Mandarin dragonet spawning log

[lowsingle]

Keep up the great work…..how cool would it be to have one live to adulthood 

 

Darren

 

[DaJMasta]

No proper settlement, but they're prowling the sides more often.  They also appear slightly brownish now (first they were yellow, then reddish), though up close it's not hugely different.  You can tell their head is slowly widening and more closely resembles an adult.  Their fins look more developed, they're again seeming more coordinated, and the base of the new fins are starting to get a bit of color.  I put together a little comparison (not size or color matched...) of their development since day 7.

 

 

 

[howaboutme]

That is so awesome. Keep up the good work!

[DaJMasta]

21 days post hatch, 21.5 days post spawn, the two babies have settled!  One settled two days ago, but will occasionally swim around, the other was primarily free swimming and started hovering/sitting on the bottom last night, but both are scooting around today as one would expect from a mandarin.

They've got a lot of growth ahead of them, and they are still very small, but I think the next milestone will likely be when I transfer them to a proper tank and out of the rearing vessel (trash can), probably to a mesh box before releasing in the tank properly (so they are big enough to get away from hydroids and amphipods and things) - they are still smaller than a full grown amphipod, maybe 4-5mm in length.

Here's the two of them last night:

[DaJMasta]

The little buddies are four weeks old today!  Still tiny:

 

Today I moved them out of their rearing vessel and into one of my 3d printed holding containers with a mesh bottom, full of copepods, but part of the breeder rack instead of in a separate system.  I don't know if the change in lighting/depth/configuration will confuse them or complicate things, but they'll be easier to check in on and it frees up the vessel for another run of something.  At some point I want to start trying prepared foods, probably still when in this container, but the increased tank volume and established filter should help maintain water quality when that happens.

As for method, around settling time (day 18 or so) started added Tisbe pods, and in the last few days I've stopped adding apocyclops and added Tisbe and Tigriopus pods once daily - two benthic species instead of the pelagic ones the larvae were raised on.  I'm no longer straining them for size, and that started around the same time.  Keeping salinity down in the rearing vessel has been important, but not too difficult, with the regular addition of salt water from copepods and phytoplankton, and they're still plenty small to move with a turkey baster.

In terms of development, in this video, and under the microscope, you can see the little swimming fins behind their gills flapping like an adult would, and you can even see a single ray of the dorsal fin on both (looks like a tiny stick)

 

 

Their faces look like little puffer fish!

[DaJMasta]

Another week and the two little ones are going strong.  They have a little wider heads, a little bigger bellies, and a little more developed look to them still (maybe slightly darker patterning?).  Probably the most noticeable difference is that they have mandarin eyes!  The red iris has shown up about half way through the week.  While these pictures don't make it easy to see, I'm definitely seeing a little of the normal color loss at night that gets darker during the day.  Between the color balance and lighting conditions, these don't show it well, but the picture of both of them was taken at night and the picture of just one was taken during the day.

 

And a video where one of the little guys does a slow rotation and shows off his fins.

 

[YHSublime]

Wow, absolutely amazing! Pioneering mandarin breeding at home is a heck of a job well done!

[flooddc]

WOW! that's so cool.

[DaJMasta]

Another week, another update!  While there is good and progress, this last week has been mostly sad for this project.  I lost one of the two babies a couple days ago.  It had been smaller for a bit and less active in the last few days before, and I couldn't tell you what went wrong or why, but it passed away.  What's worse, earlier in the week I lost their father.  He had been sick for 3-4 weeks with something that manifested as some lighter color/lack of color on his back (like he was sleeping, but during the day) which gradually got larger and made him overall somewhat lethargic (didn't stop the spawning, though).  I tried a H2O2 dip a couple of times, then stepped it up to a Ruby Rally Pro dip, and then finally tried a full on formalin dip over the course of those weeks, and after each time he didn't look better but acted somewhat more active.  In the formalin dip, he acted fine in the dip and after, but he died in the morning of the next day, basically looks unchanged.  Not sure what it was (I thought maybe brook, but that should have responded to all of the medications), and I don't really expect it was just old age, though I don't know how old he was, but it was a sad day and likely puts the next run of eggs at least 3-6 months out, longer if it takes as long for them to start spawning as this pair did.

