Beginner Marine Fish, Breeding
 

I'm looking to try my hand at marine fish breeding, I have experiance with FW fish and bivalve culture.

What do you guys suggest?

I was thinking Banggii's or Neon Gobies? Or perhaps Lsymata shrimp?

I'm just setting up a small system, right now planning a 15G set up for the spiecies I will be breeding. And I'm going to be purchasing algae paste for culturing the rotifers. Also are there any secrets for rotifer cultur? I have been reading many differant artitcals on marine fish propagation, and was wondering if there are any "secrets" that anyone has discovered to make life easier?

Thanks for the help

Matthew

when you say FW breeding experience, do you mean mouthbrooding or nest building chiclids? or tetras?
Unfortunately thee is NO secret to breeding & raising marine fish
SW fish in general are equivalent to breeding tetras, in that most if not all require some form of microfood to start off, such as daphnia or infusoria in the FW, you'll need to grow rotifers, or brine shrimp nauplii in SW.
I would suggest you start w/. reading the top stickied threa din this forum, entitled "microfoods", then if you have time read the remaining article in the breeders net series, this way you'll see the progression from easy to less easy.

AS a beginner I would suggest you start w/ banggai cardinals since the fry are large when developed and eat "ENRICHED" live baby brine shrimp. This is a microfood easily cultured and enriched w/ phyto.
CLownfish are the next easist, and admittedly they are not easy, not difficult either, just but labor intensive
Neon gobies i would say only after you've raised clownfish, and have rotifer/phytoplankton experiences as well as basic culture/grow out techniques down.
Lymata shrimp at present are extremely difficult
Read away and good luck
frank

Cool, thanks for the help, I'm thinking I will try and get a pair of wild caught Bangaii's, and start with them. I do have some experance with phytoplankton culture, so I do not belive culturing the rotifers will be too hard.

Although I have never tried the algae paste's such as this:

[url]http://www.aquaticeco.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/product.detail/iid/5978/cid/1706[/url]

I have heard that they work well, but has anyone used them for rotifer culture?

Also for culturing rotifers is it better to use the "pop bottle" method, or do 5 gallon tanks work better?

Thanks Again

Matthew

I would recommend trying to get aquacultured baggais. They are typically much hardier

Yep, Aquacultured Bangaii's would be hardier, but I'm worried about inbreeding....

I don't know if it would be too much of a concern, anyone have an idea?

At the very least I could get them from differant sources, that could minimize probelms.

Matt,

I was just thinking about starting to give breeding marine fish a shot. Currently it seems everyone is breeding clowns which is a good thing of course. Bangaiis I imagine are very easy to spawn. I just started thining about spawning the neon blue gobies, Elacatinus oceanops. Shrimp in the genus Lysmata would be worth a try as well. The cleaner shrimp L. amboinensis seem to have eggs most of the time. I used to raise freshwater species when I was in my early teens as well as culturing live foods. Its really more time consuming than anything. Don't worry about inbreeding the bangaiis yet, the next generation I would cross out to keep up the genetic "code" strong. If you look at discus, angelfish and guppy breeders its disgusting on how many times they will crossbreed their fish. But thankfully some of them will cross wild fish back into the gene pool. But anyways goodluck and keep us all posted and when I decide on what I'm gonna do I'll do the same.

Well I have given it some thought and I counted all my empty tanks :) and figure I should be able to give both Bangaii's and Neon Gobies a try.

I'm planing my microalgae culturing setup, as well as a setup for brood stock and grow-out tanks. As soon as I get it setup I will post some pics :)

Matthew

seahorses are not difficult to get to breed, and species with pelagic (hitching) fry can often take enriched or newly hatched BBS. raising seahorse fry is labor intensive, but it has been done by less experienced hobbyists (including me) :). captive bred seahorses, while not a beginning marine aquarist animal, have a much greater survival rate than wild caught, and are usually trained to eat frozen mysis.