Green Mandarin (Synchiropus splendidus) Breeding Log!

[mwp]

Holy Mother Mary of the Mandarin Miracles - if I wasn't seeing it I wouldn't believe it. Lights went off at 10:30 this evening (gave them all a late night snack at 10, so I left 'em on longer than normal). Turned out the last of the ambient room lights about 11:35-11:40.

Unless I'm misreading the courtship and rises, we're going to have ANOTHER spawn tonight. That's pretty amazing in itself considering that the female is not that "ripe" compared to the prior spawn (so this one's going to be small).

What's REALLY surprising is that Female #2, in her breeder net, is TRYING TO COURT THE MALE TOO! It's really noteworthy because normally she assumes nocturnal coloration within minutes of lights out.

She's going nuts in the net, zipping up and down, fins flared, trying to get some lovin'. I hardly think she's ready for it..she's still skinny in my book. I also do not know if she's going to work out being released into the tank..since my first noting of it a little while back, female #1 has visited #2 in the net several times per day and it always looks like a hostile visit. So I think the answer to the question, "Can you keep a breeding trio of Mandarins in a 24 gallon cube", is going to be "NO", but I'm going to wait a couple more weeks at least, see how these visits progress, and postpone making any decisions until then (at the earliest).

OK, so I still have that larval water test to do...

MP

 

[mwp]

OK, so it's 12:15 AM on 6-28 now...a few minutes ago while answering emails I heard the splash that typically accompanies a "false spawn" or the actual spawning event. I glanced over...no eggs on the surface...went back to what I was doing. Well, after finishing up the emails I looked back in the tank and could not locate either of the mandarin pair. Female #2 has gone to sleep.

The flashlight helped me find female #1. She appeared to be in nocturnal dress but not fully asleep...I haven't been able to find the male (there's a LOT of caulpera in the tank..I'm overdue for a harvest).

Pumps are on for a minute and will go back off...I'll wait a little longer to see if this ended up being a failed attempt or not.

MP

 

[mwp]

My official stance on tonight's activities - a failed attempt..the female didn't LOOK ready and I think the male figured that out after several no-goes...she's asleep and he...well, for a change I can't figure out where he's sleeping!

Larval Water Test Results - 79.9F, SG 1.025, Salinity 33-34 PPM, pH 8.2, Alkalinity 5 meq/L, Free Ammonia 0ppm, Total Ammonia 0.5ppm, Nitrite 0ppm, Nitrate 0ppm.

The only thing I don't really like on that list is the SG/Salinity. That's about where the parental tank runs, but I think for larval development it can be lowered and may have some beneficial effects. I don't know...experienced breeders, what's your take on Salinity and Larval rearing?

MP

 

[mwp]

Hey, for all of you keeping or who have kept Mandarins, I set up a poll in the Reef Fishes' Forum - trying to get an idea how long people are keeping their mandarins alive and what that captive lifespan might be (afterall, I know my mandarins can't keep up this level of breeding FOREVER...kinda curious to see how long they MIGHT stay at it).

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=874961

MP

 

[FishGuttz]

Matt,
I voted in your poll. I had a mandarin about 15 years ago. It was in a 30g reef. I didn't know about specialty feeding at the time. He died rather quickly, certainly not due to old age!!

 

[FishGuttz]

Matt,
I voted in your poll. I had a mandarin about 15 years ago. It was in a 30g reef. I didn't know about specialty feeding at the time. He died rather quickly, certainly not due to old age!!

 

[mwp]

A quick headcount today yielded about a dozen live larvae as of 11:30 AM...this is pretty good so far. I added 2 basters of the Mandarin Phyto Mix and went on to do my normal daily culture feedings. At some point this evening I think I'm going to strain the L-Strain / Copepod co cultures through 110 or 53 and collect in 10, getting only the smallest of smallest live goodies and add that in for the babies right about the time they should start feeding.

MP

 

[mwp]

So around 1:00 I seived my cultures...tried getting movies of the the results but they were bad, pics aren't all that helpful other than for showing the scale of what was collected.

