Clarkii Larval Rearing (no rotifers?)

[mtraylor]

Oh no sorry to hear that. 24 is great though, especially since they are eating regular foods now. Lets see some pics..

[jnowell]

Oh Gee, well, maybe a pic or two. I'm not a proud daddy at all!

I had just added BBS and dry food when this pic was taken. My food density isn't always that high....but I do have fat little babies...hmmm.





I'm thinking these will hatch tonight....

[Kathy55g]

Wow!

[mako56]

Very cool, congratulations someday I will get it. I ordered one of those collectors from Florida aqua farms and some Lab cultured L Strain Rotifer Cysts I hope these work but I am afraid that they won't be ready for my next hatch.

[jnowell]

Mike,

Read the stuff Randy Reed posted about Rotifers earlier in this thread if you haven't already. I would ditch the batch culture idea and go with a 10 gallon continuous culture. I ordered the filter pad from Reed Mariculture and it is very nice to have also. Rotifer cultures produce a TON of waste, and the water fouls pretty quickly. I rinse my filter pad daily, and vacuum the bottom every other day, removing about 30% of the water, then I top it off with water from my display tank.

It's working, but you do have to harvest daily, clean daily, and watch closely. I bet you could get a quart of rots to a respectable density inside of a week if you feed it right. Plus the fry don't really eat that much for the first 3 days, so you might be able to make it. I did it with 2 quarts, but mine got here 2 days before my hatch. I also killed a batch culture right off the bat.

Now that I understand the harvesting thing, my corals are getting fatter, and I know that I could have easily cultured enough of them without my beginner mistakes.

Good luck with your soon to hatch babies!

Jason

[jnowell]

Well, I called the hatch night correctly this time, and knew the difference between shrimp and clown larvae.

I collected I'm guessing about 100, and I'm happy as can be. They are much more evenly sized this time (only a few little thin ones) and all have great yolk sacs. I have a much better feeling this time.......how long until the over-confidence bug bites

The older ones are still doing great too - no losses throughout the day. The one I found this morning was a chronic over-eater, he had a little blood pocket beside his stomach lining. I suppose he could have gotten ahold of an over-active artemia, who knows.

BTW - For reference, it was 2 weeks exactly between hatches, probably down to the minute, seems like it was around 20 minutes after the actinic lighting shut down. Maybe 10 minutes hatch time, I looked at it, no babies, looked at it again 10 minutes later, and they were everywhere. I think I got there shortly after, because they were still congregated in two columns below 2 of my moon lights, (the two right above the eggs). By the time I scooped most of them out, the stragglers were scattered all over the aquarium.

It's funny, either I also had a shrimp brood hatch tonight, or a bunch of them congregated under one light at the same time. The water was calm after I shut all the pumps down, and I was wrapping up catching the last few clown fry. Then hundreds of them just appeared. These were much smaller than the clown fry, they hung in the water column head down, and swam backwards. Kinda shaped like miniature shrimp too.

Enough excitement for one day, I'm going to bed.

Jason

[Worldwithin]

Your clowns need to catch up with mine, either that or mine are just nymphos... You have it down to two weeks between hatches, while mine have it down every 10-12 days. (sure, not too much different, but still rather busy).

I have decided to carry along a single batch for now rather than run multiple batches at one time. Not enough tanks, or space in the garage to house everyone. Maybe once I transfer this current batch out of the larvae tank, I might pull another batch of hatchlings.

Baby steps for me I guess..

[Kathy55g]

Good news for me, my friend's clowns spawned a mere 10 days since the last spawn! I have 6 days to get ready for them. He's feeding the parents better, not that it was deficient before, but the new feeding regimen has up-ed their production from 18 days to ten!

I'm very excited!!!!

