too involved with my fish I am now a daddy dottyback, this is getting rediculous. Here is the deal: I have these orchids that spawn every 6-7 days. I have knocked massive holes (with my head) into my home's walls trying to raise them, no luck. One thing is hatching them, I have all sorts of DIY kreisels and hatchers but always get a crappy yeild. When I let them hatch with the parents the yield is fantastic but collection is difficult so it's about the same in the end. I have watched the (natural) hatch so many times that I know the male does all the work, he pushes, nudges and agitates the nest to force the hatch. I have read that you can (should) force the hatch with G. oceanops. So tonight I pulled an eggmass that was due, placed it in a ten gallon tank (rather than one of my hatchers), turned off the lights and started agitating it with a long handled ice cream spoon Holly Molly, what a treat I was having a ball as 100's of little larvae emerged from the mass and rose to the light (flashlight) I was holding in the corner. This worked 1000 times better than any incubator/ hatcher I have come up with so far. I hate it because I like "inventing" things and hate "work", but the truth is the hands on method rocks

 

[Kathy55g]

Holy moley, that's great!

If they rise to the light, though, why not let dad dotty hatch them and just snag them in your snagger?

 

[ediaz]

I have that problem when i transfer the eggs, I have to do it carefully or most of them hatch and it will force me to load food in the tank before lights out.

I remove the eggs a day early and incubate them in meth blue for a day, hatch is very good the next day.

Ed

 

[mwp]

Sounds like what I tried with one of my leptacanthus egg masses....looks like the manual method wins again.

Matt

 

[bandeng]

I take out the egg mass from the male on the day they supposed to hatch. Put them in the 2L tall bottle (depth of 20 cm) with rather strong aeration. The newly hatched larvae can tolerate this mechanical stress. I check them around 3 hours after dark. I can get more than 90% hatch. Then I siphon them into my larval rearing container.

Bandeng