Basically, I seived portions of each of my two Tiggerpod cultures through 53 micron, and collected the pass-through with 10 micron. The Blue Line in each photo is roughly 1" (for scale). Here's what was collected:

Tiggerpod culture #1, 12 basters:

Tiggerpod culture #2, 6 basters harvested:

I then harvested a combined total of 20 basters from my 3 L-Strain Rotifer cultures and again strained through 53 micron, collecting food with a 10 micron sieve. Here's what I got:

Now, what was really surprising was how much living stuff came through the 53 micron seive, the size that's typically recommended to use for harvesting rotifers for larval fish feed! Tons of really small living creatures...far too small to identify with the 10X loop. All three samples shown above were added to the larval tank as they're now at 36 hours, should have mouths and should start feeding. The cultures were fed my standard phyto mix a couple hours before harvesting, so they should have full guts of live phyto, good for the HUFA's

FWIW,

MP

 

[shadowman70]

bump

 

[mwp]

Here's a "bump" from the larval tank - last night I did a headcount around 1:00 AM - found 6 larvae. They were starting to show visible eyes at that point. This morning I did another headcount and made it up to 8 larvae in the 10 gallon. It's definitely theoretcially possible that there are more that I just missed...they're still REALLY small at this point.

The larvae got another 2 basters of "mandarin mix" just now, and I harvetest about 1 liter of SS-Strain rotifers, collected in a 10 micron seive, and set them aside to enrich with a couple drops of Selcon. Later today I may do a water change to bring down the rotifer population in the larval tank, and then introduce the enriched rotifers.

8 larvae as of about 30 hours...

MP

 

[BrianPlankis]

MP,

This is so exciting, I'm so happy you stuck with this through all the frustration you experienced. Keep us informed.

Brian

 

[FMarini]

matt- fantastic
gotta love your ingenuity. I too am surprised at the amount of life in your tiggerpod cultures, esp at <53um in size. Do you have access to a Qx3, or 5. I'd be interested what exactly you have in that culture, hopefully pod nauplii, but yeah never know

 

[mwp]

Frank! My tiggerpod cultures are VERY cyclical, and I know I have rotifers in them, but not sure what else! The QX5 is "coming"...waiting for some cash from Aquatic Eco and it'll be turned into a microscope The things I'll be able to post..I have to thank MR. UGLY for his Frogfish thread that so clearly illustrates the power and value of even this simple toy digital microscope!

The latest update; the "enriching" water was cleared by the rotifers in about a 3-4 hour timeframe and they got dumped in with the rest of the "life" in the larval tank. I did another check of the Salinity / Specific Gravity, still up at 1.025/ 33. So...I'm going to SLOWLY bring the SG down to closer around 1.022 or 1.023 through the course of the day, and once we're there, I'll make the determination if a water change is in order OR if I can just add another gallon of saltwater (the thank looks like it's holding 8 gallons of water right now; when I set it back up I think it had 5 or 6 gallons.

We still have 8 LARVAE, all floating around, eating and very lively for mandarin larvae! I'm not holding my breath though!

Anyway, this is what went into the tank. 1 Liter of SS-Strain Rotifers sieved through 10 micron, then placed in a cup, enriched with selcon, poured through the 10 micron sieve again, drained, collected and placed on a microscope slide on the "makeshift" microsope.

ONE "OOPS" I caught in my morning post above but can't edit, we're not at "30 hours"...that was a long time ago. We are currently at 64 hours and change with approximately 8 viable active larvae out of a spawn of 613 eggs.

FWIW,

MP

 

[mwp]

6-30-06, 12:00 AM - WE've HAD A SPAWN! - sometime in the last hour a bunch of eggs were spawned (turned off the pumps and went to watch TV). Not sure what I'm going to do with them and I have some other cool stuff to post...more soon.