Kathy

[jnowell]

That's great to hear Kathy! I wish you better luck with this set...double check your math

I have some more good news too, all the little ones are fine this afternoon (all of them, not a single loss yet). Had another death from the older tank last night...one of the big ones again

I also was in the pet store today, and after reading SPK's thread on Bangaii's, I noticed that one of the Pajama Cardinals was holding eggs (he was spitting them half way out to aerate them I guess). Anyways, probably about 30 little white eggs. There was a Percula hanging around him trying to sneak a bite during the process.

I informed the guy from the shop about it, and he said "Man, I wish I could raise them, but I don't have any room". Well, being the kind soul that I am , I offered to take all the pajamas off his hands (strictly so that no babies would die of course). There are 5 of them in their display tank, and he agreed to sell me the whole lot plus a long spine urchin for cheap if I would give him the first clutch for free, and then give him first shot at additional batchs.

The tank is scheduled for a mass cleaning next Friday, so I have to go help (and catch them).

Jason

[Worldwithin]

Don't you have your hands full now.. Just be careful and not get yourself overwhealmed by kids.. They can run you ragged... Make sure you get them to do their chores and get them all potty trained and what not before you release them out into the world!!!



Anyhow, I though I too would update how my kids are doing. Day 12 already and I am unable to count how many are in there.. They all just zip all over the place and never sit still long enough to let me count them!

Here is a quick video that I took of them hunting for food. I would suggest a high spped connection...
http://media.putfile.com/Clark-Larvae
These little buggers are hard to focus on....

[jnowell]

I thought about that, but there in front of me was a breeding pair of Cardinals...how was I too refuse. OK, so maybe I talked him into selling them to me, but still!

The hardest part for me will be not getting fired from my job while running home for lunch everyday to feed and clean. I'm sure I'll get it worked into a system, but a few of my lunch breaks went over the hour mark...oops.

Jason

[Worldwithin]

I will have to admit that is one of the beauties of working from home... In between calls, I can play with the kids...

[Kathy55g]

can't get your video to load.

[jnowell]

Me either...I have the latest version of Quicktime.

[Worldwithin]

After a bit of research regarding the video file I posted, I have come to the belief that the camera used to make the video requires a non-standard codec file in order for it to be viewed. So unless I send everyone in the world who wants to view my video the editing software for my video camera, I am SOL when it comes to sharing this video until I get a capture card.

Ugggggg... Dang Sony.

Anyhow, I do apologize for the inconvenience. I will hope to get some stills up soon.

[jnowell]

Well Happy New Year to ME! (with sarcasm)

I awoke this morning to find that about 90% of my new hatch has died...and I think I know why

I had co-cultered Rotifers with the first batch, and had pretty good success, so I thought I'd try it again with the new ones. About day 10 of the old hatch, I was low on greenwater, and tried adding a small amount of Roto-Rich to the fry tank with no ill effects.

Well, this was day 2 with the new hatch, and I was tired, it was late, etc. so not wanting to mess with changing out a greenwater culture, I tried it on the new tank. I put a little more than I was planning too, but didn't think much of it, because it had worked the first time, although it was with older babies.

I have about 15 left I finally get to the point where I have enough greenwater, and then screw up by being lazy...! How did Kathy put it, oh yeah.....live and learn.

[Kathy55g]

so sorry to hear that....

Live phyto's magic is it's ability to keep the water at a reasonable pH, it's ability to absorb ammonia and CO2, in addition to keeping the rots nutritious and swimming. It keeps the water quality good, like nothing else can.

Dead phyto will enrich the rots, but degrade water quality rather than help it. I suspect you had a water quality problem.

[Kathy55g]

didn't mean to sound preachy. You most likely know all that stuff. I was just explaining for those that don't.

I am really sorry for your loss.

[jnowell]

Preachy? Not at all. I was one of those who didn't know the actual benefits of live phyto on water quality..no worries from me...and i can be preachy with the best of them

I checked all the water params, and nothing was out of the ordinary...this water was just removed from my display tank 2 days ago.

