Landlords Log - Breeding Percula Clowns

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landlord

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Gonna try and keep some good notes on this species regarding my successes and failures. Perculas seem to be the only fish with any sort of demand in my area so maybe I will be able to get rid of more than 5-10 at a time if I have any success with them.

Here are some shots of my pair laying their first batch of eggs

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Inspecting their handywork :)

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So, this laying coincided with my GSM's first couple of batches so I have got my rotifer production going full swing. This egg mass was laid on 12/10/2009 so I am hoping and will be watching for a Saturday or Sunday hatch.

For some background on the fish. The male originally came with a mated female through the RC board as a Wild Caught Onyx pair. The female of that pair went carpet surfing about 3 months ago, so I was left with a lone male. He lacks the black "trousers " that most folks associate with Onyx perculas so whatever he is, is what he is. The new female shown in the pictures came off the boards out of the LA area. I simply put out an add for a nicely patterned larger female and this is what I was able to pick up. I was quite pleased that after only 2 or 3 months I already have eggs. Not being to familiar with this complex I have noticed that the size, amount, and arrangement of the eggs are very different from Tomato's and GSM's which tended to be quite large in number and very uniformily laid. These Percula nests are very scattered and small in number. Just thought that was interesting to note.

In any case feel free to follow along. Hopefully some of this data may help other down the line. Questions and comments are always welcomed.

Have a Great Day!

:) Kurt
 
landlord said:
Gonna try and keep some good notes on this species regarding my successes and failures. Perculas seem to be the only fish with any sort of demand in my area so maybe I will be able to get rid of more than 5-10 at a time if I have any success with them.

Here are some shots of my pair laying their first batch of eggs

picture.php


picture.php


Inspecting their handywork :)

picture.php


So, this laying coincided with my GSM's first couple of batches so I have got my rotifer production going full swing. This egg mass was laid on 12/10/2009 so I am hoping and will be watching for a Saturday or Sunday hatch.

For some background on the fish. The male originally came with a mated female through the RC board as a Wild Caught Onyx pair. The female of that pair went carpet surfing about 3 months ago, so I was left with a lone male. He lacks the black "trousers " that most folks associate with Onyx perculas so whatever he is, is what he is. The new female shown in the pictures came off the boards out of the LA area. I simply put out an add for a nicely patterned larger female and this is what I was able to pick up. I was quite pleased that after only 2 or 3 months I already have eggs. Not being to familiar with this complex I have noticed that the size, amount, and arrangement of the eggs are very different from Tomato's and GSM's which tended to be quite large in number and very uniformily laid. These Percula nests are very scattered and small in number. Just thought that was interesting to note.

In any case feel free to follow along. Hopefully some of this data may help other down the line. Questions and comments are always welcomed.

Have a Great Day!

:) Kurt
Click to expand...

Kurt...since you are so close to me...I want a pair of the GSM clown babies if they all make it...just let me know when...also want a pair of the true percs...I can drive up and get them when they are ready.....mike
 
OceansParadise said:
IMO it takes a long time to get the third stripe formed.
Click to expand...

...and even if it never happens, I'm still happy with the pair.

:)

If light is a factor it'll probably never happen. The rack is under those HomeDepot 32 watt T5's. I have heard they can develop under intense lighting.
 
Well I thought for sure that this weekend I would get a hatch. The eggs were laid on Thursday 12/10/2009 at around 4 or 5 PM. Yesterday night was the 10th night. It is a small disorganized nest of about 40-50 eggs. I can definitely see the silver eyes on them and figured after 10 days they would be ready. Took a quick peek this AM and still saw what I believed to be the whole lot of them on the flower pot. I was just wondering if any of them did a partial hatch. I figure then that tonight should be the night if these eggs are viable.

I'll keep my eyes on 'em tonight to see if anything happens. Feeling a bit of frustration that these are not as regular as my Tomato Clowns. I guess I just haven't yet figured out the routine.

:) Have a Great Week

Probably won't be postying much at all after today until I get back to work on Monday the 28th so hopefully I'll have good news at that time!

