dave w March 3, 2014 Share March 3, 2014 Also, +1 to what Scott_LM and OcalaReefGirl wrote. A couple more things to consider: 1. Try culturing two types of phyto to pack the rotifers. When people use the term "green water" mostly they mean nannochloropsis, which doesn't have a complete fatty acid profile for the nutrition your larvae need. 2. Try Isochrysis as a second phyto, you can buy them from lots of places, I don't know anyone who has them locally. This combined with nanno will give your rotifers complete nutrition. 3. Adequate amounts of phyto is always the achilles heel of larviculture. Try growing your rotifers on a yeast based food and then just enrich/pack them with your phyto a few hours before putting into the larvae tank. 4. If you're not going to fill your 10 gallon tank, you might prop up one end several inches so that detritus falls to the bottom corner and it is easier to siphon out waste. Ammonia is very toxic to these babies. 5. I recall that some people have been using naups of a small copepod called oithona to raise damsels. This pod is available in the Chesapeake, I don't know of any mail order sources but they may be out there. Even if your larvae eat rotifers (and most don't), a mix of some of the pods will give much greater survival rates. 6. You can probably substitute parvocalanus copepods for oithona, they are about the same size. And parvo is commercially available. Seahorse source is one place that has it. Good luck in your efforts, you should be able to sell any that you raise. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dave w March 3, 2014 Share March 3, 2014 Oops, and: 7. Try putting them into a round container, preferably with dark or black sides, and then try to give a gentle clockwise current. Many larvae orient themselves headfirst into the current and wait for the water flow to bring the food to them. An adjustable powerhead is good for this, try to split the supply water so it enters the tub in three equidistant places so that the flow is not too strong in any one place. The flow should be very slow and gentle. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DaveS March 3, 2014 Author Share March 3, 2014 Here's a quick response/update for all the great advice: Scott: Based on your suggestions about lighting, I painted the 3 sides of the tank black and basically kept lights out in the room. The only lighting is the reflected ambient lighting from the phyto growing. I've been using the phyto pastes to grow the rots. It's alot easier than trying to grow enough green water for everything. I made it even easier by diluting the pastes and then putting the mix in an ice cube tray. Now I basically drop a cube into the bucket in the morning and/or evening. My wife can even do this while I'm out of town. I have read however that live green water is better for the hatch tank. Since they phyto are still alive, they won't decompose as quickly and foul the tank water. So I haven't gone away from green water completely. Over the last week, I did put some green water into the rot tank. It cleared up much slower but did eventually clear up. I'm guessing there is a difference in density or something between by green water and the paste. Nonetheless, I'm thinking my green water is ok. I did add more green water to the hatch tank so it's kinda cloudy these days. OcalaReefGirl- thanks for the extra tips. Dave w: I've heard about culturing different strains of phyto. Wittenrich in one of the 2-3 written accounts I can find on raising Lemon Chromis talks about using copepod nauplii instead of rots. If I decide to go that route, I may look into the oithaona you mention. The black round tub idea with current is also a great suggestion. Honestly I think all of these are good ideas IF I decide to scale this up. Right now I'm more in proof-of-concept phase. I want to figure out the process to successfully raise these guys. If I'm successful and there is a market for them, maybe I'll decide to go the next step. I already expanded outside of the fish room which I resisted doing for years. As far as a general update: The fry are still alive! I'm about 1-4 days post hatch. It's quite a range because I saw one guy early morning of 2/27 (which I filmed) and then over the course of the next day or so, the numbers have increased. Looking at the tile this morning, there were still a few eggs with eyes on them but about 1/2 the egg mass seems to be black and have fungus so I just took the tile out. I figure there are 30+ larvae swimming around. Purely a guess as I haven't tried to count. Some of them seem to be more mature. Whereas in the video I posted, the fry is bouncing up and down as it swims, the fry are now swimming/bouncing more horizontal. Some are still going up and down and I'm assuming those are the younger ones. I guess I need to look into getting a microscope so I can have a better idea of what's happening along the way... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sharkey18 March 3, 2014 Share March 3, 2014 Wow. That is really great news. Impressive. