Ruby Red Dragonet Breeding Journal

[kizanne]

4/11 - Went to Reef-a-palooza purchased 3 ruby red dragonets that were pre-bagged but looked to have a boy and a girl in the bag. When I got them home, I could see they were very skinny with concave bellies. Boy kinda listless. Put them in my 30 gallon frag/copepod/amphipod tank.

There are two girls and one boy. Girl with darker markings (hereafter refered to as dark girl or dominant girl) pushing other girl around definate aggression but doesn't seem too harmful.


4/12 definately chasing copepods. I'm trying brine shrimp hard to tell if they are eating it. Also trying rods fish eggs they seem to be eating that.

4/28 Trying Ocean Nutrition nano pellets soaked in garlic and selco. Maybe they are eating it. Very hard to tell when it blends into the bottom of the tank but does seem to have a feeding response. Dominant girl showing some sign of gravid (hubby says no but I swear she's looking fat)

5/1 WE HAVE SPAWN!!!! I couldn't believe it. I thought I saw them ascending but when I walked in the room they dove for cover, checked before I went to bed and found a string of eggs. Bonus unlike my mandarins, I believe these are fertile. The egg looks different than the mandaring eggs. It's only been an hour or two but there are two circles inside the egg. I am not prepared at this point as my phytoplankton has crashed but we'll see how it goes.

 

[kizanne]

So freaking cool my two small spheres is now 4! Let me see if I can get any pictures the problem is my camera on my scope will be a magnification of 160x which is going to be too small. Amscope worked yeah

 

[kizanne]

can't believe I"m saying this but I'm off to bed. Not sure when the water will evap.... got others in a cup with water.

 

[kizanne]

Update. I don't think they are still developing but here is one of the latest pictures. I have
some in a cup in the tank that are developing but slower because the temp is lower than sitting on top of the microscope light. However most don't look to be developing.

 

[HPark]

very cool - just grabbed a pair of red scooter blennies...love them

 

[ichthyogeek]

Hey kizanne, have you given up on the mandarins? Or are the red rubies in a project along with the mandies?

 

[kizanne]

I haven't given up on the Mandies but I think my male is not fertile (or his nutrition needs to be improved). I think (and Julian Sprung suggested) that I change out the male. I don't want to do that cause he is a great little fish (I like him more than the girl) but eventually I'll get around to giving up on him. I would like to find him a good home with someone who doesn't want to breed him. My hubby says because the eats frozen brine that he should be easy to find a home. But his spine is a little crooked so I don't know if I can find him a good home with copepods and someone willing to feed enough. I feel like I want to make sure he goes somewhere he'll live and not starve slowly.

So yeah the rubies are a side project. I will eventually probably also try a pair of spotted mandarins. I am just excited to have fertile eggs to play with. I wasn't quite ready cause my phyto crashed, I have more on order.

I also wasn't expecting after buying them skinny that they would be spawning in two weeks. Next time I'll have a warmer tank ready to put the cup of eggs in to help with hatch rate. And hopefully I'll have some tetra for the larval tank. My parvo's are currently out of tetra so I'm hoping they can hold on until I get some.

 

[kizanne]

Quick update. The eggs in the cup had larva this morning. So I am still in it. I have to run out this morning so I'll try to do pictures later. Even with crashed phyto it ain't over till it's over.

 

[nvladik]

This is so cool. How are you taking these pics?

 

[kizanne]

First the update this morning was from my Iphone which is how I kept it so short. So let me start with....

WOW. From my mandarin research I expected hatch from 18 to 24 hours. When 24 came and went and the eggs in the scope tray were toast I expected that was it for now. When I woke up this morning to larva I was thrilled and surprised. So at 78 degrees the hatch was somewhere between 24 and 32 hours. I think some hatched after 32 because I seem to have more this afternoon then I did this morning before running out on an errand. Though I did not do a full count this morning.

For simplicity sake and anyone following in my path (or researching their own). I am going to say they spawn at 10 pm on Friday, May 1st and hatch was say Sunday morning before 7 am. So from now on when I'm counting hours or days post hatch it will be post Sunday at 7am (EST). At 5 hrph (hours post hatch) they appear to not have fully developed eyes, no mouth and a large egg yolk.

