Ps. steenei Female is SUPER GRAVID

[MorandiWine]

From the looks of it my female Ps. steenei will be dropping eggs tonight or tomorrow. She is MASSIVE! Her entire abdomen and vent area is super swollen. I can only assume that she is full of eggs because I had a spawn a week and a half ago.

Does anyone know the incubation time on this species? I want to be prepared for this hatching.

Also a reminder for local breeders ..... if you want fry get ready! PM me if you are interested in picking some up the day of hatching.

Tyler

 

[ediaz]

I don't know any people raising these or who had , but of about 8 species I have raised it takes 4 days to hatch at 80-82 degrees.The eggs will go from a nice salmon pink to clear with little black dot in them, eyes.

Let the spawn go, I beleive it is your second one, raise spawn 4 or 5 and on, for the first spawns the quality of the larvae will be bad.

Ed

 

[MorandiWine]

Just as predicted, there is a golf ball sized mass of eggs in the terra cotta cave with the male fanning and guarding. Must have spawned either last night or this morning because it was not there when I left the shop at 8 pm and it was at 12 when I made my rounds!

This is still pretty exciting for me because I've always wanted to work with this fish and getting an actual female was out of reach. Yes I could have gotten another male and the less dominate one might become a female but that seems like it is cheating a little

Ed, I know that you said that the first couple spawns are pretty waek, but I am going to give it a shot anyways. Reason is that both fish were pretty large when I got them. Male being 3.5-4 inches and the female at 3.5 inches. At that size I would imagine that they have had a spawn or two in the wild. Does that idea "hold water"?

This time I am going to keep a photo log!!

thanks

tyler

 

[ediaz]

Hello Tyler,

The reason i said it is because when you are working with larvae that die just by looking at them, it is better to rule out any variables that might affect the outcome.

let say you are not succesful with the rearing you would not know if it was your protocol or the larvae were not healthy enough. If you start with mature brood you can rule that one out.

You might have something there when you say that the pair might have been spawning in the wild, i would not know that since most hatcheries and myself use young TR stock to create pairs.

I was talking to a friend in Europe who owns a hatchery there, he said he tried to pair them up but lost most of them to aggression.
And he thinks keeping them in grow out will be hell. I worked with P olivaceous, and mortalities in grow out were very high due to this.


but good luck and keep us posted.

Ed