MATT

 

[mwp]

OK, first up, another MOVIE I shot around 11:00 PM or so; this is one lone larvae, around 71 hours post spawn, making his way through a sea of rotifers and other goodies. Quicktime, about 16 MB. No need to listen to the audio...I suggest turning your volume down. You'll really quickly get an idea why it's so hard to get an accurate count of viable larvae in a 10 gallon tank (FWIW I think we're still around 8 as of this evening!)

http://www.cichlidrecipe.com/nanoreef/DSCN3016.mov

Tonight's spawn got collected, counted and dumped in the 10 gallon...can only give me some more babies to play with, right? It looked like a small spawn, the female was not "sickly-fat" this evening. The actual egg count of HARVESTED and photographed eggs is 213.

These eggs obviously sat a bit longer and were well on their way to developing. At least 50% looked like a ball of cells within an outer shell with some "void" area; a few looked like they were in the process of "folding over" into two halves that would ultimately create the bilateral symetry (I'm sure there's more technical terms for these early stages of larval development...not going to bother to look them up). I'd guess these eggs sat for as long as 1.5 hours post spawning before they were photographed.

One more update on the larval rearing tank...over the course of the evening I added an entire gallon of freshwater to the tank. The larvae seem unaffected by this gradual reduction in salinity...hopefully it'll ease up some of the osmitic pressures their little bodies have to deal with.

FWIW,

Matt

 

[Mr. Ugly]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=7652766#post7652766 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by mwp
The QX5 is "coming"...waiting for some cash from Aquatic Eco and it'll be turned into a microscope The things I'll be able to post..I have to thank MR. UGLY for his Frogfish thread that so clearly illustrates the power and value of even this simple toy digital microscope!

Heh, I'll have to thank Dr. Marini for that recommendation

Only wished that I had picked one up sooner!

 

[Mr. Ugly]

Gonna check out the vid later. This puter doesn't have QT loaded yet.

Keep up the good work, man!

 

[mwp]

Well, this morning there's still larvae in there...counted 4 or 5 of 'em without even looking! No hatch on last night's spawn yet.

Feed wise, they got 2 basters of the Mandarin Phyto Mix (about 3 oz) and I seived my cultures again through 53, collecting food in 10 micron. Not as much as last time, about 6 basters (9-10 oz) of each Tiggerpod, and 4 basters each of each L-Strain Rotifer. This also went into the tank (which I think now is definitely in need of some rotifer harvest!). I got some good pics of the seived food - tried shooting through the 10X loop and got somewhat interesting pics. Enjoy!

MP

 

[mwp]

Another update of sorts, I shot a PM off to Mr. Martin Moe asking if he had any suggestions on improving both hatch rates and first foods. Martin agreed to let me share his comments here:

I couldn't figure out how to respond to your messsage
on Reef Central so I'm just sending an email. I had
the same problem with flame angel eggs a while back.
What I did was to take brood tank water, about a
quart, add chlorine to it in the early afternoon (5 to
10 ppm), then just about lights out decholorinate it
with sodiuim Thiosulphate, then collect the eggs after
spawning in a fine mesh net and place them in the
prepared water (a jar) with an airstone. In the
morning, the eggs were perfect. It changes a mortality
of 98% to a survival rate of 98%. ANd the the eggs
were all clear and clean, no funny white spots and the
larvae were strong and active.

This worked for me with the flames, but you tried it
with the mandrins and it didn't? if not I have no
other suggestions at this point.

good luck,

Martin

Martin's suggestions are indeed useful and the KEY thing to me is the pre-harvesting and sterilization of PARENTAL tank water...I haven't done exactly that yet, instead sterilizing a different batch of water that may have differing water chemistry. If it works for Flame Angelfish, maybe it'll work for Madnarins! Next spawn I'm going to give this a shot and see what happens!

Matt

 

[mwp]

More maintenance updates - I think we lost a few larvae today. I'm pretty sure I saw one FLOATING (a lot of them have been close to the surface, but this one looked dead and stuck in the surface film)...

So, I haven't done a water test YET, but I did siphon out 4 gallons of water...siphoned out 2 larvae but I think it was the same one twice; each time it was rescued from the 10 micron seive and placed back in the tank. Anyway, new water is mixing up and I'll gradually add it in throughout the day, at least 2 gallons worth today and maybe more tomorrow. And yes, I'll be doing a water test.

On last night's spawn, we've had some hatch..I counted at least 6 larvae.

FWIW,

Matt