 

[kizanne]

 

[kizanne]

 

[gogo7]

kiz... this is really cool...
i love your pictures.
can't wait for the next post....

 

[kizanne]

Well at 12php most of the larva appear to be dead. Almost all of them seemed to develop the eyes more and start to absorb the yolk. I had some left in the hatching cup, dead, some in a petri dish, all but one dead and some got put in a rearing bowl with a little old tetra and iso I got from the crashed culture and some parvo and tisbe copepod. The bowl has at least one alive (but some are dead). The bowl is really hard to see the larva in it so I don't know how many are in there.

Also at the beginning I also put some eggs in my copepod tank (a 10 gallon) it isn't where I want it to be and has too much micro algae (I think got contaminated with nano) so there might be some in there.

It could be bacteria. I think because the eggs were in different locations I can rule out temp, salinity, transfer trama. I also think maybe the yolk wasn't rich enough. The parents physical health may not have been completely recovered.

12hph (dead)

 

[kizanne]

Well 24 hph I still have at least two larva left alive.

I have one in the petri dish ( can't see much difference from yesterday and she won't hold still for a picture)


I have one in the rearing bowl.

Things I found interesting.
The one in the petri dish swims upside down at the top of the water.
The one in the bowl swims right side up at the bottom.

Neither swim or move around much.

I don't know If I'll get any more picture until they are dead because I don't want to risk harming them by trying to capture them. If the petri dish will hold still tonight I'll try to catch a picture. Then I think I'll be putting her in the bowl where most the food is available.

Don't have high hopes but I want to let it go as long as possible to learn for the next time.

I haven't found any info on anyone raising these guys but I'm using what I have pieced together about mandarins. Since I have two adult females in the tank with the male I will hopefully get another batch of eggs soon.

 

[Coelli]

Very cool, thanks for posting updates

 

[kizanne]

This is so cool. How are you taking these pics?

I missed this in the excitement. It was my Christmas present...


It is an Amscope M158-E5 microscope. have magnification from 40x to 1000x

40 works great but the lowest pictures I can take are 160x because the camera is automatically a 40x and the lowest objective is 4x.

I don't use the 1000x and don't think it would work well without oil immersion.

One day I will have to break down and buy a dissecting microscope which tops out at 40x.

40x, 100x and 160x(camera) are great for copepods and fish eggs.

The 100x to 250x are good for looking at the algae.

I really didn't know how much fun or use my microscope would be but I love it. If I had to do it again I would have bought the one with two eye sockets so that the camera could go in one and I could use the other. (not sure if that would work but I think it would have). Later I might break down for a dissecting scope for looking at larger than larva fish and looking for diseases.

 

[kizanne]

Well I haven't been able to see any in the bowl (where I put the last two remaining larva) for 24 hours so I'm going to say I only made it to 24 post hatch. There might be some in the copepod tank but I doubt it if there are I won't see them for a couple months LOL.

I ordered some micro algal disks to get my tetra, iso and such going again and feed my copepods. I'll be watching them for the next sign of spawning. I think the non-dominant female is getting a little fat so maybe in a week or two she'll spawn. My mandy girl is getting pretty fat so I'm hoping for them to spawn soon (though he may not fertilize). They were distracted last night by shrimp larva in the water. She is never interested if there is a new batch of plankton in the tank.

I have to work on figuring out how come they didn't make it past 24 hph they didn't have mouths yet so it wasn't starvation. I'm thinking the eggs just weren't rich enough since they spawned only three weeks after having very concave bellies at reef-a-palooza. If you have ideas as to the 24 hours I'd love to hear them.

 

[kizanne]

I have another SPAWN.

Very exciting. Don't know if it was my dominant girl or the other one. I didn't watch the tank tonight.

Unfortunately, I'm not more prepared than I was last time (sigh). My algal disk were supposed to be shipped yesterday but I don't have them yet and of course I'll need to try to get them started. I turned up my heater on my copepod tank which was going to be my incubator but it only got up to 76 degrees so they'll incubate in the parent tank for tonight which means 24 - 32 hour til hatch. I didn't put any on the microscope so time lapse but I'll suck a few up tomorrow to look for development. I'll probably also clean up a small bowl and set it up with what little algae and copepods I can muster up.

 

[hotelbravo]

awesome great news i hope this all turns out well!