Ruby Red Dragonet Breeding Journal

Ok so update. I hatched out some larva early this week but they only made it to about 4 days so I'm going backwards.

Other observations. They seem not to spawn if the specific gravity gets to high, other than that they spawn pretty regular.

They spawned tonight so tomorrow I'll try again with babies but I need to get more small things they don't seem to be able to get enough baby psuedo copepods or they are too big all together.
 
The rubies continue to occasionally spawn. I am currently working with bangaii and trying to recover my copepod and algae cultures. The eggs I hatch I am putting in my large tank refugium and back in the parent tank to see if there is enough variety of small foods to raise them in those settings. so far I haven't seen any results from this. I expect in a couple weeks I'll try to raise them again in a larval tank. Their spawning does seem to correspond to salinity. When the salinity gets high they slow down on the spawning.
 
Mixx glad to see you are still working at these little guys. I lost my male ruby red and my little female green mandarin. Some corals, snails and peppermint shrimp. It was due to a faulty heater. Water was almost 92°. There is still one fish alive, but his breathing is rapid and he stopped eating. I have a controller for the large tank. I was just keeping these in a 10 gallon until the new one was ready.

So the rings do not like their water to salty. Interesting. I once let a tank with a couple of clawed frogs get really low. Then I added water. And Preston they spawned. Tiny tadpoles everywhere. They were carnivores. I could not feed them. It was the middle of winter, so I could not even get pond water. I wish you better success than I had.

And yes, I am relieved that he is supplementing his diet with clams and oysters. The mandarins are a truly wonderful fish.

Shelley
 
Yes, but the female mandarin was hard to find. I had her for a year. It was awful. It appears the lone survivor is breathing better. It is a young scooter blending. Well must get ready for company. And I am very glad it was not the heater in my 65 gallon. I would be devastated. I have a small golden angel, had her for over a year. She is shy but still lots of fun. And some others that I have had for years.

Shelley
 
I just had some eggs hatch. I added them to my main tank refugium. There are copepods and amphipods in there. While I try to recover my algae and copepod cultures I'll be trying less intensive methods of growing the larva.
 
i agree. less intensive methods seem to yield better results. if you lived in canada, i'd send you some phyto.
 
yeah I agree. I'm working on regenerating my phyto now, while trying to keep my copepods alive on what I generate so I need to get ahead in the phyto production
 
So here we go again. They had taken a small break on spawning. And their tank had some cyno and their salt had creeped up. So siphoned cyno, treated with chem clean and lowered the salinity.

They spawned (both girls I think). I've put them in a cup and have to decide if I"m going to put them in my display refugium which is really beginning to have a nice population of copepods and amphipods. OR set up a vase again. Still don't have a great number of copepods.
 
great news kiz.
i hope you get some babies. the sound of little flippers running up and down the hall makes fish breeding all that more rewarding.
the vase sounds like a good idea. are you gonna try ciliates on them?
 
I still don't have a ciliate culture. I've been kinda messing with the bangaai and haven't gotten much of my old problems solved. In addition my last remaining copepod culture seems to have rotifers in it. My spotted mandarins that are in small containers for training have some interesting things in their water. One seems to be a rotifer. Either my adult mandarins are eating it or it isn't as prolific as a normal rotifer. It also has some other things. But it isn't high density. I had ordered a culture of tisbe but I got it from a guy instead of live aquaria and it had rotifers in it so I just put it in my display tank to top off the population. I have about 10 hours of work I need to do but unlike you I haven't put the time in.
 
So Inspired by Gogo7 (check out his Goby thread) I have hatched the latest batch of ruby red eggs. I didn't count the eggs or the hatch. I did make up several cups for some of the babies. Hatch eve of 7/5 about 8 pm is what I'm calling hatch.

Cup 1 Some stuff from my refugium, tetra, tisbe (just a few) and a small number like 5. I'll add a squirt from my refugium every day. The tetra is also from a disk so don't know if it will take.

Cup 2 is from my happy accident(kinda of purpose) waste bucket. It has tisbe pods, nanno, a small amount of tetra, rots, baby brine. I sucked off the sides to get as many tisbe's as possible many were pregnant females. Maybe 5-15 larva.

Cup 3 is refugium water only sucked from the rocks and base of the algae. I'll add to it daily.

Cup 4 is actually a 1/2 gallon 'tank' It had Olive in it and had some tetra, euplotes, and weird little rots. Some nanno. I added some chaeto, tisbe, tetra, rots, refugium squirt, and some cerith snail eggs. I'm hoping their pelagic stage will be good eating? don't know how many larva I added.

Cup 5 - is actually the waste bucket. The one in cup 3 I just put some larva in there. If a cup is good a bucket is better (maybe)

Cup 6 - I added a few to Olive's new tank. She kept most of her old water and it had stuff in it. I figure she'll probably eat the larva but it is worth a try. If she doesn't eat them then there is always stuff in there. If she eats them maybe she'll put on some desperately needed weight.

I'll try to post my observations daily. My longest is 7 days post hatch. I will not be taking pictures this time around.
 
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