Green Mandarin (Synchiropus splendidus) Breeding Log!

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The little black specs are most definitely NOT rotifers, I in fact believe that they might be cyanobacteria or some other similar organism. They're actually a redish brown in color. Yes, they could be responsible.

Well, I'm not boiling 5-10 gallons of water for the larvae..bleaching is definitely the way to go. Even if ultimately some negative stuff may get reintroduced, diluting it thousdands fold with sterilized water surely would help. I'm also sitting with Formalin on hand now, so that may get tried in the next spawn or two...Methelyne Blue didn't appear to be any help.

Interesting info on the eggs but I'm not entirely sure how it would be applicable...more than anything from what I read it sounds like a LACK of caclium would be a problem in egg development. Maybe I should try a batch where I add some "Reef Complete" to the larval water? ;)

Matt
 
6-28-06, 12:01 AM, WE HAVE A SPAWN! - tonight, the lights went out around 11:00 pm, along with the pumps, and the courtship kicked on almost immediately...took an hour or so for the actual spawn to occur.

I'm going to harvest the eggs, try getting another full-length vid via the microscope, and add the majority of the spawn into the 10 gallon larval tank. I dechlored the tank several days ago, so I'm not sure how truly "sterile" it will be. I'm debating adding some Formalin to the tank, and most likely WILL do so.

I'm off to harvest...they've been floating for 2 minutes now ;)

MP
 
OK, looks like a spawn of about 250 or so. I have some under the microscope at 60X..this time around I used literally just enough tank water to cover them, no more, so sinking shouldn't be a problem. However, I already have an unforeseen problem with the top of their little vessle fogging up, so the first few minutes may be up in the air! Took the top off without stopping the time lapse...I hope the exposed setup won't be a problem (although I am worried about evaporation, so I may bring put it back on soon)

The rest of the eggs are getting acclimated to the larval tank water and will go in soon. I'll be adding some formalin. That's it for tonight; wish me luck!

Matt
 
Just a couple additional notes...I used 5 drops of formalin (purchased from Dr's F & S) to the 5 gallons of water in the larval tank. Also, it's worth mentioning that while this was a small spawn, it was VERY VERY STICKY! There was less than 6 "free" eggs...the rest were found in clusters of at least a half dozen up to as may as perhaps 50 or more.

FWIW,

Matt
 
Hi,
I found this thread 3 days ago, and have since read it through. I just wanted to thank you for your commitment, to the breeding and the "documenting". I have a male green mandarin and I've been looking for a female for a while now. Reading about your progress (yes, even though none made it all the way through yet) and trials, I'm burning to also try breeding them within a year or so. But I'll first practice on the Tomato Clowns. Now if my bloody micro algae starting cultures would just keep from going all white ...
Anyway, please keep up the good work - *a lot* of people are thankful for it.

Gideon
 
Gideon, thanks for the props...they're always appreciated! I too kinda wish I had some success with ANY marine species under my belt at this point...of course I have to focus on the most difficult species I have spawning, totally ignoring gobies, cardinals and such ;)

I'm very cautiously optimistic. Since I first started this effort up a lot has been changed and a lot is still being refined.

Hatch Rates are the main thing that bug me. The odds go way up when you're dealing with hundreds of larvae vs. 30 or less! I was really leaning towards sterility or fertility problems in the broodstock, but at least the male can be safely ruled out following examination of the eggs under the microscope. It really looks like we're getting VERY HIGH fertilization rates. On the female's side, egg quality is still a concern of mine...afterall if she's producing spawns EVERY DAY I could entirely believe that these eggs aren't getting enough / correct nutrition for development. This latest spawn, that was 8 days after the prior, well, those eggs probably had some time to "sit and stew" and get good and ripe. "Stickyness" is also cited as a sign of good vs. bad eggs, and to date, this is by far one of the "stickiest" spawns we've had.

HIGH water quality / sterility seems important to hatch rates...the method of incubation may not be very important afterall. Determining that bleaching is an effective method to sterilize is certainly a boom...there's no excuse to start with unsterilized water, except that it can be hard to tell when to harvest and sterlize parental water so that it's ready and FRESH for a spawn.

Profalactic medications are still up in the air...I can't say that Methelyne Blue helped at all and Formalin is currently getting it's first shot. This is an area that's still very "open". IF hatch rates are being impacted by "biological pests", hopefully we can eliminate that and really bring the hatch rates up.

Sadovy's comments on temperature sensitivity are noted as well...it's safe to say that I have better hatches in the larval tank, which is generally the same or a degree or two F warmer than the parental tank.

We obviously don't need to have HUGE tanks to get these guys to spawn, although I still think more vertical height would be appreciated by my pair.

I now have the "full spread" of phytoplankton at my disposal, and T-Iso and Tetraselmis have been cited as playing useful roles..but heck, Nannochloropsis probably helps too! The biggest addition was the SS-Strain rotifer cultures - they definitely seem to help out. I have two types of copepods growing, although maybe not in the best quantities; none-the less they can't hurt if I can get the larvae to grow out far enough to where they can successfully prey on larval copepods.

