Yellow watchman gobies - at last

[oceanarus]

Amy has been more optimistic than I have with this latest batch of fry, I have been optimistic with other batches only to get my hopes dashed. Well she has finally convinced me. We have given them a first food that they will accept.

They are 3 days old now and I'd guess there are still over 90% of them alive (normally it would only be about 25% at this point). I gave them a healthy dose of S-strain rotifers upon hatching, probably added too much because they didn't make a dent in them after 12 hours, so I added some algea paste to ensure the rotifers remain nutritious. As John knows I am not a fan of co-cuturing, but I kinda forced myself into it with the amout of rotifers I initially put in there. So any way, I have been adding IA 2Xday and the rotifer population has held steady (if not slowly declining) and if they were not being consumed, the tank would be over run with them (been there before trying to raise this fish). To the naked eye they are still so small that you can't actually see them eat a rotifer, but you can see that they are hanging out in the rotifer cloud that is in the center of the tank and darting about back and forth through it. At this point they are normally lethargic, slowly falling to the bottom and then suddenly jerk upwards as if they are using their last bit of strength to stay alive. So today Amy is telling me that she thinks they look a little bigger and you can see that they still have a belly on them (normally would be gone by this point), I'm not so sure so I grab a pipette to remove one from the tank to examine it under the microscope. Well I had a devil of a time trying to catch one, they would dart away quickly whenever the tip of the pipette came near them (behavior I have not seen before from them).

Well attached is a picture of the 3 day old fry on the left, newly hatched on the right. I know the focus is not perfect, but you can clearly see that the 3 day old is longer/larger. And you can see dark spots in the GI tract as well as a full belly.

We have finally got it!

Well for now, who knows what metamorphosis is going to be like or what other difficulties lay down the road but we have finally have made that first step.

Thanks everybody for the support (moral or otherwise)
Alan

[oceanarus]

Every once in a while I get an idea to do something good/bad (like breeding blue eyed plecos (FW fish)) On my own I could never come up with the answers to all these fish problems. My big goal is to breed the blue eye (Panaque Suttoni which is now a severely threatened species), but to pay for this work I had to breed a money making fish, so that is how I got into breeding Ocellaris clowns. Well of course that snowballed. Anyway...

At this time I would also like to thank everyone who helped us. Especially Alan who did all the research for my bright idea. And to all the fish breeders on this forum you are sooooo cool for what you do.

Lots of love,
Amy

[oama]

Well, Congradulations!
Great Job, Both of You!

[Atticus]

CONGRADULATIONS!!!! Great feeling when all the hard work pays off!!! Hope you will keep this thread alive and show us your progression. Keep up the good work you two!!!

[JHardman]

Its not often that one can make a break thru, so this is a special time. Congrats to both of you!

So guys, what's the next step? L-strain at 5-10 days?

Get some AmQuel Plus and add it to the rearing tank to control nitrite from the rotifers/IA co-culture. With all the co-culturing I do, I think of that old AMEX slogan... "Never leave home without it".

[oceanarus]

Its not often that one can make a break thru, so this is a special time.

I wouldn't call it that, we're not the first, they have supposedly been done before, though they wouldn't tell us how.

So guys, what's the next step? L-strain at 5-10 days?

? uh, something like that I suppose? I'll keep a close eye on them to document the progress. I guess L-strain when they are at least as big a clownfish fry.

Get some AmQuel Plus and add it to the rearing tank to control nitrite from the rotifers/IA co-culture.

Already on top of that. One of the many things I have learned from you and others on this board. Thanks again!

[xxaquanutxx]

Sounds Great!! keep up the good work and keep us posted, pics would be nice too!

[SaltwaterNovice]

Oceanarus:

Nice work!

Did you guys ever breed the blue eyed pleco?

Best,

Brian

[rockstar]

Cool, congrats. Keep up the good work. In a few years, you can teach us all how to breed this fish !!! Please keep the pics coming as they progress.

[oceanarus]

Did you guys ever breed the blue eyed pleco?

Working on it. We have a pair that has been together for about 5 years now (divided in the same tank most of the time) but have been undivided for about 3 weeks now. Sexing of this fish is dificult and they usually need to be several years old before you can be sure. The female seems nice and ripe and the male seems to be 'in the mood' but the female has yet to give up the goods. Hopefully sometime soon.....

Please keep the pics coming as they progress.

I plan on posting a Day 5 picture tonight when I get home from work. Hopefully there will be some more noticeable growth.

[oceanarus]

Picture of one 5 days old. Getting bigger all the time. You can now see the pectoral fins. Oh and this picture as well as all others have been taken with the same magnification (of course).

