Luis A M
Premium Member
Excuse the very poor quality of these pics but itÃ"šÃ‚´s the best focus I could get of this tiny (10mm) 30days old juvenile Fiji devil (Chrysiptera taupou)soon after metamorphosis and still coloring up.
As far as I know,it could well be the first of this species ever captive raised.The first and only because this fish is the only survivor of several hundred hatched larvae.
Even so,I feel very happy with it,and take it as a long awaited acomplishment.I have a special crash with this fish
Thirty years ago...(here comes a long boring story which you should skip or stay at your own risk
:lol: )Well,no,IÃ"šÃ‚´ll make it short.I set my first marine aquarium,very pioneer way,almost all DIY,including the salt,there was nothing available here at that time.I had a mixed group of fish including a pair of C.taupou.I was lucky because this fish is very aggressive and hard to pair off.Anway,I found them one day spawning in a big barnacle shell.I was astonished,books of that time didnÃ"šÃ‚´t mention fish could breed,keeping them alive was good enough.Coming from FW breeding,I said "why,theyÃ"šÃ‚´re just like cave spawning cichlids".So I put the shell with the nest into a HOB Dynaflo filter,with the return flow hitting the nest.Sure enough,the eggs developed and one day I found hundreds of new born fry.The larvae were obviously too small for bs,so I tried hard egg yolk (a common FW food),but they soon died.Then I lost the parents,and all my fish,with an Amyloodinum outbreak.
But this close encounter with breeding proved addictive and I kept thinking about getting a new pair,breed them and RAISE them.
Then I moved to San Antonio,Tx.for a pot-doctoral fellowship.There I met Nelson Herwig and Steve Walker,then (1977) of the local Aquarium.They were raising Neon gobies and almost every day I visited them.As C.taupou were impossible to find,Nelson suggested the yellow tail damsel,C.parasema.They are cheap,easy to find and breed easily.So most of my breeding attempts were made with parasema until I first could raise some few,some years ago.But taupou was my first love and I kept dreaming on raising them.This is why I find this tiny blue thing so special :beer:
Las crie en uno de tus "BRT"(black round tank)
but you can see the yellow fins and blue body.
I promise better pics of baby and parents in the future.Doug,IÃ"šÃ‚´ll love to hear about that "first time".
