When I called Tim Weidauer (WMAS president and newsletter editor) to ask if he could put a birth announcement in the Sea Star newsletter, he said "What? Don't you have 6 kids already?". "Yes," I replied, "but now I have new little fishies too." My Arabian dottybacks (pseudochromis aldabrensis) had spawned and the male was supposed to be tending a ball of eggs just waiting to hatch. I hadn't known about it for maybe a day or two. He had been hiding and tending the eggs in a cave. During a feeding frenzy the eggs were swished out of their cave and into the open reef aquarium. The female immediately went for the ball of eggs (3/8" round and 3/4" long) and started biting at them. I didn't know if she was trying to "do lunch" with her kids or trying to regain control of them. Parents with unruly kids, take a lesson from this strict mother. I used a turkey baster and cup to remove them from the reef tank where they'd have never made it past the fish food stage.
A mated pair of Arabian (neon) dottybacks playing hide 'n seek in flower pots at Desert Fisheries.
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I've been keeping this beautiful parental pair in my 150 gallon community HANDY Reef tank with my other fish. They consider this tank home now and have spawned twice in the last 10 days (a close guess). They are quite the striking couple, neon blue, purple and yellow/orange! Most people who see them ask if they're eels. They're not really that long but they do slither and snake about in an interesting and graceful way. They're very fast movers! They can dart right through a jumbled stack of rocks at lightning speed and out the other end in nothing flat. They're quite the tag players and seem to thoroughly enjoy the creative rock work in the aquarium. They're bristle worm eaters and do stalk tiny crustaceans too. I haven't noticed any problem with them eating small feather dusters yet, but they won't touch the quickly multiplying yellow terrebellid worms with eight spindly detritus collecting tentacles.
Some dottybacks can have aggressive behavior. The worst I've seen is the dazzling magenta strawberry dottyback (pseudochromis porphyreus), which will kill royal grammas, firefish gobies and some other small fish, such as another strawberry dottyback, if you put it in the same tank. The amazing thing is that once strawberry dottybacks (and other aggressive marine fish) are 2nd generation tank raised or further, they loose some of their excessive aggression. At this point you can even keep two strawberry dottybacks in the same tank without the problems, according to John Walch. Tank raised fish have other benefits too!
I'm not a fish propagation expert and in fact have never raised fish (fresh or saltwater) from larvae in my life. I've been very interested in tank raised marine fish since Oct 1995 when I went to Desert Fisheries in Grantsville, Utah and saw how the fish colors can now be as good as or better than most wild caught ones!
The newly hatched larvae are started out on enriched rotifers as their fist food. Rotifers are enriched or made good and nutritious by feeding them good and nutritious green water planktonic algae which are in turn made good and nutritious by feeding good and nutritious (possibly delicious) special fortified fertilizer with vitamins and minerals. As the newly hatched dottyback larvae grow they can be fed larger foods like newly hatched brine shrimp then larger fortified brine shrimp and eventually frozen, canned or dry food mixes. VibraGro fish food has made a dramatic difference in tank raised fish health and coloration.
Before hatching, the larvae can be seen developing and wiggling inside the transparent egg shells. When the eyes develop a metallic sheen and the pupils show up, the eggs are about to hatch. Hatching should take these guys about 5 days. I am hatching them out in a tall half gallon drink cup anchored in a separate larval rearing tank, or tub. A group hatches out each day until hatching is complete. Mine are still hatching and I am helping break apart the egg ball with a bulb syringe as they do. They seem to hatch mostly after the lights go out at night.
They start out about 3 mm long, are transparent and have metallic looking eyes and four dots down their backs. They look kind of like transparent little tad poles with shinny eyes. According to Linda Nelson at Dessert Fisheries and John Walch at The Aquatic WildLife Company, the dottyback larval fish will go through metamorphosis after about 30 days and gain their color and fancy fins. Metamorphosis is a strain on fish. They expend a lot of energy and need good nutrition to make it through this change. A good diet is mandatory. Feeding live brine shrimp fortified with Selco (what Selcon is made of) is reported to help. Selco is loaded with vitamins and HUFA or High Unsaturated Fatty Acids which you may have heard of as omega-3 oils which new hatched brine shrimp are also loaded with. I can't guarantee that this batch of dottybacks will work out, but if they do I'll be elated to say the least! If they don't, I'll find out what to do differently next time and try again.
I am raising this batch a bit nonconventionally in a tank with live sand and plenum as opposed to the tried and proven bare tank method. I'm hoping to get a better variety of natural plankton this way plus gain the benefits of natural sand filtration. One potential problem noted already is the presence of aptaisia which not only eat the rotifers but enjoy snagging a dottyback occasionally too. I clean these out as I see them on the sand. I was going to put live rock in too but am now concerned about the live rock being more difficult to keep clean of aptaisia. I'll work on this problem later. Although it is ideal to raise dottybacks out in as large a tank as possible, I've started them in a 20 gallon purple Rubbermaid tub from Wal-Mart. The dark color is supposed to help the larvae see the rotifers better and therefore increase the survival rate. Maybe I should have used a bigger one. I had considered using a HANDY reef to raise the new fish in but you can't use a Skilter without killing the larvae eventually. Air bubbling is the order of the day to move and oxygenate the water, so it's pretty much a Jaubert style set up. No skimming, just the Jaubert live sand filter, heater, light and air bubbles at this point.
