Fish Propagation/ Breeding

[stuckey_t]

I think I am going to attempt the project of rearing some marine fish. I've been reading a good amount of material on the basics behind it and think I might be up to the task. I probably don't know what I am getting myself into but that's the way it goes:agree:

Anyway, any help at all from anyone would be appreciated. First off, I need to find out who in the club have fish that are actually laying eggs from time to time. I know there are mature clownfish pairs in the club and I know some of these have laid eggs. If I can get my hands on eggs/larvae before my pairs start doing it I will be ahead of the game. So everyone keep your eyes open. Also keep an eye out for gobies, dottybacks, royal grammas, blennies or anything they think might be pairing up and doing anything weird:laugh:

Next, I could use some help with anyone who has experience with green water, rotifers, or brine shrimp raising. I am going to need some help with people in the cities who can help me with attempting to feed the fry. I will be bringing my own cultures into the party but backups and different strains would be a big help. Rotifers in particular would be a big help so if anyone wants to learn/ try this I'd appreciate it. These are good food for corals in the tank as well so keep that in mind.

Last, if anyone has any small supplies laying around that might go along with raising fish I'd be up for any help. I will be either/ buying or looking for a couple of smaller tanks (ten gallon or similar), cheap strip lights, foam bubble filters, heaters, and brine shrimp raising stuff.

So anyway, everyone keep a look out for breeding fish and eggs and let me know if anyone wants to try and help:agree: Hopefully the first batch of club fish I "successfully" raise I will donate to everyone's tank who wants a club baby:)

[patent]

I have a couple 10 gallon tanks you can have. I can't bring them tonight, as I'm not heading by home. No lids, just the tanks.

patent

[epidemic]

Since you are starting out it might be helpfull to know that SF has live phtyo, rotifers and brine shrimp on hand

[David Grigor]

Dwayne Sapp is the local guru on green water, rotifiers etc. He even had a small business selling them online and something fishy. Also the one to devise the culture reactor.

[hypertech]

I have a 10 gallon on a metal stand I got free from a member. It needs a cleaning, but you can have it if you want it.

Let me know, I can bring it to the meeting tonight.

[morty]

I've got a decent amount of experience with green water (using Guillard's enrichment media), rotifer cultures, and a ton of experience hatching BBS, from my time working at the U. I'd be happy to share what I know.

I've also been curious about rearing marine fish, and have several books on the subject. My interest was more towards pelagic spawners, which haven't really been successfully raised en masse in captivity due to special live feed requirements, so I've also looked into copepod culture for them. But I talked to Martin Moe and he steered me towards working with demersal spawners or mouth-brooders first. Haven't really tried anything yet.

I'll look for you at Jun Bo later tonight!

[Otolith]

I have a 10 gallon on a metal stand I got free from a member. It needs a cleaning, but you can have it if you want it.

Let me know, I can bring it to the meeting tonight.Did you get that from me? Any chance I could have it back to house some goldfish from my pond so they don't freeze over the winter? :gay1:

[morty]

I have a couple 10 gallon tanks you can have. I can't bring them tonight, as I'm not heading by home. No lids, just the tanks.

patent

I have lid/light for at least one 10g tank. I'll bring what I have tonight.

[hypertech]

Did you get that from me? Any chance I could have it back to house some goldfish from my pond so they don't freeze over the winter? :gay1:

Yes, and I haven't touched it since I got it from you.l Its just been sitting in the garage.

I'll bring and send it home with you or somebody else.

[Otolith]

Sounds good.

[stuckey_t]

Since you are starting out it might be helpfull to know that SF has live phtyo, rotifers and brine shrimp on hand

That would definitely be the place to go if the quality of their product is good. From what I've read, the fatty acid contents of the rotifers and brine shrimp make all the difference for your best chance at raising healthy fish.

[morty]

Here is an article that talks about choosing quality Artemia cysts.

http://www.advancedaquarist.com/issues/jan2004/invert.htm

[stuckey_t]

Here is an article that talks about choosing quality Artemia cysts.

http://www.advancedaquarist.com/issues/jan2004/invert.htm

thanks for the link! very informative article:bow:

[storrisch]

there are a lot of local people that culture live food over at minnfish.com as well. I am sure doing a search will get you some decent articles and most are willing to provide starter cultures as well.

for buying brine shrimp eggs I would go to www.brineshrimpdirect.com

[David Grigor]

Troy, I've got some brine shrimp egg that I bought from brineshrimpdirect that I can't possibly use up before expiration. Let me know if/when you need some. I also highly recommend that you decapsulize the eggs, hatch quicker and no need to seperate the shells. Make the day to day tasks a bit easier and less messy.

Here's ther article that I found to be the easiest to follow:

http://www.killies.com/Decapsulating.htm

[stuckey_t]

I have a couple 10 gallon tanks you can have. I can't bring them tonight, as I'm not heading by home. No lids, just the tanks.

patent


Thanks a bunch! I could use those for sure:) Shoot me a pm with your address and a good time to pick them up:)

[stuckey_t]

Troy, I've got some brine shrimp egg that I bought from brineshrimpdirect that I can't possibly use up before expiration. Let me know if/when you need some. I also highly recommend that you decapsulize the eggs, hatch quicker and no need to seperate the shells. Make the day to day tasks a bit easier and less messy.

