Flame Angelfish Breeding attempt

[fla2341]

billsreef: This is true. Sigh, I guess I have to plan a fishing trip. Oh darn!

[billsreef]

Sorry to hear you'll have to go fishing. Absolutely horrible way to spend a day

[fla2341]

For those photo junkies here's the eggs collected from tonight. I counted 800+ as there were still some along the edges I didn't photograph. This is the largest spawn to date. The past three nights have yeilded 600-700+ eggs each night. I'm getting 100 or so eggs not fertilized/defunked each spawn, all others hatched into pro larvae.

Not had a chance to go fishing yet.

[fla2341]

I need some opinions:

These photos show a 5DPH larval fish in 2 exposures. I see a brownish/white lump inside the middle of the stomach. The only live food I've added to the jar was Tisbe and Nitokra lacustris napulii.

Thoughts?

[jungle pete]

Hey Fla2341,
I'm over in Melbourne FL working on a similar project. I got to a similar point (5 day old) last summer before getting distracted by other things in life. When I start getting eggs again (right now temps are lowered and no eggs) I will start plankton towing. I have a small raft and a 6' 50 micron net. Its not pretty but it might work on calm days. On rough days when I can't get past the breakers I plan to go down to sebastian inlet (45 minutes south). I was collecting there last year and had some success... there were copepod nauplii in the mix and something was filling their larval bellies. Anyway, just letting you know I'm out here if you want to collaborate. Also to your west you have Wittenrich making some progress with angels.

http://http://risingtideconservation...1_archive.html.

Congrats on a good start fla324.

Peter

[jungle pete]

That didn't work for the link above.
I'll try again

http://risingtideconservation.blogsp...1_archive.html

or

http://risingtideconservation.blogsp...1_archive.html

[fla2341]

jungle pete: pm's sent

[fla2341]

The photo at the bottom is a copepod nauplii which I believe they are eating as these are the only ones present. This was taken at 230 x's magnification.

[fla2341]

The following photos show the developmental order of the eggs up to this time for those who choose to spawn these fish.

I finished collecting the eggs at 1am this morning. The spawn occured between the 12:30am and 12:45am period when I checked last.
The water temp is at 81 degrees F and has been thru the time period of the photos. The pH was initially 8.2 when the spawn occured. It has since dropped to 7.9 in the incubation container.

The first photo shows the early cell development. Temp 81, pH 8.2

The 2nd photo shows further cell development and the early central mass and spinal development. Temp 81, pH 8.1

The 3rd photo shows spinal development in more detail. Temp 81, pH 8.0

The final photo shows the complete hatching of most and the slow/delayed hatching and development of a few eggs. Temp 81, pH 7.9.

Egg spawning quanities have increased to the point where spawns are in the 600-800 quanity on average and some over 1000 eggs ( one 1400+).

Seine materials have been ordered for hopefully a beach/fishing trip next week.

[BrianMac]

Those pictures are really cool.

[fla2341]

BrianMac: Thank you. I'm trying to provide a stage by stage report on their development.

I Forgot:

The 1st photo was taken at 2am
The 2nd at 10am
The 3rd at 2pm
and the 4th at 3:45pm
This time information is on the photo tags but I forgot to add them to the details.

This shows you how quickly things/development can change with them.

[Luis A M]

Christian,you´re getting an amazing number of prolarvae!
Which seems to be a pre-requisite for rearing larvae;start with thousands to have some hundreds (or dozens) settled
We have two different steps in rearing pelagic spawners;a-obtaining good numbers of healthy larvae and b- raising them.Each stage presents it´s own set of problems.
See that for some time I didn´t have any egg developing,and I thought they were infertile.Later I could trace the problem to my egg collecting method,straining all the outflow into a small sieve.When I changed to larger seines with gentle treatment,my eggs developed.
Perhaps I should try your method,and shut all water circulation and collect eggs from the surface.

[racerw]

Just found this thread, Good luck. I have been off and on attempting as time permits. Would love to chat about your progress. I have only been able to get to day 14 on my C. Jocs and C. Interuptus. Just started pankton netting to find the tiny plankton.
Eddie

[Ohio]

Silently following! I am hoping you make some big strides in raising these tough little buggers. WOW 7 days is quite a long time for nothing to eat, I know they survive on the yolk sac for a while but still that is a long time for such a small creature. They obviously are trying just as hard as you are for their survival.