In any case, there's also good.  The last remaining baby is active, growing, and is showing the slightest hints of the adult coloration on its forehead.  The fins are also starting to gain pigmentation (turning yellow instead of clear), and I think it's a week or two out from full adult coloration.  So 6 weeks (42 days) post hatch, my remaining baby looks like this:

 

[lynn.reef.nerd]

8 hours ago, DaJMasta said:

Another week, another update!  While there is good and progress, this last week has been mostly sad for this project.  I lost one of the two babies a couple days ago.  It had been smaller for a bit and less active in the last few days before, and I couldn't tell you what went wrong or why, but it passed away.  What's worse, earlier in the week I lost their father.  He had been sick for 3-4 weeks with something that manifested as some lighter color/lack of color on his back (like he was sleeping, but during the day) which gradually got larger and made him overall somewhat lethargic (didn't stop the spawning, though).  I tried a H2O2 dip a couple of times, then stepped it up to a Ruby Rally Pro dip, and then finally tried a full on formalin dip over the course of those weeks, and after each time he didn't look better but acted somewhat more active.  In the formalin dip, he acted fine in the dip and after, but he died in the morning of the next day, basically looks unchanged.  Not sure what it was (I thought maybe brook, but that should have responded to all of the medications), and I don't really expect it was just old age, though I don't know how old he was, but it was a sad day and likely puts the next run of eggs at least 3-6 months out, longer if it takes as long for them to start spawning as this pair did.

In any case, there's also good.  The last remaining baby is active, growing, and is showing the slightest hints of the adult coloration on its forehead.  The fins are also starting to gain pigmentation (turning yellow instead of clear), and I think it's a week or two out from full adult coloration.  So 6 weeks (42 days) post hatch, my remaining baby looks like this:

 

 

 I'm sorry 

[Origami]

Sorry for the loss, but really impressed with how far you've come and how much you've learned on this journey.

[DaJMasta]

Another week and the chubby little guy is still going strong.  Some slight darkening of coloration and slight growth/shape change, but he's still small and yellow (appearing more brown by eye), basically.  I got some video where you can see slight iridescence from the adult patterning under there, but the surface skin isn't to that color yet - maybe this coming week.

 

Probably the biggest change from the week before is that several times I've walked up to the tank and he's sort of backed off and swam away, more like the adults would.  I think either his vision is better or he's paying more attention to farther away surroundings now, so I get a little bit of a reaction when I check on him.  Otherwise, there seems to be a slight amount of vertical flow in the holding tank, as he will commonly be slightly drifting up, only to then swim down and go back to browsing for food (which is literally all around), but I don't see the drifting on the solid bottom surfaces of the container, so I don't think it's like a bubble or something.

Here he is today, with a medium amphipod lower right for scale:

[lowsingle]

Great thread and even better work….how great would it be to get this guy to adulthood 

 

Darren

 

[therootcause]

I just read the ups and downs of the entire thread.  Such heartbreak right now but still hope for the only baby left.   Thank you for being so persistent with your phytoplankton and copepod cultures.  I think it was @ScooterTDI who I got my parvocalanus cultures from.  I kept them alive for months, sometimes just barely hanging on after several crashes.  Eventually I lost them all.  

 

I'm glad to see you finally gave into trying artemia if they turned out not to be the correct food.  I know the nutrition can be questionable at best - but the advice that @AlanM gave you regarding the hobby breader is sound!  No air, no heat, and even works with old eggs -  I'm using one now with eggs that were open at least 18 months ago and kept at room temp.  When I was breading peppermint shrimp the artemia were the perfect food for them and I also used several types of artemia breading devices.  Without a doubt the black tray hobby breader was the best for me.  The artemia would hatch for at least four days, no cysts would be collected, and it was very clean. I could harvest as much as I wanted with the built in sieve or a pipette.  With my aerated and heated artemia breaders all of the eggs would hatch at once and the water would foul very quickly.  I used 5 gallon jugs that come equipped with a spout from Walmart ($12 in 2020) to gut load pods and artemia (ultimately with a self sustaining artemia culture to the point where I no longer needed to hatch from cysts).

 

A few things I would like to know about your setup now that the male has sadly passed away.  Is anything else currently spawning in the tank? What's the model of microscope that you were using earlier this year - and are now using?   Did you purchase the larva collector from BRS - I've been shopping for one.

 

Thanks,

Adam

[DaJMasta]

He's still going, and is now 8 weeks old.  A little bigger, than before, pretty active, full coloration on the tail fin, and still has the odd propensity to float slightly, then swims down to the surface.  It happens enough that it may not just be currents in the holding container, but he seems to have a full body and stays active, so I don't think it's negatively effecting his health.

 

A little easier to get the phone camera to focus on him now, and while I've gotten some video of him in the last two weeks which really shows the striping starting under the skin, the float and then dart down behavior and staying away from the glass a bit more than before make it harder to get something consistent.