Here's ther article that I found to be the easiest to follow:

http://www.killies.com/Decapsulating.htm

Thanks David so much for the frags from last night and your generosity:) The link you sent has a link to a simple brine reactor setup as well so I'm sure to use that and decapsulization. I'll contact you when I can use so eggs and if you have some extra that would be great! Much appreciated!

[mattb]

So are newly hatched brine shrimp nutritional? I know the adults are not. I'm interested in this aspect for my anthias...

[stuckey_t]

So are newly hatched brine shrimp nutritional? I know the adults are not. I'm interested in this aspect for my anthias...

They can be somewhat nutritional if they are fed an enrichment product like selcon. The San Fransico Bay brand frozen dead ones my anthias gobble down like popcorn. They love them and I believe they are enriched.

[David Grigor]

They say decapulized newly hatched are more nutritious than regular eggs with shells. The logic being that it takes less energy to hatch thus they have more yolk sac left.

Just how much difference that makes who knows but does sound logical. I decapulsize becuase it's less messy but is a nice bonus if it is true. I alway save a portion of them and put in the fridge to slow down metabolisn just in case the something goes wrong with the next batch then I still have something to feed. That trick I learned from Bill Capman.

Once the baby brine are about 24hours old and yolk sac is gone they don't have much nutritional value at all. This is when you feed them selco to gut load them for use or growth them out in green water.

[patent]

They can be somewhat nutritional if they are fed an enrichment product like selcon.

How do you feed them selcon? Just pour it in with them?

[storrisch]

I am assuming you will also want some sponge filters for the tank since it is just about the only filter that wont suck tiny fish off to their death.

http://www.kensfish.com/ati.html

Ken has probably the best pricing out there on the good ATI Hydro Sponge Filters. If you are using 10g tanks I would probably run H2's or H3's.

[David Grigor]

Selco and selcon are a little different. Selcon is a more concentrated version. Selco was designed for this application. Selcon is designed more for soaking frozen food in.

I don't have it handy but there is a dosage I believe is right on the bottle. You add too much and you pollute the water and they all die. I forget the exact amount of hours you wait for them to ingest it but it's around 7-12 hours.


Troy, I forgot I have a big bottle of selco as well that does have an expiration date as well that I will never be able to use up by then so your welcome to some of that too if/when the time comes. It's pretty expensive about $50 a bottle.

[epidemic]

storrich- dont the saddleback clowns at WoF lay eggs pretty often? Think they would give any up?

[storrisch]

they used to.....They laid a new batch every other weekend on Saturdays. When we rearranged the tank though they stopped breeding. I am sure they would give the eggs away but it would be tough to get them out of there w/o hurting them if they are even breeding again.

I had to quit working there when I started my new job so I haven't been up there much at all lately.

[Patrick]

What are you going to do for anti biotics? IF you read up on fish breeding they do dose the fry with some anti biotics especially with metamorphising fish like dottybacks.

[Chad Vossen]

i would recommend collecting the fish fry the night of their hatch, as i have never had luck transferring eggs.

phyto is simple to culture, but can be difficult at times. i used to grow phyto a lot to grow brine shrimp and rotifers to feed my tank. if i would do it again, i would just buy "instant algae" online instead of messing with the tubs of green water. for me, contamination was always an issue.

rotifers are easy to grow, assuming you have a constant supply of phyto. these guys will reproduce rapidly and consume a culture of phyto in no time. i once contaminated my main phyto culture with rotifers, the rotifers ate themselves to death (it appeared the phyto was all gone, and i filtered out rotifers to feed my tank daily), and a week later, the greenwater returned. if i did this again, i would use a commercial phyto vs. growing it myself.

brine shrimp are so easy to grow, i have been hatching brine for awile now. when i grew phyto, i would always have a population of adult brine shrimp in each phyto container (they couldnt eat enough to damage my culture, but they grew very fast and were gut loaded at all times). right now, i have a tub with a plastic coffee filter covering a drain so that i can just add water to do water changes (old water drains out leaving the brine in the tub). i am feeding phytoplex that i bought from petsmart (i feed a cap full after a water change 1x per week)

i have tried raising clownfish, but due to store hours, i could never collect the fry. so i would collect the eggs along with the rock. first try ended up killing all the eggs. second try worked and i had lots of clownfish fry, however due to a lack of phyto, and an even worse lack of rotifers (a mistake in the order from florida aqua farms ended up with me getting a bag of live rotifers and a culture disk of phyto. so i had no food for the rotifers!!!). all attempts failed because i didnt have a sufficient supply of food.

right now im breeding zebra danios. first thing i noticed was how small the fry are, about the same size of baby clownfish fry. took two days for the fry to become free swimming and are now eating. i would suggest breeding and raising a batch of danios to get some experience with egg layers.