I have a good feeling about this and will be following, but I probably will not have much to say -this is over my skill level. My clownfish recently started spawning and my son wants to raise them. I am afraid of messing that up, which is cake to what you are attempting!

Best of Luck and Perseverance,
Jenn

[fla2341]

I didn't make it all the way to the beach/ Ponce inlet as I had originally planned. However I did stop by the inner coastal at a boat ramp. Attached is what I've found so far in the water:

Unknown cephalopod http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MED_ts3KsQ
Inner coastal plankton http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bu69x7V0TIA

I hope to have more info on what's in the water later as I continue ( after lunch) I got thousands of Acartia, Parvocalanus and Tisbe which I've been able to spot if not photo as well as some as yet to be identified "stuff".

[fla2341]

Ohio: Thanks for stopping by. It's a LOT of work and frustration to see these fish die each time. I'm committed to attempt to get just 1 to settle. As long as the pair keep spawning this season I'll keep trying.

racerw: What did you do to get to 14 days? any photos you can share? Let's keep the info flowing not only for ourselves but also for those silent watchers out there.

Luis A M: I'm having spawns of 600-800 eggs nightly ( a couple 1000+ and 1400+). From that I cull 50-100 eggs the rest develop to prolarvae. Then 50% to 3 DPH larval fish to 20-30% of that to 5 DPH larval fish then few to 7 DPH. IF I can close the first food link starting at 3 DPH I think that more will make it thru to 5 and 7 DPH. I want to break the 10-14 DPH time frame after that.

The first photo was of a 2mm+ copepod with orange eggs
The 2nd was a fast moving orange ball bouncing all over the place. Looks like some kind of jelly once I slowed it down.

I'm trying to photo what looks to be a crab larvae but it's still hyper active.
Amphapods, a 1" comb jelly and some kind of red cyclops which was 5-6 mm long were also found in this sampling.

[fla2341]

I attached the photos but it looks like they didn't make it. Here's the photos again.

[paka]

fla2341 - Nice photos! Have you tried setting a cover slip on your larva to let the gut content ooze out? This way you can see how well whatever they are eating is being digested. You may also see undigested body parts which may mean they are eating unsuitable items. (I usually use 400x to see gut content).

Eddie - Nice to see that you are working on your interrupta and jocs! Are you using cultured plankton as well as wild plankton?

I don't get much time to spend on the forums but I hope to follow this thread and I'm happy to share info.

Karen

[fla2341]

paka/Karen: Thanks for joining in. My microscope dosen't go beyond 230x's mag(cheap e-bay buy) so doing this type of analysis will have to wait. I'm interested in all contributions and information from those who have or are attempting to raise this species and any pelagic spawners. Some ideas and breakthroughs for one might lead to breakthroughs for the rest.

Some information has been presented in the past that cultured copepods become toxic to larval fish after a few days. I can't recall where I've read this from at the moment but the few rearing successes I can remember mostly note wild caught plankton was the key. Any Centropyge successes using cultured organisms I want to hear about.

This then puts forth the questions:

Is(are) cultured zooplankton/copepods toxicity still a valid concern?

What causes the copepods which are cultured to become not suitable/toxic for these larval fishes?

What changes can we do as hobbyists in the culturing of copepods to change this?

Is this toxicity what has caused so many to fail in the attempts of rearing these fishes?

Frank's work on the Centropyge debelius noted using wild caught. During this rearing they were able to identify Clausocalanus sp. and Oithona sp. copepods as the one's injested.

I redesigned the 10 gallon tank for the larval rearing. The photo shows the removable divider with 120 micron mesh, a 4" sand bed area, some cheato and the pump area which has some rubble rock in it. Most of the flow is performed by a Aquaclear 10 powerhead pumped into the overhead pvc and dripped thru the 1/4" elbows and tubing. The full flow was far too much for the larvae using all of it in the larval area. I diverted most of the flow from 5 outlets back into the sand/sump area and now only use 1 outlet with a control valve to adjust the flow up/down as/when needed.