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dave w March 3, 2014 Share March 3, 2014 DaveS, My opinion is different than most other people in this regard, but here it is and you only have to read it once. I think the only way to succeed with larviculture IS to scale up. I think a small setup will discourage you with the need for 24 hour attendance and constant siphoning, feeding, water changes, attention to live food -- yes, you can raise a few larvae, but at what price? If you value your time you might want to try a larger scale and more automated setup that can succeed. Think about having sterile water on the top shelf, phyto on the next one down, rotifers below that and the larval tank aside or below the rotifers. Then think about dosing pumps programmed by a controller. I know this sounds complex and for some reason everyone hates complexity. Sorry to bear bad news, but it's like the guy with a piece of sheet metal in the garage saying he's got a great start on building a rocket ship. OK, sorry, that's too harsh. I apologize. But getting fish to lay eggs happens by neglect and getting the new fry to live for a few days on their yolk sack is the first tiny step in a long chain of events that end up with mature fish. I'm not trying to be the sourpuss. I'm not trying to discourage you. Please have a lot of fun trying to raise fish, it is a blast! But after the novelty of all that hand work gets old, please think of ways you can use small pumps, solenoids and controllers to automate (as well as using lots and lots of live phyto) in order to get your system to the point where larvae will live. I think 99% of people drop out of larviculture because of the amount of constant attention involved. Alas, now I have probably gotten you mad at me. Please have lots of fun trying to raise your little beauties. I hope you prove me wrong, I will be the first to congratulate you and buy you a beer, if you will still talk to me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DaveS March 3, 2014 Author Share March 3, 2014 No worries Dave, I'm not mad. I agree that if I want to do this in the long run, I will need a different infrastructure. This is my first time EVER with breeding marine fish. I haven't done clowns or anything else. My primary goal right now is to get a few to pull through. I'm completely aware that the effort per fish at this stage will be huge and unsustainable. Again this is proof-of-concept for me at this point just to understand what the process is that I would try to scale up and/or automate. Using a more topical analogy, this is my first 30-40G reef tank. I'm trying to see if I can get SPS to grow before I dedicate part of my house to 300G tank with full fish room. I'm shooting for base hits before going for the grand slam. Based on your own build thread, I know we probably see and approach things from a different perspective, but that's ok! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OcalaReefGirl March 3, 2014 Share March 3, 2014 I agree with Dave W about scaling it up, but that is if you decide you want to do it long term. You might decide that it isn't as enjoyable or you might decide this is your life passion. Who knows. I for one am starting my fish breeding (absolutely NO experience so far) with a basic set up before I spend a fortune. Scaling it up allows you to spend less time doing a lot of the time consuming boring stuff and allows you to enjoy the fish breeding part more and keep it from being a huge hassle. I spend at least 1-2 hours per week on just sanitizing all my containers because I am too unorganized to separate the different buckets and tubes for different strains of phyto, rotifers etc. When I do start to work with larvae I will have to be more organized because I simply won't have the time otherwise. I am sure you will find a way that will slowly help you cut some corners and simplify some steps along the way. Again, best of luck to you! Very exciting! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dave w March 4, 2014 Share March 4, 2014 No worries Dave, I'm not mad...Based on your own build thread, I know we probably see and approach things from a different perspective, but that's ok! Based on my own build thread, I'd try to steer you away from a system so complicated that it's taken over 3 years to put together! Please be smarter than me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sharkey18 March 6, 2014 Share March 6, 2014 Wow... let the guy give it a try before you knock him down! I think a small scale start is awesome. It gives you an idea of what is involved and what you might need to do later if and when you decide to scale up. Also, I DO think you can be successful on a small scale. You may not make any $$$ off of the endeavor but it didn't seem like that was the goal. The goal is just to see if it can be done. Keep on it DaveS!! On that note, are any still alive? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DaveS March 6, 2014 Author Share March 6, 2014 Yup, still have some alive and kicking! Here is a video from yesterday. It's 2 short clips spliced together. I estimate they are at 6 days old. It's hard to know for sure as there are 2 clutches of eggs laid a day apart and I don't think each clutch hatches on the same night. As you can see, they are swimming horizontally a lot more than before. The vertical bobbing up and down is most likely early stage behavior as they are incumbered with the yolk. At this point the yolk should be gone and they are figuring things out. According to Wilkerson, with clowns, at this point they should be weaning off rots and going to BBS. But looking at some videos of clowns, these guys are no where near the same size at 6 day old clowns. I know the video doesn't give much for size reference but at some points in the video (thanks random auto focus ), you can see the specks that are rots. I think they are going to need to stay on rots for a few more days easy. I think I'm at least able