Hi Fin Goby larvae (Stonogobiops nematodes)

[Tomoko Schum]

Hi y'all,

Last Saturday I ended up trapping some unknown larvae in my larvae snagger. My clownfish eggs hatched very late instead of right after the light out, and I found these guys in the snagger instead when I checked it at 11:00 pm. They definitely looked different from my clownfish larvae - a bit smaller and very slender. Their bodies are clear from the top. You can only see their silver eyes.

Here's the video clip of them:



Here's the picture of four days old little guy

and the video clip



I have a pair of the high-fin goby (Stonogobiops nematodes) and five yellow tail damselfish who are laying eggs on my montipora in my 120G reef tank besides my breeding pair of clownfish. I am pretty sure that they are High Fin Goby larvae. What do you all think?

They seem to be eating something. After two days I could see dark dots behind their eyes. They even look a tiny bit larger now after 4 days. They are in a 5.5 gallon tank with L-strain rotifers and three different kinds of live phyto (nanno, isochrysis, and tetraselmis.) There are some live copepods, tiggerpods and baby mysis (hitchhiked with the larvae) in there as well.

I am wondering when I should start them on bbs. Any suggestion?

Tomoko

 

[rkelman]

I'd wait for Meta..

 

[Tomoko Schum]

I am not sure when they start metamorphosing. One thing I did not mention in the above is their particular way of swimming. Some of them have a jerky zigzag way of swimming - very much like some gobies. Clownfish larvae on the other hand have very smooth fast movement. I may be mistaken, but I expect that damsel would, too.

Tomoko

 

[billsreef]

Very nice :thumbsup:

For brine shrimp nauplii, I would start introducing when most of the larvae are big enough to easily eat them.

 

[Tomoko Schum]

Tonight I did something stupid, and I think I lost 3/4 of my larvae. There are still a number of them in the tank, but all the larger ones seem to be gone.

This is what happened:

I saw Seachem's Ammonia Alert badge has changed the color slightly. It is not totally yellow (safe) but a bit closer to light green (alert.) So I tested the water with API's ammonia test kit. It turned to strong green, indicating 3 to 4 ppm ammonia. Although my larvae was swimming normally and looked just fine, I decided to bind ammonia with Prime since I was afraid of sucking up tiny larvae if I did a water change. Funny. If this was a clownfish larvae tank or FW angelfish I would not have hasitated to do a water change at all. Anyways, I diluted some drops of Prime with the tank water in a cup and poured it in slowly. Within a minute, many tiny larvae started writhing on the bottom of the tank to my horror. It was really sad to see. So I ended up changing the water after all and the remaining larvae looked much better after that. I did not suck up any larvae, either.

It was a hard lesson... especially since I don't know when I can capture the larvae again out of my 120. It was just a sheer luck that I got these guys.

Tomoko

 

[Tomoko Schum]

I still have a few larger larvae and a number of small ones this afternoon. They seem to be doing well. They are eating and swimming around.

Some people on another list suggested to use a permanent coffee filter or a plankton collector during a water change to keep larvae/fry away from the mouth of the tubing for water change. I am going to try that

Tomoko

 

[rkelman]

Or just scoop it out with a plastic container.

 

[Gravesj1s]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=13528576#post13528576 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by rkelman
Or just scoop it out with a plastic container.

Hi I was wondering if you had any updates on your larvae,were they actually highfin gobys? and if so how are they doing to date.
thanks-Graves

 

[Luis A M]

I only found this thread now,but yes,they were definitely goby larvae and not damsels.
Quite a nice hatch!Worth of further rearing efforts!

 

[Tomoko Schum]

Hi,

I ended up losing the remainder of the larvae shortly after the last post of mine. Since they were doing so well before the Prime addition despite the ammonia creeping up in the tank, I suspect that they might have done just fine with frequent water changes if I did not use Prime. They were obviously eating rotifers and growing well. I think that high fin gobies might be a relatively easy fish to breed based on the fact that the larvae are almost as big as clownfish larvae and eat standard rotifers. I hope someone else give them a try

I have not tried to capture the larvae since the last time. I have a high number of clownfish juveniles that no LFS's are interested in taking at the moment (they are stocked up at the moment and they only take a small number of them at a time anyway.) There is no reason for me to keep breeding fish if I cannot even sell them. This is kind of frustrating because I love breeding my fish.

What do you all do with the offspring of your fish? With the economy being the way it is, LFS's seem to be having a real slow season, too.

Tomoko