Landlords Log - Breeding Percula Clowns

agsansoo said:
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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Indeed they do! I am going to begin to siphon the rotifers out a bit earlier since the 5.5 gallon tank next door to theirs is brimming with GSM fry. They are consuming rotifers at a rate where I am unable to simply co-culture enough to mantain a good supply. This is usually the part where I run out :lol:

Never was able to determine the fuss with high ammonia in the larval tanks. I rarely, if ever, became a problem for me. I mean it would rise up and simply reduce itself over a week or two. Guess I've been getting lucky

:)

BTW Andy,

Loving that larval snagger, would love to see more pictures of it in detail. I need to reproduce something similar yet small enough to work on the short edge of a 10 gallon tank!

Take Care

Kurt
 
Day 7 - I am going to make an effort tonight to get some photos of the five babies. They have at least tripled in size from when they hatched and are swimming with purpose now. I will begin adding Otohime A to the mix tonight.
 
president89 said:
Why can I see pics on other threads, but I can't see any here? Is this a typical problem? Do I need to enable something?
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No idea. I know that when I am at work I cannot see anything on various sites like (Photobucket, , Flickr, etc) My IT dept blocks them out....
 
Day 8 - I tried for hours to get a decent photograph but alas was unable. My point and click just doesn't cut it. They will either need to hold still or I need a better camera. :(

Other than that the babies seem to be doing well. No noticable headstripes yet but I have a suspicion that they will be appearing very soon. Also no new nest from the parents yet. I am amazed at the rate in which these tiny ofry are growing. It is quite the thing to see.

:) Kurt
 
Day 13 - I had lost the runt of the five a couple days ago. I personally believe that he was simply an unhealthy specimen. So that leaves me with 4 of the original 5. I have not noticed any headstripes on them although the now have taken the shape of a flat football. The look very odd to me but I've never really looked at perculas at this age before. I would have expected more development by this time. I am starting to think that rotifers until meta is simply not enough of a good food source with this species as it seemed to be with Tomato clowns. I guess I'm going to bite the bullet and start raising artemia. I have been avoiding it simply because of time. I really like spending some of my free time outside of the fishroom. :)

I have begun to introduce Otohime A and really need to siphon out the remaining rotifers. I am hesitant to move on this plan because the fry do not seem to be taken to the Oto, probably because they are swimming in a sea of rotifers. Just going to have to do it and see what happens tonight.

On the plus side the parents did lay down another quite small nest of eggs last night. Maybe 50 in pot, so I am pretty pumped up to continue with this species and see what kind of results I can get. So hopefully I can begin the vigil of waiting for the hatch on the night of the 13th. The male and female do not seem to be very inclined to clean the pot where they are laying eggs and just plop them down. Inexperience, I guess.

Thanks for reading and have a great week.

:) Kurt
 
Day 14 - No stripes???? Any thoughts???

In any case I have filtered out all of the remaining rotifers, did a 50% WC added a bit of ammonia lock and put the sponge filter into the tank. I get nervous at this time because of the lack of easy access food in the tank. I am only adding Oto A at this time and they do not seem to be going for it just yet. :( I hope the figure it out soon.

As for the parents - Well I do not know what may be going on here but the female hadsher ovipositor out for the better part of the afternoon yesterday. With a pretty shabby scrambled nest laid the day before she had plenty of places to lay but didn't. Not sure what this two day egg laying is all about but it makes for a tricky gathering of fry... Thoughts here would also be appreciated.

:) Kurt
 
Day 20 - Well I am down to 1 possibly 2 fish. Just cannot ge tthe fish to start eating Oto A with any gusto. Gonna go online today to order what I need to start raising artemia. Just doesn't seem like rotifers are enough to get them over the hump to start eating dry food. Weird thing is that these 2 post meta fish do not show any stripes whatsoever. It is as if they are devoid of any coloration at all. Cannot really say what is going on here.

On the plus side I do ahave a nest of eggs in the broodstock tank that will be ready to hatch starting Wednesday night. I only count 16 eggs, very scattered, but at least it is something to work with until I can figure these guys out.

:) Kurt
 
Day 22 - Well I have 2 fish left in this batch. No stripes, in fact the two fish are crystal clear in color. They look very odd. They have only been getting Oto A as a food source and I cannot really see them eating at it. They swim through it but that is about all I can make out. I have a brine shrimp setup coming on Friday to try something different for the next round.

The current batch of eggs should be ready to go tonight. I built a larval snagger out of a large and small sized Lee's specimen container, a RIO 50, some mesh, and old U-Tube, pen light, and a return elbow. Tested it last night and it seems to be working pretty good. Thought I might get a premature hatch last night so what better time to test it. Checked this morning and the eggs (All 10 of them) did not hatch. Should be tonight so I look forward to seeing if my snagger works as designed. We shall see.

:) Kurt
 
I will take some pictures of the snagger tonight. It still needs some tweak but should work out in my small sized tanks.
 
Day 23 - Sad day :(

Looks as though I have lost all remaining fish. I would venture a guess that they simply starved to death. I never really saw them eating at the Otohime A and since I had stopped rotifer production in their tank there was simply not enough food close at hand to keep them thriving. When I started to break down the tank I was able to find four little bodies, all white, no coloration at all!

To top it off I was unable to get any of the 10-15 eggs laid by the parents yesterday or the day before. Had the snagger running all and in the morning nothing had hatched so I would turn off the snagger only to come home from work and see more eggs gone from the pot. These guys just do not act like my tomato clowns did, hatch 45 minutes after lights out, religiously!

Also - Still cannot figure out why the female has not retracted her ovipositor. It has remaining extended for about 10 days now. She eats well but this just doesn't seem right.

Whatever the case, I won't be reporting back on this thread until another batch get laid which could be 2 weeks away if things go like they have been going...

Andy - If your reading I'll be starting another short thread for my snagger, I took pics of it in action last night.

Until we meet again here in a couple weeks

Take Care

:) Kurt
 
I really wish I had some positive news to report here. I believe that there may be something really wrong with the female of the pair. Here ovipositor has been stuck in the "Out" position for about 3 weeks now :( She just seems like she is going to pop. She is still eating normally but she cannot be comfortable. I have a suspicion that she has a belly chok-fulla eggs that just won't come out......
 
landlord said:
I really wish I had some positive news to report here. I believe that there may be something really wrong with the female of the pair. Here ovipositor has been stuck in the "Out" position for about 3 weeks now :( She just seems like she is going to pop. She is still eating normally but she cannot be comfortable. I have a suspicion that she has a belly chok-fulla eggs that just won't come out......
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That's a shame kurt. Maybe it's just a temporary indigestion thing.
 
I don't know if there are any vets around on this site due to the fact we don't typically take marine fish to them but maybe one of the help forums would give advice. Also, if you were to look on some koi forums they have info on egg-bound females. Might not apply directly but it could give ideas. I wonder if at some point a "belly rub" or manual stripping of the eggs would a good thing to try.
 
I have read that people have done a treatment involving the introduction of Magnesium Sulfate to help with this issue. Not sure of it's affectiveness. My wife just wants to give her a little squeeze. Personally I do not know what to do.

BTW Daniel - Your fish have settled in quite nicely and the eat like pigs.
 
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