to keep the rot density up (you can see that in the video too). This is one of the problems with raising the Chromis as my first attempt. There isn't any real information out there about their growth timeline and requirements. For clowns, there is plenty of documentation that says Day X do this, day Y do that. Oh well, part of the fun and mystery! As far as numbers, they have dropped. As a random guess, I probably had a lot more to begin with than I thought- say maybe around 100. Yesterday morning I probably had about 40+. I siphoned detritus off the bottom of the tank and by this morning I think I'm probably down to maybe 20ish now. Some of them died overnight and others got siphoned off the bottom with the detritus yesterday. I pulled some back and saved them but a bunch just continued to lay around on the bottom of the bucket thrashing around in the muck. I'm guessing those guys weren't going to make it anyways. I'll check on them more this afternoon and hopefully things will be going well... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DaveS March 10, 2014 Author Share March 10, 2014 An update- around day 7 and 8 I had major die offs. I think the last one was done by the end of day 8. I think the problem is, while few documented cases say "they are just like clowns", they aren't exactly like clowns. For clowns, around day 5-6 you are supposed to start introducing BBS. Any later and they start to die off as rotifiers don't provide enough nutrition. Any sooner and the clowns can die as the BBS are too big and they can choke to death. I added some BBS around day 7 but I think that was too early. I even noticed a few larvae thrashing around on the tank bottom. Maybe something that would happen if they got a huge BBS stuck in their mouth?! Oh well, next batch will be on rots for much longer. Also got to try and figure out a way to get a better look at these guys under a microscope or something. Gotta troll Craig's list for a scope or something. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JR-Tanked150 March 10, 2014 Share March 10, 2014 That's sucks, so when is the next set due? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DaveS March 10, 2014 Author Share March 10, 2014 I'm guessing in a week or so. Depending on this 3rd batch goes, I may put the training wheels back on and try with some clowns. I know there are a few pairs in the club that lay eggs that aren't being collected for growing. Since I've never bred anything before, it's hard for me to gauge a lot of things. Kinda like learning to ride a bike by reading a manual... There's tons of documentation out there for clowns so I have a much larger body of knowledge to draw upon in figuring stuff out. We'll see! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dave w March 16, 2014 Share March 16, 2014 you can start with san fransisco brine shrimp when that time comes. they are smaller than great salt lake brine shrimp and will cause fewer issues in the early days. have fun. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OcalaReefGirl March 16, 2014 Share March 16, 2014 you can start with san fransisco brine shrimp when that time comes. they are smaller than great salt lake brine shrimp and will cause fewer issues in the early days. have fun. I didn't know that, great info! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dave w March 17, 2014 Share March 17, 2014 Copepod cultures will give you a food organism sized in between rotifers and brine shrimp if you think that might be an answer for you. Actually it would be more accurate to describe copepods as both a smaller and parallel food size to rotifers , and also a food that jumps the size difference between rotifers and brine shrimp. But there is a difference between copepods and rotifers. As granddaddy Martin Moe once said "most larvae, given the choice between eating a rotifer and starvation -- will gladly choose starvation". Rotifers don't elicit a strike response in larvae like their natural food, so most larvae have a hard time recognizing them as food. Hope that helps. If you decide to go that route there are some specific copepod species I'd recommend. Keep up with just rotifers if you want. I don't give any of this advice as an attempt to knock you down. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WheresTheReef April 9, 2015 Share April 9, 2015 Any updates? This is really neat. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Newfishgirl May 16, 2015 Share May 16, 2015 Amazing Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DaveS May 21, 2015 Author Share May 21, 2015 New batch! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AlanM May 21, 2015 Share May 21, 2015 That's a lot! Hope they make it through. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dave w May 22, 2015 Share May 22, 2015 Great job Dave. Keep giving us updates so we can learn along with you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Seahorseconservancy June 2, 2015 Share June 2, 2015 wow this is the most exciting thread don't give up, I wish I knew what you should try but I don't have any ideas just don't give up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AUFishGuy December 11, 2015 Share December 11, 2015 Are there any updates on this? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Engin February 10, 2016 Share February 10, 2016 I'd like to know how it's going also. That's so cool. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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