[Dlckwood]

WOW, very cool.
DLCKWOOD

[ozadars]

Congradulations!!!!!!!!!!

very cool, i want to breed some fish too
they are very cool
these big eyes and big head just look like the one i had

[oceanarus]

They're 9 days old now. Their appetites are growing with them. They finally got to a point where they are consuming the rotifers faster than the rotifers can multiply. For the first 7 days I was adding IA 2X day to keep the rotifers fed but now they have cleared the tank and I have been adding the S-rotifers several times a day. Just yesterday I started adding some L-rotifers as well. The L-rotifers seem to be getting consumed as well, the YWG fry are about the size of newly hatched ocellaris fry now. Mortality rate remains fairly low (about 2 or 3 a day) so there are still a couple hundred in the tank. Believe it or not, the hatchout was somewhat poor, only getting about 25% hatch. The hatchout is very tricky, nothing like the clownfish, it took us a couple times to figure out the trick to it, but even still, it is hard to get it right. A couple of times we were able to hatch >90% (1000-1500 of them) though we had no food for them, sad to watch them wither away. Anyway....

Attached is a picture of a 7 day old fry, didn't turn out as well as some of the others, but you can see the skeletal structure as well as a FAT belly. I'm working on getting some new slides for my microscope so the pictures will come out a lot clearer.

[minfinger]

Sweet...I can't wait to see the final results...

Good Job Alan and Amy!!!

[skipm]

Congratulations! From the looks of those pics they must be tiny when they are newly hatched. Hopefully this won't be a one time thing and you can start supplying the area with tank raised YWG too. Good luck and keep us posted, Skip

[Dlckwood]

Hello, right now I have a male yellow watchman gobie (I think because of his colors) and I was wondering if it was possible to introduce a female into the tank. Is this possible? Do these fish change sexes like clowns do? Thanks
DLCKWOOD

[oceanarus]

Originally posted by Dlckwood
Do these fish change sexes like clowns do?

I know they are sexually dichromatic but I am not sure about the changing of sexes (sexual dimorphism? is that the right term?). I think they do though based on the numerous posts I have seen on RC that go something like....

"...and when I bought my YWG it was a nice bright yellow/green color but now it has turned into a darker drab grey color..."

Do a search for "yellow watchman goby color change" and I'm sure you will find a few threads.

As far as introducing a female to your male.....dunno... they are easy enough to sex (with them being different colors) but will they get along, pair up and mate...dunno.

Our pair was given to us by a good friend (I consider them on loan) to see if we could do something with them, and was getting close to thinking about throwing in the towel and giving them back, that was until recently of course

[oama]

The term sexual dimorphic refers to "two different morphs/types between sexes" (my really rough translation)

In other words, you can visually see something different between a male and a female. Like, cows have udders and bulls have clackers Or the vibrant colors of a peacock as compaired to the peahen.

[oceanarus]

So what is the correct term then?

FWIW, the person we got them from initially had 3 together in a tank until two of them paired off and killed the 3rd wheel. That is if I remember correctly.

Dlckwood - Amy says go ahead and get another one, a grey one if you can get it, but they are very infrequently seen for sale. So you should be able to pair yours up with another yellow/green one and the larger one should become the female. We're just guessing here, but believe it is like the clownfish, so you will want to get one that is smaller than the one you have if you have had it for some time. Anyway keep an eye on them and let everyone know how it goes. Raising them we have managed to do but the pairing up and getting a pair to spawning could be new territory you could chart for us.

Our pair may have already been a spawning pair before we got them, they lived in a reef tank prior to us getting them and they don't spawn out in the open like clownfish, so who knows. We suspect they were since they had their first spawn for us only 12 days after getting them. (they're not clownfish but I think that beats John's record)

[bertoni]

Are you sure that this coloration difference is always present? I have two YWG, and both are pretty much yellow. The larger one has a bit more green. I've seen egg masses and I thought I'd seen hatches?

[oama]

Sexual Dichromatic, loosly translated "different colors between sexes" is a Sexual Dimorphic trait.
Are you thinking are the term Hermaphrodite? Sex changing?

[oceanarus]

Originally posted by bertoni
Are you sure that this coloration difference is always present? I have two YWG, and both are pretty much yellow. The larger one has a bit more green. I've seen egg masses and I thought I'd seen hatches?

Does your pair look like this

The female is in the forground and the male is in the cave tending the nest of eggs.

Another important thing to note, the previous owners had this pair for 5-6 years before we got them, so the change in color may be something that becomes more and more pronounced with age. All the small ones we have seen (WC or CB) are the lime green color, which leads us to believe in the color change/sex change theory, but like I said were just guessing at that. So it is possible a young female could be still mostly lime green but still a bit darker than the male.

[Dlckwood]

That was just the pep talk I needed, I think I will try it.
DLCKWOOD

[bertoni]

No, I've seen your picture, thanks. My (possibly) female YWG is a bit darker, but otherwise looks much more like my (possibly) male YWG than the one in your picture. I don't have a digital photo capability at the moment, sigh.