Linda Nelson, co-owner with George Sanders of Bonneville Seabase and Desert Fisheries in Grantsville, Utah, has given me some coaching. John Walch, fish and coral propagation expert who set up C-Quest marine fish hatchery in Puerto Rico with Bill Addison, has also been very helpful. I have also been reeding Martin Moe's handbooks and Frank Hoff's brand new book "Conditioning, Spawning and Rearing of Fish with emphasis on Clownfish". If you are considering such a venture you may also want to join the Breeders Registry for more information on breeding fish and coral. If you already know what you're doing and want to start a fish farm of your own, talk to Linda Nelson, she would like to have an entrepreneur (who has more time than she does) lease Desert Fisheries and make it really take off. To do this you'll have to be a good fish farmer and be able to devote full time and effort, plus hire a good salesperson to move the fish that you raise!
Wish me luck, or better yet, hope that I learn a lot real fast. I'll let you know how they turn out. If all goes well maybe beautiful Arabian dottybacks will adorn reefs from Salt Lake to Weber county much like flowing bush-like neon green sinularia coral from my tanks does now. I Think that the "fishy" side of reef tank propagation might be fun! Next I will work on raising percula and ocellaris clownfish. I would also like to try bicolor blennies, they have loads of character. Everyone who watches my bicolor blenny loves it. I think it was "uncle Ben" who used to say "A blenny raised is a blenny earned." Or something like that.
Inside Desert Fisheries, ornamental marine fish hatchery.
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This pair of Arabian dottybacks were lots of fun in my reef aquarium. They were a wild caught pair that I got from Linda when she was closing the Desert Fisheries portion of the operation in the fall of 1996. She had them in a 40-gallon cube breeder tank for many months with no spawning activity. She warned me that the male still might kill the female since they were a wild caught pair. She only had two flower pots in the tank for them, as is typical of many breeding set-ups. They just seemed to like the real reef aquarium with a community environment and loads of live rock to play in and around. I wish I knew then what I know now so I
could have had a better shot at raising them.
It is best to leave the egg ball with the male in his den in a tank with plenty of live rock. He will help them hatch out all at once, shortly after the lights go out one night. You can then siphon them out of the parents' tank after attracting them to the top of the tank with the beam of a flash light. You must first turn off power heads and overflows before lights go out and turn on an air bubbler which will keep the tank's water aerated while not harming the newly hatched larvae as pumps can. Nutrition is the biggest problem with raising dottyback larvae. According to Martin Moe they do best with at least a small portion of their diet being wild collected live plankton.
I lost most of this good hatch-out of the dottybacks after just four days due to a power outage at night. Only nine of the larvae made it through that outage. At eight days old I started losing one or two of these a day and on day 13 the biggest most vigorous last one was 10 mm long and looking good when it got trapped between the mesh and frame of a breeder net and died. I did not catch another egg ball. A Sally Light foot crab ate one bunch of eggs and the male ate two others before hatching. If I fed him by shooting food into his den, with a feeding tube, he usually did not eat the eggs.
The male started out with a cave for his den, right on the sand between some rocks with a few big openings. He moved to another den that I could not see quite as well that appeared to be fairly enclosed. He made that move right after the big (5") Sally Light out crab got to the one batch of eggs in the first more open cave/den. I assume that's why he moved. He did very well keeping the eggs after that, as long as I shot food into the den for him. When they very first started spawning he would come out of his den, leaving the eggs for a short time, but usually just to feed or to see if I was feeding when I would look at the reef tank. As time went on he started getting really cautious and would not leave the eggs, even to eat. He would stay hidden for 6 days until hatching (at 75 - 76 degrees) and then suddenly re-appear again. From watching this continued behavior, I assume that 6 days is normal at 75 - 76 degrees for hatching the eggs. I kept the tank/tub for raising larvae at about 80 degrees.
For a few days just before spawning, the female would develop a very swollen belly in the front half. After spawning, which was in the afternoon or evening, she would reappear all skinny looking again with lots of superficial bite marks. The male would stay in the den guarding and tending the egg ball. She would especially end up with bite marks all up and down one side which would heal before the next spawning, usually about 12 days later. At first, this time varied from 9 - 21 days but became more regular at 11 - 13 days. I fed them two or three times a day with a good variety of foods mostly including but not limited to a super home made frozen mix, VibraGro and Wardley Total Color Marine flake food. At times I would also feed a little bit of live Artemia enriched with greenwater plankton algae. They ate a few enriched rotifers that I fed the tank too. Rotifers were fed mostly for the filter feeders in the tank and are tiny and harder for the dotties to see.
They spawned many times before I transferred them to their own boring tank with a flower pot and very limited rock. I did this in hopes that I would better be able to catch an egg ball to hatch it out in the big tall cup with heavy aeration from a rigid air line tube. Upon transfer to the new tank, the pair immediately got parasites and soon died. I only later found (from Martin Moe's new book) that it is best to leave them in a nice reef setting (even community) and catch the larvae after the male hatches them. I'm about ready to try again now! Maybe with orchid dottybacks this time.
Notes:
It has now been over a year since the above attempt at raising the dottyback larvae. Linda Nelson did not find a fish farmer to lease Desert Fisheries and the hatchery has now been dismantled. Adjoining Bonneville SeaBase is doing well however. You can still see many varieties of saltwater fish and dive in the saltwater ponds. A new book is now out by Martin Moe on "Breeding the Orchid Dottyback". A very good book, helpful to raising the Arabian dotties and other marine fish too!
