Here's the latest and greatest from the tomato garden.
Batch II - Day 21
These babies have acquired their new grow out tank. A friend of mine at work gave me a freebie last Friday. It is one of those Marineland Eclipse all-in-one 12 gallon tanks with some fancy retrofitted sunpaq light. The keyword being "Freebie"
I hooked up some livesand on Friday and filled it with tank water from the SPS tank that night. I gave it a day or so to clear and added batch II on Sunday afternoon. I was finally able to get a verified and accurate count of the offspring, 37. It's amazing how hard something as simple as a count could be to get :lol: The little guys have "clicked up" into little groups of there prefered tankmates. They are much more enjoyable to observe in this new tank. The lighting is a 30 something watt 50-50 bulb and does not look way over blued as before. I will get pictures up later on tonight or tomorrow when the tank is a bit more clear. These guys are still eating Oto B1 but I believe that the size of the granules is too small and I will move them on up to the next grade this evening. They all seem to be eating like champs. There are a couple of fry that have a mis-barred headstripe but one in particular has a uniform misbar. The headstripe is broken on both sides right near the crown of his head making it appear that he has a white dot on the top of his head. That fish makes me smile
Bath III - Day 10
I suppose like children everyone is different. In this case my only frame of reference has been with the previous batch. These guys are simply developing much more slowly than before and I am concerned, more out of inexperience than anything. With Batch II I was seeing the headstripes begin to appear at day 7 yet with these guys I am not. I would say that perhaps meta will start in the next day or so but who knows. I am not really even sure what the signs are for meta. I am simply basing it on the appearance of the headstripe. With my current 2 bucket rotifer production line I was doing the same amount of feeding as before. Siphoning out a gallons worth from each bucket and dumping it in the larvae tank. These guys would have them consumed in under an hour. Toward the latter part of last week I started siphoning twice a day, bad idea
They would still consume the rotifers as quickly as ever and now I have diminshed my rotifer stock to the point where I have not been able to harvest any since Friday evening. One bucket is still OK but the other is quite iffy. I had been supplementing Oto A for 4 to 5 days now and now I think I am simply going to cut them off of rotifers and stick to Oto A which has been the primary food source since the weekend began. I am adding Oto A as often as possible with my work schedule and all. They get a 5:00 AM, 3:00 PM, and 9:00 PM feeding. I am able to see some of these guys lurching at the food successfully but others lurch and miss. I do not know if the particle size is still too big for these guys or what. In any case I have siphoned about 75 dead fellas from the tank over the weekend. Many of the fry are kind of just drifting in the water column and do not appear that they are actively trying to swim. Like floating zombies. I mean they aren't floating to the bottom like the dead ones but they just do not appear to be "with the program" so to speak.
In re-evaluting everything I have experienced so far, I would have to say the under optimum conditions (Batch II) meta begins around day 7. With this batch, I have yet to see this stage of development. Perhaps now that the tank is self-thinning its population those remaing fry will get a kickstart from having more space and more available Oto A. As a take away, I guess the moral of the stroy is, in my case, start with a tremendous amount of rotifers if you want to get to meta quick. With the amount of fry that hatched from Batch III I would have needed about 4 good cultures to harvest from to keep the numbers and the growth up. Perhaps another approach would have been to start with less fry, maybe 100-150. Again I'm still very new at this and everyday is a learning experience with valuable lessons to carry over to the next batch.
With the transfer of Batch II to the larger 12 gallon growout cube I was able to move the sponge filter over to the Batch III tank. I want to get a handle on any ammonia issues that may start arising in there. Knowing how much slower this batch has developed I am glad I purchase an additional sponge filter. I believe that Batch III is going to be in this larval tank for awhile to come and I will need a sponge in the newly freed up larval tank for Batch IV after a week or so.
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Some New News
I went to the local hardware place and picked up a storage shelf, which my wife calls a pie rack. It is essentially an adjustable 4 shelf (I only use 3) steel rack, painted black. It is a glorius addition. I am now able to at least organize the breeding station now. I have placed the rotifer buckets on the bottom shelf, the 12 gallon cube above that, and finally on top are my two 5.5 gallon larval tanks. The grated shelfing has all kind of places to hang gang valves and airline tubing. Wires are all out of the way, and the light switches are easily accessible. Best of all the wife is happy
Before I had tanks balanced precariously on nightstand and bucket strewn about. It was a mess. This is much more visually appealing. With the breeding station in our great room it really needs to be
Batch IV - T-Minus 1 more day and counting...
I have decided to keep the production going with another batch and am not going to skip this round. After moving out Batch II the larval tank is currently running greenwater with rotifers to see if I can beef up the numbers in there. The current culture was started on Sunday at noon using a gallons worth of siphoned water from each of my 2 buckets. One bucket is pretty much nil. There are a few rotifers in there so I can only hope that by not harvesting it at all for a couple days I can get something going in there. The other bucket seems OK but I am still not going to harvest it in the hopes of incresing its density. The larval tank looked OK this morning with some rotifers doing their thing but it is not the density that I would prefer, I fed that tank and we shall see what it looks like this afternoon when I get home.
I am debating whether or not I should simply only capture 100-150 or so fry from the DT Tuesday night. I want to give these guys a better chance at developing more quickly. I am afraid that if the fry do not reach certain developmental milestones (meta) at the correct time that I will end up with unhealthy fish. Maybe it doesn't matter how quickly they develop to be healthy? I simply do not have enough experience to know the answer to this? I do know that if I pull them all on Tuesday night I will be in the exact same feeding situation I was in for Batch III. My guts says to pull them all, out of guilt I suppose. I just feel bad for the ones I cannot save from the DT. On the other hand maybe slow development isn't an issue and I should capture as many as possible. Perahps Batch II's success was out of the norm and cannot be expected with a decent sized hatch out. It'll be a tough decision either way for me.
In any case Batch IV is coming so stay tuned for updates.
Thanks for reading, helping, laughing, cursing, etc
Kurt
Thanks again
