Spawning log - Coral Catfish - Plotosus lineatus

[Chelsey]

Fish: Coral catfish, Plotosus lineatus

Purchased: 2-20-10

Paired: Purchased as a pair

Notes: Yet another dumb luck land-in-my-lap pair Went to a LFS for the first time this weekend and discovered that they had a mated pair of coral catfish. This pair was in someone's tank and was very destructive around spawning time so they were given to the LFS. I was debating between species last night when they decided to lay some eggs! All 380 eggs are now ~24 hours old and are HUGE, right around 1/4"!

Here's the pair, still in QT:

Here are the eggs, pics taken @ 20 hours. I'm guessing that the outer covering of the eggs are sticky and they've managed to pick up some junk from being laid in my less-than-sterile QT tank. These eggs are currently in a tumbler.

 

[landlord]

Fantastc photos! Should be a fun little venture for you with them catfishes

 

[phil519]

that is cool - i've seen shoals/bundles of these fish together when small. Are you raising any food for them - if so what?

 

[Chelsey]

I currently have rotifers going for my clowns and neon goby fry, and frequently hatch out brine shrimp as well.

Here are today's pics, eggs are now nearly 48 hours old. At this point I have NO idea which eggs are good and which ones are bad. However, I do know that the bad eggs are fouling the water in the hatching jar FAST and water changes are being done very frequently as a result.

 

[phil519]

cool! now i have to subscribe to a neon goby thread also?

 

[Chelsey]

Not on here...don't have any babies ATM.

 

[fragboy94]

Hmm any chance I could buy some and hav u ship em when ever they're ready im not very far only like 2 to 4 hours

 

[jhawkor]

So cool! How big is the pair? Eggs are 1/4 inch? Those are HUGE!

 

[Chelsey]

Eggs are indeed 1/4". The male and female are about the same size and are 8-9" long. Now that the female no longer looks like she's swallowed a golfball I cannot tell the two apart!

fragboy: I hope I do not come off as rude, but I didn't post this thread here to get sales, I posted it looking for information on how to raise these guys and hopefully provide a learning experience for those who may also run across spawning pairs. I believe I would be considered commercial if I used this as an avenue to sell my fish and I would rather not break any RC rules

 

[NINEONEONE]

That a nice pair and you are very lucky what a deal .

 

[Beaun]

Very interesting, I've never seen people raising these before, I'm interested to see how it works out.

 

[Chelsey]

First batch of eggs is a dud The eggs are very soft shelled so my standard artificial incubator with air for egg movement didn't not work well, it just ruptured the eggs. After experiencing problems with that I turned the air WAY down and dripped water in to attempt to aerate the eggs. This worked well except for the fact that I had no way of knowing which eggs were good and which were bad so the bad eggs fouled the water really fast. The female is starting to plump up again so hopefully I'll have more eggs soon. In the meantime, I've got several ideas regarding hatching jars for these fragile eggs.