Nailing down larval care is still the end goal. In some respects, if hatch rates don't rise it won't really matter if I can drastically reduce larval mortality! One of the things I really haven't been doing much is enriching the rotifers...I've been relying on live phyto to do that. One of my main changes in the feeding regime this time around will be to harvest rotifers daily and enrich them with Selcon for a few hours before feeding....who knows, maybe that'll be all it takes?

I'm makin' progress, but there are days when I wish RSman was right here at my beckon call to tell me exactly how he did it ;)

FWIW, this next vid so far looks like it's going to be exceptional - keep the finger's crossed!

Matt
 
So the update - It's been 15 hours since the spawn..eggs are starting to sink in the larval tank, so I upped the air (something I did earlier with the kriesel...I've been wondering lately if the increased agitation helps with hatching).

The video has been running, shooting time lapse at 1 frame every minute, for about 14.75 hours now. This is definitely going to be an improvement over the first set of vids I put out! I'm going to let it run possibly as long as 24 hours...we'll see.

Matt
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=7829883#post7829883 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by mwp
6-28-06, 12:01 AM, WE HAVE A SPAWN! I'm debating adding some Formalin to the tank, and most likely WILL do so.

MP
Click to expand...

There was a nice article about the advantages of treating pelagic eggs with formalin.That and other good papers were part of a Hawaiian Sea Grant page.I never saved it,hoping that it would be there for ever.It was not:mad: the page can not be found anymore.You think you could retrieve it if I find the old non working link?.It could then be sticked in the forum or some...
(spell check says "sticked" is not english,I mean fixed) :rolleyes:
 
Luis, there's a couple ways you may be able to find it. Google itself caches pages, so the page in question may still be in Google's cache. There are also a couple websites out there that periodically capture and store websites so you can actually go through them and see older versions (i.e. I've seen what eBay looked like 10 years ago...creepy!)

Not sure exactly where to start the search, but those are some ideas.

Matt
 
FREAKIN' KICK BUTT - there's already 10 larvae in the larval tank - only 30 minutes after my last post...maybe that was the trick..increase the air? Granted, they should be hatching around now anyways!

The COOLEST part is that ONE of the eggs in the microscope appears to be developing and in the process of hatching...I adjusted the positioning as it wasn't in the video's frame (at least I don't think it was) so if I'm really lucky the process of hatching may be captured in TIME LAPSE - SWEEEEEEEET!

Matt
 
So I got just under 16 hours of video (955 frames when I stopped it). It looks like there's a hatching right at the very end...hard to say but the egg I was watching was "gone" when I looked back just now.
 
OH THIS IS THE BEST VIDEO YET! It basically shows the eggs from start to finish. Watch the egg that's partially cut off at the top, center, during most of the video. Towards the end I move it to the center. The hatch is THERE. Most of the movement is likely due to my CAT jostling things around during the night, and then me working on the same desk as the microscope most of the day ;)

http://www.cichlidrecipe.com/nanoreef/full_egg_development_with_hatch.avi - 11.62 MB.

I also got some VID of a newly hatched mandarin at 60X as well...realtime speed, not timelapse!

http://www.cichlidrecipe.com/nanoreef/newly_hatched_larvae.avi - 15.59 MB.

They're uploading as I type this, so if they don't work right away, wait a couple minutes. If you want to try the .avi versions, I suggest downloading them and then opening them through your viewer vs. just double clicking. They still may not work.

I'm going to try Jeff's Voobo site to post these as well...remember, I've been having problems trying to view the straight .avi files that the Digital Blue software spits out.

On another front, the 2 margaritophorus cardinals (remaining lonely males) are going to be heading back to the LFS today...and a mature female S. stellatus is coming back!

MP
 
Wow! that first vid is just awesome. I can't help wondering if the focus could be just a tad sharper, you could see the intra-egg development just a bit clearer. You might be able to tell which eggs are fertilized, and focus on them. It almost looks as if you can see the cells dividing in the first few frames.

The second vid looks as though the larva got stuck with its head still in the egg.

Did that toy scope come with a camera mount?

Really great! And thanks for sharing!


Kathy
 
Alrighty, those of you who can't see the .avi's, the 16 hour video is up on Vobbo!

http://www.vobbo.com/user/mwp/entry/115607

Kathy, unfortunately that's pretty much the best quality that comes out of that little scope...if some babies come down the line maybe there will be finances for an upgrade. It seems, looking at it, that initially ALL the eggs are fertilized...you can seem them "swell and shrink" for the first several hours.

The 2nd larvae, well, like I posted so long ago, when they hatch they look like sperm ;)

Camera Mount? Do you mean like a mount for my digital camera?

So we definitely hatched out 15-20 larvae, maybe more...can't really say whether the formalin had any affect or not or if it was just the sterilized water, but from a spawn size to hatch size this is probably the best yet.

MP
 
Matt,

Amazing video! You are on the cutting edge of raising mandarins :) Keep up the good work and I'm sure one day you will succeed!

Brian
 
Well, between 11:43 PM and 12:12 AM, WE HAVE A SPAWN!

NO CLUE what I'm going to do just yet!

MP
 
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