Synchiropus Splendidus Development log

[D3monic_Urges]

The following is a development log of my Green Mandarin larvae.
Photo's and video's taken with a celestron lcd microscope at 4x unless stated otherwise.

Egg at roughly 10hrs.

Pro-Larvae

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFwu-4TySKw

Larvae

I have a video of the same specimen that I have not uploaded yet. I will try to do that this evening when i get home from work.

Thanks to a heating issue I did not have very many larvae out of this first batch and I have a batch from last night incubating in the same container. Hopefully I will still have several from the initial batch to document or I may have to back track a day to work with the current batch. Once they reach 72 hours old they will be released into BRT and I will be lucky to eversee or catch any of them until they are larger. Enjoy.

 

[FMarini]

awesome photos--
great development shots.
i'll be honest- i spend the day looking thru microscopes, you image quality is excellent, but your magnification is more along the lines of 100-200X, unless those prolarvae are huge

 

[D3monic_Urges]

No they are really really small, Comparative to a rotifer they are pretty big. Maybe around 2micron in the first prolarvae picture. I believe the microscope has built in digital zoom but I am pretty sure it is not zoomed in. Dunno I have not had the scope for all that long. Here is a link to it.

http://www.celestron.com/c3/product.php?ProdID=516

I got it from amazon for $140. I had it on the lowest setting.

 

[D3monic_Urges]

OHHH ok I was just looking at it. The objective lens is 4x but the camera adds an additional 10x so technically it was at 40x

 

["Umm fish?"]

Thanks for figuring that out. I read through the manual but could never figure out just how much magnification it was giving me. On mine, the 4x objective gives me a view of just a little over a millimeter.

 

[D3monic_Urges]

NP I didnt find it in the manual. I found it on the celestron link above.

I finally caught a video of them spawning. Took some patience. Had to cut the video short because everyone else thinks it thier personal snack time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjXKkrBBonk

 

[D3monic_Urges]

 

[D3monic_Urges]

You can actually see the blood cells traveling in its arteries.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxBlSD_yPoM&feature=player_embedded

 

["Umm fish?"]

That one's getting pretty far along. What are you going to feed it?

(Congratulations, BTW!)

 

[D3monic_Urges]

Thanks Andy. I have 5 rotifer cultures one that im keeping at higher salinity to see if I can keep them smaller. It seems to be working but unfortunatly when I look at them under the scope most do not have eggs. The culture is not ver dense either. I have another culture that I feed rotirich heavier than the others and I have noticed that it is getting what I can assume are ciliates. They are 1/3-1/2 the size of s-strain rots. I will run some through a coffee filter tonight and see if I can get some pics on the scope. I have about 60-80 (complete guess) larvae that stage in my incubation bath. I will probably get some more pics tonight before I release them into the BRT to never be seen again most likely.

 

["Umm fish?"]

Well, good luck with them. My rots keep getting contaminated in high densities with a lovely big (relatively) ciliate that I can't seem to identify. Closest I can figure is maybe Euplotes clauda. It's free-swimming in the WC in a kind of corkscrew pattern. I have some hopes for them, especially as kind of matches the admittedly vague description that Karen gives for what she used on Genicanthus, although this one may be larger than she describes. If I can ever get the larval system cycled. And if the nitrite was really what was keeping the sixlines from hatching out. And if my T-Iso cultures take off. And if.... And if....

How do larvae ever survive?

 

[D3monic_Urges]

lol I know what you mean...its always one thing or another...my biggest problem is culture crashes at the worst possible time. I am concidering next time I do a water change on my reef tank using the water to start a culture and see what kind of things I can get growing. Apparently I always have tons of mullusk larvae in there so it would be interesting what kind of foods I can find smaller than rotifers.

 

[D3monic_Urges]

I need to start some T iso as well... My algae cultures right now are plagued with fly bodies. I opened the garage door the other day for alittle bit and now I have like a 100 flies in my fish room. I put a couple fly traps in there but its hardly put a dent in them.

 

[FMarini]

your development photos are great and by the size and coloration of the larvae they are feeding --on "rotifers" wow- thats great. Could it be your ciliates that are actually the food

Thanks for the info on the microscope they are getting better and cheaper every year, to me its a must have for all fish breeding folks.
Anyway, can you do me a favor and put a measure bar on a photo- just to get an idea of the size. Your 40X mag is throwing me off, esp considering your saying that the prolarvae were 2uM

 

["Umm fish?"]

Frank--

I don't know if it helps since each scope is an individual, but here's a mm ruler under the 4x objective (what he's saying is 40x) on the same brand of scope. That's a sixline egg.

I need to get a stage micrometer. I finally found an inexpensive one just a couple of days ago: http://wardsci.com/product.asp?pn=I...00423C27502&mr:referralID=NA&bhcd2=1253818649

D3monic--I've heard that some of the German breeders are getting interesting results by, in effect, doing plankton tows in their reef aquariums and then feeding straight or culturing out the results. It might be something to pursue.

 

[D3monic_Urges]

Lol its pretty sad when a grown man feel's like he won the lottery when he finally spots a fry swimming in the BRT.

I had massive die off when I got home. I should of released them this morning.

 

[D3monic_Urges]

sigh ...50 more posts to have my own avatar.

 

[Chelsey]

Any updates on these guys? With more pictures?

 

[D3monic_Urges]

Sadly no...I forgot to update this thread. I lost all my fish including my breeding pair of Mandarins a month or so ago. I was collecting a spawn and I left the pumps off to feed the coral. I fell asleep that night with the pumps still off. I woke up the next day to complete devistation. The only survivor was a bangai cardinal. I am in the process of trying to find a new pretty pair. I am also cycling a 75gal macro tank that I Intend on using to breed mandarins and pipefish in.