CaptCrash Breeding - Harlequin Shrimp Fry, Blue Tang Eggs

[Aydee]

Hey Captain oh my Captain.

How are you going? Have you managed to pick yourself up yet? (Even if it's just to get some small things started)

Do you still have the love/drive/passion?

Dave

[CaptCrash]

A bit of an update, I had turned the temps down at the end of last year with the string of issues that I had been having, the enthusiasm was not there so I was only feeding once a day.
Around the end of last year once I got back from some holidays, I turned the temps up on the breeding systems and started to feed the fish more heavily again.

The last two weeks have been great with good sized nests from the following pairs

A. percula, (Percula clown) first nest from a new pair as the old female passed, so the old male transitioned to female and a new male was introduced.
A. frenatus (Tomato clown) two nests in January from the single pair. The first nest was eaten, the second should hatch tonight
A. ocellaris, (Ocellaris Clown) two pairs have nested, one twice in January the other once. Should be a hatch tonight or tomorrow.
A. melanomas (Fire Clown) first nest in January from this pair
A. ephippium, (Red Saddleback) first nest from this pair. Most fry passed within 24 hours, but its their first nest so hopefully that will get better.
A. clarkii (Clarkii clownfish) They did produce a batch in the month but ate it within a few hours
P. hepatus, (Blue Tang) the tangs are spawning like troopers, the large female is reliable every second day, the smaller female about every 3-4 days.
C. viridis, (Blue/Green Chromis) the chromes are spawning intermittently but about every 12-15 days.

In terms of shimps, I have a large batch of L. amboinensis (Red Lined Cleaner Shrimp) on the go, at about 20 days now (only 9,438,983 days to go or so it feels).
I have also had two batches of peppermint shrimps and another of Red Lined Cleaner Shimp that didn't last very long (48 hours ish)

Fish that haven't resumed spawning at this stage are
Pseudochromis diadema (Diadema Dottyback) new pairing
Pseudochromis flavivertex (Sunrise Dottyback) two new pairs
Pseudochromis aldabraensis (Neon Dottyback) grumpy grumpy fish!
A. rubrocinctus (Australian clownfish/Red Anemonefish) cleaning like crazy but nothing yet
Dragonetts (both pairs)

Im really happy that the bulk of the spawning pairs have resumed laying so quickly, I would guess between 4-5 weeks so thats not too bad, I was sort of expecting a few months.

[Bandit]

Awesome Darren, you are going to have your hands full... what happened to the McCulloch's?

[CaptCrash]

what happened to the McCulloch's?

In 2012/13, I had a series of setbacks including gill flukes in the grow out system, a couple of pump failures for a breeding system, someone turning off all of the power points for the breeding systems and loosing about 1/3 of my broodstock. Unfortunately the McCulloch's were casualties of the year.

[Aydee]

OK.. That is one hell of a hit from a karma train. Hopefully, the karma train will now take you on much more exciting adventures (You've earned it)

Dave

[spanishmack]

good to see you back, having given up on the hobby I know what it's like, the passion comes back!

Good luck!

[Bandit]

In 2012/13, I had a series of setbacks including gill flukes in the grow out system, a couple of pump failures for a breeding system, someone turning off all of the power points for the breeding systems and loosing about 1/3 of my broodstock. Unfortunately the McCulloch's were casualties of the year.

That's a shame, one of the more unusual clowns out there.

[CaptCrash]

I have just had my Amphiprion ephippium pair in my reef tank, lay a new nest on the day that the old nest hatched (eg. new nest laid 2-4pm day yesterday, old nest hatched 10pm last night).
My other pairs have always had a few days between hatches and laying a new nest (2-3 days).
The eggs that hatched last night were laid on the 19/2/2014 and hatched 28/2/2014.
This is a young pair, and this was their 5th and 6th batch of eggs, both nests were of a good size and respectively were the largest nests from them so far.

[CaptCrash]

For the last few months I have been attempting to raise some Blue Green Chromis fry, with the latest batch I now have 10-20 fry that are 10 days old today

[Mikelob]

Hate to say it, but they are ridiculous looking critters when they are that young !

[NewyReefer]

Congratulations mate on getting chromis fry.
I read they were very hard to breed?

[cody.sheridan-2008]

Well done mate, hope they keep on growing

[CaptCrash]

Hate to say it, but they are ridiculous looking critters when they are that young !

Na, they are starting to get to be normal looking by now. But I get what you mean, fry of both shrimp and fish are just odd looking when you know what they end up looking like.
Though this particular one does not appear to have much in its gut, so thats a bit of an issue.

This is when they are a few days old

:clap: Congratulations mate on getting chromis fry.
I read they were very hard to breed?

Yup, I have read the same thing. There are a couple of instances that Im aware of where people have got them through, though not a lot of specifics.

Well done mate, hope they keep on growing

Me too, though I did stupidly add newly hatched brine shrimp to their bucket last night by mistake, so that may be an issue for this batch (If nothing else it makes them harder to find in the bucket).
But I have more nests every few days so even if it does cause a problem, I can try again.

[CaptCrash]

Some Sunrise Dottyback eggs and the adult pair. These guys have only been with me for a couple of months and I only put them in the same tank about three weeks ago.
The egg mass is about the same size as the female (she is twice as long, but the egg mass is a sphere).


Parents


Egg bundle

Video of larvae in the eggs

[cody.sheridan-2008]

vid isn't working

[CaptCrash]

vid isn't working

Still uploading and taking a long time, should be there tomorrow
edit: now with working video

[CaptCrash]

New video showing the Sunrise Dottybacks hatching.