Temp - 78 f
Ammonia - .25 ppt
Nitrite - .25 ppt
Nitrate - 40 ppt
pH - 7.6

The Roto-Rich is more than just dead phyto, it smells more like a vitamin than algae. I got the powdered stuff, and blended it per instructions. The rots love it, but maybe there is something in there that 10 day old fry can handle, but 2 day olds cannot. The 15 or so that made it look completely normal too, they are swimming around normally, hunting rots, and acting just as I would expect them to.

I'll go look for an ingredient list from the roto-rich, if nothing else, I bet we learn something from this.

Jason

[jnowell]

Well, naturally FAF is not going to give the recipe away, but here is how they describe it on the instructions.

"ROTI-RICH is a potent commercial food formula containing quality food grade ingredients including a special inactivated yeast base, microalgae, our special formula vitamin mix and specific trace nutrients that we have found to enhance invertabrate growth and reproduction."

It's great stuff for rotifers...and I should note that I love it, and that they never tell me in their instructions to add it to a fry tank (just in case anyone thinks I'm not happy with the product or Florida Aqua Farms, I like and recommend them both).

But I'm guessing yeast, vitamins, and trace nutrients floating around with 2 day old fry is not such a good thing. Thoughts?

Jason

[NicoleC]

Yeast is excellent at growing bacteria and ciliates. Perhaps the Roti-Rich encouraged some sort of contamination? I don't think the ingredients of the Roti-Rich itself was the culprit, at least not directly.

[Worldwithin]

That does seem somewhat odd to me as well.. Don't forget, in a pinch you don't HAVE to co-culture. Since I do not have any greenwater and instead use IA, I do not co-culture, and have very litttle issues because of it. If it comes down to laziness or time constraints, just feed them their rots and come back for the co-culture when you can. No harm done.

[jnowell]

Maybe I'm taking the rot nutrition thing too seriously. My philosophy (wild guess) was that when co-culturing, the rots would always be of the highest nutritional value because they were continually eating. Also, when I stock the fry tank to the recommended density, the rots are in there for several days before being eaten. If I'm not co-culturing, wouldn't those rots be of much less nutritional value?

One other variable between this hatch, and my last one which was successful was this. Last time, I filled the rearing tank with water from the display about 30 minutes before the fry hatched and were transferred. This time, I filled the new rearing tank about 6 hours before the hatch and ran air and heat until the hatch. The reaing tank was about 2.5 degrees warmer than the display tank. I would think that would cause problems immediately if it was going to. But the fry were all healthy throughout day 1, then well over 75% of them died the night between day 1 and 2.

Thanks for the help, here I was thinking I was ready for batch two....Nature-1, Jason-0

[Worldwithin]

Don't forget that some batches are just hit and miss too. One batch here and there may just be a bad batch overall. If it is frequent, then start to eliminate the variables. I am sure that the next batch you attempt will have some of those variables that you mentioned removed and you will see if anything changes...

[jnowell]

Well, it IS only their second time to lay, I guess I could cut them some slack.

We'll see what happens next time, they should lay tomorrow morning-ish. I never see eggs when I leave for work monday, but they are always there when I get home for lunch. Since I'm off tomorrow, I think i'll set my video camera up on the tripod and try to tape the spawning, that would be kinda cool to post.

I hope my anenome's relocation doesn't effect the spawning location. He decided he wanted to be at the top of the tank last week. They cleaned there regular rock all day today, so I think they will stick to the plan. With my luck of late, I'll zoom the video onto that rock, and they'll lay just outside the camera view

The original hatch is still fairing well, allthough I loose one now and then. The casualties seem to be the ones that start changing shape, but haven't gotten their stripes yet. 7 of them have full stripes, and swim slowly now, so I'm thinking at least those will make it. There are still about 10-12 more who haven't gone through metamorphasis yet (and one straggler who looks like he was just hatched yesterday...only a bit bigger).

Jason