Green Mandarin (Synchiropus splendidus) Breeding Log!

Status
Not open for further replies.
As of 7:30 - Pair #1 produced only 2 vialbe larvae. However, the 2nd spawn has hatched out 26 so far, and there are still many good eggs. It's possible these are RSBs based on the longer hatch time...just a thought...

Matt
 
I've been wondering about actual incubation temp. The tank is still at 82F, but the containers are far from covered in tankwater and our air-temps have gone from 72F to 67F (summer to winter conversion)...so it's possible that they're not getting warm enough.

Matt
 
Well, the RSB's are dancing! I've been a bit busy, haven't gotten back to count the larvae from last night's spawn #2. Too much going on!!!!

Matt
 
OK, so 1 false spawn on Mandarin Pair #2. The RSB male has "lost his mate" (FWIW she didn't look anywhere close to ready to spawn). He's been cruising around the tank looking for her since my last post.

Matt
 
137 is the final hatch count from spawn #2 from last night ;) So whomever these little guys came from, they're fertile! What's strange is that the cardinalfish tank's water was the dirty water, and they were placed in the smaller container.

The RSB male went to sleep in the sand a little while ago, but our #2 mandarin pair is still trying to figure out if they can make a spawn happen!

Matt
 
10-20-06, 12:30 AM, WE HAVE A SPAWN ON MANDARIN PAIR #2!

Collecting them ASAP, putting them in a specimen cup and waiting to see what happens!

Matt
 
OK, so I tried something a little different...from rereading about clownfish rearing in an older issue of Coral Magazine, I thought about volume vs. surface area of the incubation water in the specimen cup. So the 1/2 gallon specimen cup has the spawn, maybe 200 eggs (it was a smaller, looser spawn again), with only 2" or so of water. This should allow for much more gas exchange in comparison to have a FULL specimen cup, which would minimize the need for any aeration at all.

The only other notes I have to offer - broodstock tank is at 77.3 F, and the larval tank is 81.2F at the moment. We'll see how this next batch works out.

The larvae from yesterday were simply added to the larval tank...they'll most likely become food for the juvenile cardinals. The rearing scheme right now is to move our African Wrasse (Halichores sp.) into one of our 24s from the 6, move the 8 juvie clowns to the 6, move the 17 post-meta clowns and the cardinalfish to breeder nets, take our new spawn of clowns and give them the new larval tank, and then I have an empty larval tank to play with mandarins again!

Phew - gotta go feed the rotifers and harvest some phyto!

Matt
 
I have a question. I saw that you said that they were in a 24gal nano. how do you keep the pod population up. do you have a seperate system that you take them from that is solely for pods?
 
Checked again at 10:25 PM - one more larvae. A total hatch of 4 - totally abysmal. There's obviously something more to it than temperature.

FWIW,

Matt
 
PhatBrdr427, If you look back earlier in the thread, in the first 5-10 pages, I describe in great detail how I trained all my Synchiropus onto frozen foods. They don't "require" pods in the tanks...they get PLENTY of quality foods.

FWIW,

Matt
 
FWIW, last night I observed courtship on pair #1 before lights out, but with 2 early morning guides, was not able to leave the pumps off to see if there was an actual spawn. I'm back "briefly" tonight, and the RSB pair is dancing like crazy. The have maybe 10 minutes to do the deed, otherwise I have to turn the pumps back on. Interesting to watch, just like the VID posted many pages back in this thread on RSB's. Going to have to dig up and update my old RSB thread or start a new breeding log! BTW, this evening mandarin pair #2 is also dancing.

Got some interesting info on rearing Synchiropus that I was asked not to share, promising though.

FWIW,

Matt
 
10-23-06, 11:55 PM, we have a spawn, but WHO? - this evening I noticed the RSB's dancing again so I turned off the main current...came back just before midnight and found a small number of eggs at the surface. I didn't notice any courtship in Mandarin Pair #2, so I *think* these were RSB eggs. Not ready to work with anything (tied up with a big perc hatch and a desperate need to prepare more Phytoplankton water) I turned the pumps on and let the eggs just go over the surface skimmer.

On another note, the ICH that came in on Male #2 and appeared to have cleared out reappeared on Sunday evening by infecting both mandarins, 2 of our Glass cardinals and our pair of GBG's. Talk about being ticked, especially since the tank has a 24 watt UV on it.

Well, the UV prefilter was dirty, so flow was reduced, so I've cleared that out, been dosing with Marine Max, and added a small cleaner shrimp to the tank. I'm also toying with slowly bringing the SG down from 1.026. I've had small outbreaks of ICH on one fish here, one fish there in the past in my other tanks, mostly early on additions that didn't spread to other tankmates, but nothing like this. Totally PO'd about it and forced to just "deal" with it...just one of those things that can happen, they are fish afterall :)

Matt
 
10-28-06, we have dancing in both Mandarin Pair #2 and the RSB pair. It seems that the RSB's tried to spawn for a while but gave up, whereas the mandarins were more persistent. However, I'm going after the male Bangaii this evening to see IF he's actually HOLDING babies (I haven't seen him take any prepared foods since 10-5-06!). Basically, I disrupted the pair so IF they were going to spawn, they probably won't now. Gotta start up an RSB thread soon...I'm not going nuts over the Synchiropus just yet - I'm also expecting another round of Apogon leptacanthus on the night of the 28th/29th - I think I'm going to give that species another shot (we're at 45 days, 1 juvie remaining).

FWIW,

Matt
 
10-29-06 - the RSBs are dancing and "Fatboy" is muckin' it up...apparently he feels like breeding tonight, and since he's large and in charge (double the size of our male RSB) he's getting in the way. The female RSB did a rise with him...so um, there could be a possibility of intra-species mating between two species of Synchiropus housed together. While I don't foresee this happening, it does mean that I may very well have to visually observe any spawns I try to utilize from this tank!

Matt
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top