Black Ice X Black Snowflake Eggs!!

[stevers]

With a much more conservative count and a few days of nest tending I counted 222 eggs left. Pic is day 2 (today).

 

[stevers]

Day 5 205 eggs left almost shiny eyes. Starting my rotifer culture tonight, waiting for delivery. I ordered 1 million L strain rotifers from Reed Mariculture. Very happy with the customer service. According to RM it takes 2-3 days to establish a stable rotifer population, I will have 4-5 days before the hatch, so as long as everything goes according to plan I'm in good shape.

 

[stevers]

178 eggs left night of day 6. Hard to tell if I'm growing rotifers correctly. But the water starts green at feedings, and becomes clear within 12 hours. I just used rotifer floss to clean the culture, and did a 33% water change, with water from the broodstock tank. I need a sieve though, this coffee filter home made sieve isn't working well.

 

[stevers]

Oops it's day 7! Pot pull tomorrow !

 

[stevers]

173 eggs day 8... Should I pull tonight or wait until tomorrow ? I think I'm going to leave the light on tonight so they won't hatch until tomorrow. They have hatched on the ninth night the last two times. But there isn't that much orange left in them. I'll plan on pulling it tomorrow night I guess

 

[stevers]

Well it looks like 29 eggs hatched last night. I have 144 eggs left. Everything is looking good for a hatch tonight. Around 8 pm, the pot will be moved into a 3.5 gallon cylindrical glass jar, with a heater and an air stone set to low, no light at this point. Once the hatching phase has ended I will add a significant amount of rotis. And a few drops of RGcomplete. I will black out the sides and provide a buffered led light from above.

 

[snwmnky007]

Awesome!!!

 

[revhtree]

Looks like 145 to me!

Great job!

 

[Davesgt]

Pretty Awesome!

 

[stevers]

Well I didn't want to harass them too much for pictures, but we had a hatch 7/14!!!! I pulled the pot at around 5 pm, because over the course of the day we had only 120 eggs on the pot.. I thought they were supposed to wait until darkness to hatch.. hmm either way I have around 30 eggs that haven't hatched yet, but still that makes 80 babies swimming and active. I'll get pictures later when I give them more rotifers.

 

[fishroomlady]

yay! looking forward to the progression! Your patience in counting those eggs is impressive

 

[stevers]

Haha thanks but I cheated, I have a galaxy s5, the phone has awesome edit options. I open a picture and with different colors I will dot 20 eggs. Then just count my colors

 

[stevers]

Some pics, I think I have good rotifer density hard to tell if I have too much. I am attempting a "co-culture", feeding the rotifers in the larval tank RGcomplete, to my advantage Rg complete also contains an ammonia neutralizer.

 

[Sully]

Awesome man!

 

[stevers]

Made it past 24 hours, looking good, leaving the light on all night so they will get nice and full. I did a 33% water change, tied a knot in the airline tube and dripped in the replacement gallon over the course of an hour. Being very careful not to stress or shock these guys in any way. I added rotifers in at 1 pm and at 1 am, I have added around 5 drops of RG complete in the rearing tank and to the rotifer culture several times. I don't want the rotifers to starve and crash and take the larvae with them, so I add the RGC knowing it's keeping the rotis alive and the ammonia low. I will add some more rotis and RGC at 9:30am when I leave for work.

 

[SkipperTheSohalTang]

Come to me my clowns!! Lol

 

[stevers]

Haha no natural deaths, although I had one crazy drifting spinner I removed. Interestingly enough I had around 5 eggs that looked viable but didn't hatch with the rest, I helped them hatch and thought for sure they would die from my brute force, not yet at least!

 

[stevers]

Ok I was wrong. I cleaned the tank better today and realized there were some deaths. I think some starved even though I had high rotifer density, I think I added too many rotifers at first Idk everything else looks great.

 

[stevers]

So I woke up and my air pump was off... Idk I had to siphon like 50 dead larvae out less than 20 live ones left what a drag. I have a couple guesses as to what happened.
Starved lights were off for 4 hours last night, cooked by heater air pump turned off and didn't spread the heat, or something is wrong with my rotifers. I am bummed for sure I hope some make it to meta ughhhh

 

[gar732]

Just read through your thread, good stuff. Don't get too bummed out from everything I've read there seems to be a learning curve till you find what works best for you. Sometimes it takes a few clutches and you still have survivors so that's good. My picassos finally laid after 3 years so I'm running just behind you. They hatched yesterday but I wasn't ready for them. I'm hoping to try to raise the next clutch. Not sure if you've come across it already but there is a great thread with some ready good info on NR. Good luck, I'll be following along.