The flow rate from the 1 outlet is approx 1 gal/hr when prolarvae are present. I adjust this up little by little as they progress. I'm hoping this setup will allow for a better control of the rapidly deteriorating water quality perameters I've been experiencing while using the 1 gallon jars.

The other photo is I believe of the crab larvae.

Progress: None past where I've already been. I lost 4 days worth of prolarvae and larvae due to I don't know what. The only change I can figured right now was we had 4-5 days worth of rain and wind from tropical storm Debbie. Just how this could effect the prolarvae/larvae from outside the house I don't know. None of the other parameters and proceedures were changed.

I added some wild plankton to a batch of 5/6 DPH larvae but none survived. I surmise it was too late to help or they didn't find what they were looking for.

[fla2341]

Pictures again

[billsreef]

Definitely some sort of crustacean larvae. Worth sieving those out. While they look really cool, they can eat fish larvae

If you remember where you came across the idea of the cultured copepods becoming toxic, I'd be curious to see that info.

[fla2341]

billsreef:
On the toxic copepods:
Here's an excerpt from an e-mail conversation Jungle Pete sent me between himself and Martin Moe.

Martin Moe wrote:
"My friend Syd Kraul in Hawaii was working with similar fish at the time and found that he could rear them on cultured copepods but he could only harvest them for about 3 days before the copepods became toxic to the fish larvae. He had to sterilize the copepod culture tanks and start them up again and then use the cultures for only a limited time."

In addition:
A paper from OI(Oceanic Institute) on Flame Angel (Centropyge loriculus) rearing it is stated that they used cultured Parvocalanus copepod nauplii as the first foods with limited success to a point, 14-20 DPH, at which they experienced a high mortality/die off rate. They started adding the copepod nauplii at 2 DPH and maintained the nauplii at 5-10/ml. They were dealing with 18-20 pairs and tens of thousands of eggs during each effort ( high of 45,000 eggs I believe at one point). The end result was they got "Dozens" to survive thru to settlement.

I don't know how many "dozens" they got but even assuming 96 ( the highest "dozen" you can go to not over 100) and starting with 30,000 eggs, almost 70% of which progressed thru prolarvae to 3DPH larval stage (21,000), then "thousands" thru to 14DPH where they experienced the die off. Now while these numbers are imprecise they do fall within the stated numbers from OI. Using these numbers shows you the expected success ratio of approx .32% (.0032) : 96/30,000 under this example.

Now using a modest amount of eggs/spawn which the standard hobbyist(me, you and most everyone reading this) can expect of 600 eggs, you then follow thru to the .32% success ratio and you get 1.92/spawning thru to settlement under the same conditions and methods used by OI.

This is what lead me to ask the questions on possible cultured copepod toxicity.

I will be happy with getting 1-2 thru settlement to start.

On the "Crabby" front:
When I got home from the plankton gathering I seived out everything into four class sizes 300(tossed), 120, 53 microns and then what ever passed thru the 53 micron minus silt/dirt. So crabby got "tossed" but I first wanted a photo cause it was neat.

[Luis A M]

Beware of "crabby",looks like a mantis shrimp larva.Scary!
My thoughts about toxic plankton later...

[Luis A M]

Chris,the species of copepods we culture can not be toxic per se.And they couldn´t acquire exogenous toxins unless we fed them with ciguatera dinoflagellates
But they could be unsuitable for raising our larvae,either because they are the wrong species or because the way we culture them doesn´t bring the same nutritional properties they get in nature.
I expect (and hope) this is not the case and we could culture the required organisms and not depend on wild plankton.
It is true that initial success rearing angels involved wild plankton (and also NSW)
But you must read the last article by Frank in Coral.He now cultures plankton,and only with a cultured ciliate could he raise a triggerfish that failed to thrive on copepods.
But in those runs fed with copepods,he added some Centropyge as a control;and they were raised uneventfully!

[billsreef]

Interesting stuff, though I'm inclined to agree with Louis about the problem actually is.

Originally Posted by fla2341

but I first wanted a photo cause it was neat.

Indeed they are neat Actually one of my favorite things to find in a plankton tow, though I'm always happy I get to pass of ID'ing them to the crabby people