 

 

Spawning in the tank has decreased, but the cleaner shrimp are fairly regular, and I see some porcelain crab larvae every now and then.  Have even caught some tubastrea larvae, I think, but that's asexual reproduction, so not quite the same.  The old microscope was an Amscope T690C, and the new one is a Zeiss Axioplan 2 imaging (which was a high end research microscope about 20 years ago, not cheap), I'm still getting it all dialed in, but I've got it kitted out the way I think I want it and have some practice using most of the features/modes.  The larva collector was from BRS (though manufactured by Vossen), but honestly I don't bother with it now.  It works fine for what it is, and the light on a suction cup is useful (though dim, you really need all external lights off for it to count), but with a sieve built out of a measuring cup, a turkey baster, a cup, and a flashlight - you can collect everything manually pretty well once you get a spawn.  Probably is slightly more efficient at capturing more, and you don't have to balance the input flow between suction and swirling action to keep the larvae safe.

Oh and the microscope used for top down video a bit zoomed out of the little guys is often an Aven Cyclops, not a conventional looking one but basically a camera on an arm, but a snappy video inspection scope to work under.  I can't say the camera or optics quality is amazing, but it's practical and does a pretty good job.

Edited October 5, 2022 by DaJMasta

[therootcause]

9 hours ago, DaJMasta said:

Amscope T690C, Zeiss Axioplan 2,  Aven Cyclops

 

Thanks for the info on the scopes.  I was borrowing an Amscope and using a phone mount but gave it back when I moved.  Wasn't a great image anyway.  I'll keep an eye out on marketplace for something.

 

I saw the Vossen trap on BRS a few weeks ago for $58.   Yesterday it was on sale for $50 and I had a coupon code + free shipping so I bought it.

 

Hopefully I can start up my own breeding threads again once conditions are right.  Thanks again for documenting the journey!

[DaJMasta]

Another week, another update, now with a bit of video and microscope (Aven Cyclops) footage!  I'm going to just copy-paste what I just wrote for the youtube video because it's basically the whole update since last time:

 

This little guy has passed two months old and he's still looking and acting more and more like an adult. He's got the first hint of blue/green on his anal fin and the adult patterning is clearly visible (under a microscope) in red slightly under his yellow skin, whereas there's just a little bit of metallic striping on his forehead under lower magnification.

 

He's up to almost 1cm long mouth to tail and is much more wary of the changing environment - 10 minutes under the microscope and he was just starting to be comfortable enough to start exploring, whereas it took 30 seconds or so the last time I had a close look. Lots of looking around and taking it all in, too.

 

In the tank, there's the usual scooting and then swimming back down because of the current, but I've seen him in the water column more frequently and on the sides (especially near the top) much more frequently.
 

 

Oh, and additionally: the little scoop used to corral him into the beaker is the same one I took the picture of both in about a month ago, and the video in the tank is now on a lens with half the focal length, the size difference is pronounced and perhaps even speeding up.

[YHSublime]

Awesome job! I suppose outside of their colors, mandarins are actually really funny looking, but the juvie here looks like an alien! 

[DaJMasta]

His head has gradually widened over the last few weeks, I think the back half hasn't fully caught up, but they are certainly goofy looking fish!

I think a lot of what makes him look more like an adult to me is just that the fins have coloration, but the ones behind the 'ears' that they flutter to swim still only have color at the base, and it may look more filled out behind the head when they are no longer clear.

Edited October 11, 2022 by DaJMasta

[DaJMasta]

Not much to report another week in, a little more activity around the holding tank and a little more color - some green appearing on the tips of the fins, mostly.  He's probably a tad bigger, but honestly it's hard to tell, and still hard to photograph with a cell phone.

 

 

The changes are happening, it's just slow... I wonder when the adult coloration will set in.  I had sort of expected that by 70 days it would already look blue.

[DaJMasta]

Decided I would clean the container (first time since he went into the tank), just cleaning the glass and replacing it with a new one, really.  So I caught him and got a better pic:

 

 

By eye, he doesn't look this green, but I think it is probably the right color up close.

[DaJMasta]

He's a bit more active this week, scooting around the tank with fewer breaks and seemingly more of a place to go (but he's still surrounded by food and doesn't care in the slightest bit about the piece of locline I put in as a cave.)  But is basically doing as before, with slight coloring changes.  Most notably, there's a clearly brighter line across his back behind his eyes that seems to be mostly a reflective layer under the skin, and there's a whiteish patch right above the base of the tail that seems to be actually a white color, so he's got two sort of distinct bright spots even from a distance.

[DaJMasta]

She (the dorsal fin has some pigment and doesn't seem to have a spike but I have no idea if that would be visible by now, so....?) is still growing, getting more colorful, and getting sassier.  Here's a video:

 

[howaboutme]

That little thing is pretty cute. Keep up the good work!

[AlanM]

wow, no one can accuse you of not having enough pods.