:) Kurt
 
When I was in college one of my buddies was doing an experiment for a class where he was breeding danios, he needed to breed them so they all had the same DNA etc... He then would blind them and try to regrow a part of their eye. And he was one of the first people to successfully do this. Anyways, the part that I wanted to mention was one weekend he had to go out of town and he asked me to take care of them, so thinking no biggie I can feed fish I said yes. Well, I didnt know but he needed all of them to hatch and withing the same time period so when they hatched about half were stuck in the egg sack and under a microscope we had to remove the fish from their egg sack. Luckily he showed me how to do this (I was a business econ major) but it really wasnt too hard and didnt require any really specialized equipment. I think that this could be done if someone was interested in doing it but I personally don't have a place to breed them myself at this moment.
 
Kemah said:
When I was in college one of my buddies was doing an experiment for a class where he was breeding danios, he needed to breed them so they all had the same DNA etc... He then would blind them and try to regrow a part of their eye. And he was one of the first people to successfully do this. Anyways, the part that I wanted to mention was one weekend he had to go out of town and he asked me to take care of them, so thinking no biggie I can feed fish I said yes. Well, I didnt know but he needed all of them to hatch and withing the same time period so when they hatched about half were stuck in the egg sack and under a microscope we had to remove the fish from their egg sack. Luckily he showed me how to do this (I was a business econ major) but it really wasnt too hard and didnt require any really specialized equipment. I think that this could be done if someone was interested in doing it but I personally don't have a place to breed them myself at this moment.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the idea.

:) Kurt
 
Magga Pie said:
How did you get them to breed so fast?
Click to expand...

That is the million dollar question for sure. :)

Wish I knew. I simply put the pair together in a bare bottom 10 gallon tank with just a flower pot and they proceeded to do their thing. I do feed them to saturation so the tank requirse quite a bit of maintenance to keep clean. But other than that nothing much special has been done.

Thanks for reading

:) Kurt
 
Well this is a day or so late but I was able to capture some of the first laid batch from my Percula pair. I was expecting that my hatch would happen on Sunday night. So like a ninja I was checking on the eggs about every 15 minutes or so Sunday after the lights went out. Nothing nothing nothing!!!! After 3 hours of this BS I turned back on the water and went to bed. I gave it about 3 hours to happen and nothing. Remember that this was the first batch from my pair. The nest was rather spotty and only contained about 50 or so scattered eggs. Well next morning I looked inside the flowerpot to see that about half the eggs had hatched.

Argh....

Well I was deadset to get the remainder Monday night. After about 4 HOURS of lights out I was able to see them in the water column. I was so used to the size of Tomato Clown fry that the unexpected smallness of these guys was a real surpride for sure. SUPER small fellas. In any case after about an hour or two I was able to spihone out 11 fry total. So I had this brilliant idea to hang a piece of 1/4 inch airline tubing over a nail down to a buket to use as a siphon hose. Great idea until I found a kink in the line where the tubing went over the nail.

Argh....

Lost another 4 after moving them into the tank, not sure when they died. On the good side I was able to keep 5 of them alive. They have since been swimming and feeding at the leisure. 5 fat silver bellies tiny as can be are swimming about. I am pretty stoked that I was able to get a few of the few that were laid we'll see how they come along.

Thanks for reading and I appeciate the questions, comments, and good will.

Have a Great Holiday

:) Kurt
 
Day 4 - I still have the 5 fry I collected from the hatch night. They are swimming about eating rotifers and just doing their thing. The swimming seams a bit bizarre as of the last night. Possibly the beginning of meta. Never been here before so about all I can do is to keep a good watch and report back.

I am waiting for the parents to lay anouther batch of eggs which I hope will happen on a regular pattern but we shall have to wait and see.

Thanks for reading

:) Kurt
 
congrats kurt! thanks for sharing - if only to help others learn what to do and what not to.

i totally agree with you on the swimming thing. I thought mine were all going to fish heaven on me (it's day 8 now, 5 still ok). Are you going to try BBS after day 5 or switching to a dry food?
 
Day 6 - I still have my 5 fry doing their thing. They have been filling up on rotifers without any issues. They are still swimming funny, kind of sluggish, I guess. It's hard to describe. They have definitely increased in size from hatch day. Tried to snap some pictures but with only five fry in a five gallon tank it is quite difficult to get a good focused shot. Going to continue on with rotifers and later on this week I will add some Otohime A and begin siphoning out the remaining rotifers.

The Percula pair has not put down another nest of eggs as of yet. Still watching with anticipation as to whether they begin laying on a schedule. Still very pleased to at least get five of them so far.

Thanks for reading

:) Kurt
 
The five should have plenty of rots to choose from. Also the lower the number of larvae, the lower the ammonia levels. ;)
 
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