MikeandNicole
New member
We are so excited to follow along 

Alberta-newb- The remaining larvae are doing well.
At the end of day 3 they still were not developed enough to feed which surprised me since the temp has been at 26C to 27C. This morning (day 4) they have full tummies.:spin1:
I am culturing parvocalanus and am adding that as well as wild plankton to the tank. I got a good batch of small plankton yesterday after work and I'm off today so will go back again with more buckets this time.
I'm trying to update the blog every few days through the larval run. Because this was a small batch of eggs and I feel so lucky to have gotten fertile eggs this soon, I'm not sacrificing any of the larvae for photos. I'll get photos from another spawn (maybe tonight) and post the early stages on the blog.
Tactics-Every species is different and there are many larval runs that don't produce any fish but do help to figure out the challenges. I'm going to guess maybe 4 or 5 settled fish for the first 'successful' Fabio/Faith run. There are usually heavy losses in the first few days, then lower but consistent losses over the next two weeks. After day 18 things get better but that still leaves a good 40 to 50 days before the fish settle.
Egg quality has a lot to do with larval survival and Faith went through so much from the time she left Japan until she met Fabio and produced these eggs. I'm very surprised and pleased that these larvae are doing so well after all that and I think a big part of it is that Faith never shows much in the way of mental stress. She's always cool with everything!
And with the way this whole project has gone so far I think there are a lot of positive "vibes, karma, mojo" or whatever you want to call it riding along with us!:rollface:
Alberta-newb- The remaining larvae are doing well.
At the end of day 3 they still were not developed enough to feed which surprised me since the temp has been at 26C to 27C. This morning (day 4) they have full tummies.:spin1:
I am culturing parvocalanus and am adding that as well as wild plankton to the tank. I got a good batch of small plankton yesterday after work and I'm off today so will go back again with more buckets this time.
I'm trying to update the blog every few days through the larval run. Because this was a small batch of eggs and I feel so lucky to have gotten fertile eggs this soon, I'm not sacrificing any of the larvae for photos. I'll get photos from another spawn (maybe tonight) and post the early stages on the blog.
Tactics-Every species is different and there are many larval runs that don't produce any fish but do help to figure out the challenges. I'm going to guess maybe 4 or 5 settled fish for the first 'successful' Fabio/Faith run. There are usually heavy losses in the first few days, then lower but consistent losses over the next two weeks. After day 18 things get better but that still leaves a good 40 to 50 days before the fish settle.
Egg quality has a lot to do with larval survival and Faith went through so much from the time she left Japan until she met Fabio and produced these eggs. I'm very surprised and pleased that these larvae are doing so well after all that and I think a big part of it is that Faith never shows much in the way of mental stress. She's always cool with everything!
And with the way this whole project has gone so far I think there are a lot of positive "vibes, karma, mojo" or whatever you want to call it riding along with us!:rollface:
Unfortunately I have lost the larval run.I've updated the blog and you can see how the larvae looked today. http://fromfisheggstofry.blogspot.com/
I know it's hard to ask questions and make comments on the blog so feel free to do it here and I hope to get a better feel for what you are all interested in hearing about and how detailed I should get.
To answer Wayne's question about how I learned larval rearing I did have aquaculture jobs working with food fish and I worked at the Waikiki Aquarium for 18 years. I started at the aquarium on the mahimahi aquaculture project learning a ton from Syd Kraul and them worked in the aquarium's live exhibits dept. I had a lot of support from Bruce Carlson (the director at the time) to pursue larval rearing of marine ornamentals while I was there. I've also worked on my own in my small scale garage hatchery since the late 80's raising and selling clownfish and then trying more difficult species. So I guess I was both trained and self taught.
Humaguy- Jaws and Connie Joculator are doing great and I have been considering moving them in with Faith and Fabio. There is plenty of space there since I moved the bandits to their own tank and I think Faith and Fabio would like the company. I am worried though about changing anything while they are spawning so still considering.....
If the jocs move in with Faith and Fabio then the flame backs could move up to the jocs larger tank. I have seen a little prespawning behavior with the flame backs. I haven't seen any of that behavior with the jocs but they are still young.
I hope to be ready to start the next interrupta larval run in a week or so.
Fingers crossed.