Newly hatched fry (front lit)


Newly hatched fry (back lit)

[CaptCrash]

New video on the Blue Tang Breeding

[NewyReefer]

awesome stuff mate.

[Thommo01]

Great stuff. Pretty cool under the microscope.

[NewyReefer]

Hey Mate.

Any updates on the Chromies and Dottybacks?

[CaptCrash]

Well it has been a very long time since I last did an update.

After not breeding much for the last year, just the occasional batch I am focusing on bringing the nutrition of my adults up again and have a couple of new rare fish to add into the mix.

Hopefully within a few to six months I can get my new additions to start laying and I can raise some Mccullochi Clownfish (Amphiprion mccullochi), one of the worlds rarest clownfish from my new adult pair.
Given the rarity of these (14 wild caught fish in the aquarium market world wide), my goal is to make them more available to the Australian market.

One of the very interesting things about this pair is how friendly and inquisitive they are. For the last few years they have been in a family room and are quite happy with people being around them.
Almost everything I have read about Mccullochi clowns describes them as aggressive, but this pair is anything but.

If you would like to follow my progress on breeding these rare and unique fish, please follow the progress on the Facebook page I have stated for the project https://www.facebook.com/MccullochiClownfishBreeding.
I will also be keeping this thread up to date with progress along with more specific details in the MBI breeding journal at

[CaptCrash]

Well I suppose its time for another update.

Breeding efforts have been slow but continuous over the last few months.

Whilst I have done a few batches of fish
A. ocellaris, (Ocellaris Clown)
A. melanomas (Fire Clown)
A. ephippium, (Red Saddleback)
A. clarkii (Clarkii clownfish)
P. kauderni (Banggai cardinalfish)

I have also been raising the last of Acro Al's Banggai cardinal fish and juvi clowns. Other than a few clowns, these are all now sold, so that turned out to be a good exercise and paid for some of the years power bills

With the addition of a heap more Banggai adults, Im expecting to be able to produce a regular supply of captive bred Banggais. So far this is going well with about 120 on the go and three males holding eggs at the moment.

Now onto the much more exciting parts

Mccullochi Clownfish - Amphiprion mccullochi

Over the last few months I have been able to get a number of nests from my new Mccullochi pair, but they have not cared for the eggs very well.
So with the last batch I moved the eggs over to another pair who then fostered the eggs, about 1/2 of the eggs were eaten by the foster parents as part of keeping the nest clean and getting rid of bad eggs.
I missed collecting the fry as they hatched earlier than I expected, but this is still a very encouraging result and I will look to try this again asap.

Harlequin Shrimp - Hymenocera picta

I now have an exciting new task of caring for a pair of Harlequin Shrimp with the objective of breeding them.
The pair has previously released fry, so with any luck I can raise some of these very interesting critters.

I have only had them for about 24 hours now, but they are very interesting, I can really see the attraction with keeping them.

Blue Tang - Paracanthurus hepatus
For the last few weeks the replacement Blue Tangs and been going through their courting behaviour between the two larger fish.
I have a group of three, one of which was a survivor of the power failure.
Given the previous experience, Im expecting that they will start to spawn in the next few months as the behaviour is very similar. The large fish chasing both smaller fish, swimming in tighter and tighter cycles, then dashing away from each other.

One odd part of the behaviour is that there has been a change in the gender of the fish doing the chasing.
The largest fish (female, has spawned in the past with the old male), now appears to be taking on the initiator role with the new smaller fish (believed to be male).
Weirdly the largest fish also will occasionally repeat the behaviour with the smallest fish (believed to be female).

I had associated this behaviour with the male initiating spawning, but as I only have one fish to base this on, there is a lot of room of error here.
Another option may be a change of gender for the largest blue tang, but I am not aware of them changing gender.

[Narcosis]

Thanks for the update Captcrash

Harleqin Shrimp and mccullochi clownfish is just awesome

Be fantastic to get more of these out into the market, good luck!

[CaptCrash]

I like this picture


I now have confirmation on the eggs, pictures and video will follow once they all upload.
The following two pictures in the GIF were taken during the same minute and show movement within the eggs.


Video show various movement and what I think is the heart beating, need to view high res and full screen.

[CaptCrash]

Summary video including video of fry now that they have hatched.

[CaptCrash]

Some macro shots of the fry at 24 hours

[CaptCrash]

The following photos are approx 68 hours post hatch.

Most now have 5 sets of legs, some still with four


Eye stalk development


In terms of length, they are approx 4.5x the length of NHBBS (so 4.5 * 0.5 = 2.25mm long)
This is based on a NHBBS (422um - 517um so just under 0.5mm) photographed at the same magnification and then a rough measurement of this photo in comparison.

In the last 24 hours they have gone through 2 x 10ml serves of NHBBS (approx 50% NHBBS, and 50% water). The number of fry has reduced, I would estimate 75-100 remain.
Cleaning of the screen in the kressel provides many molts, to they are growing quickly and well by the look of it.
They are much easier to spot now, bright yellow in colour.

[Bangalang]

Mate that is super exciting. Well done!

[CaptCrash]

Massive news, I saw by Blue tangs start to spawn again and was able to collect some eggs.
All three were involved in the spawning activity so Im not sure who actually did the deed.

Eggs about 1 hour old


They look good, but I can't tell if they are fertilised as yet.


Even if they are not, I am super excited to now have spawning tangs again