Information regarding successful rearing

[Skydvr]

Are people (individuals, not necessarily research facilities or commercial operations) currently successfully breeding anything other than clowns intentionally?

It seems that the majority of non-clown related posts are along the lines of "hey, I found these, what do you think they are" or "I found xxxxx larva/fry, I'm going to try to raise them". The few posts I have found don't typically make it to the juvinile stage and drop off without much information. (Just stating an observation, not intending to be negative or putting people's experience or attempts down)

I'm thinking about shifting my focus to breeding, but haven't found many posts here (or on the breeding forums) that list what has lead to success or what the stumbling blocks were beyond early stage nutrition or water quality issues.

It is starting to look like I am going to have to spend a lot more time at the local university library scouring research documents. It would be nice to see success with hobbiests and smaller larval species.

Can anybody point me in the direction of breeding resources and writeups of successful breeding? The fish I am interested in breeding tend to be egg layers with very small larve.

 

[Instigate]

I don't have any experience with egg layers yet but plan to try kamohara blennys and peppermint shrimp at some point. I've been successfully breeding banggai cardinals for about a year and a half. But they're mouth brooders and the offspring will eat artemia nauplii right off the bat so it's pretty simple however a study has shown that a food source enriched with HUFA's can greatly reduce instances and intensity of sudden fright syndrome. If you're interested in trying banggai cardinals here is a good pdf on the subject: https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewd...CC3B9B9?doi=10.1.1.498.2317&rep=rep1&type=pdf

 

[Sallstrom]

@Skydvr

Here are two sites for breeding marine fish and invertebrates. I would love to see something similar here on R2R some day, but at the moment there are not many breeders sharing their protocols here.
http://mbisite.org/
http://www.marinebreeder.org/forums/

 

[Skydvr]

I was thinking about looking into cardinals, thank you for that link. Cardinals would be a bit more marketable than most of what I would consider breeding.

I’ve been on both of those sites, but unfortunately there hasn’t been much in the way of successful protocols outside of clowns. There aren’t many people that are still posting over there, so getting questions answered or finding newer information is difficult. Most of the links are dead and the majority of the photos are missing, at least in the sections that are relevent to the fish I am interested in.

It would be great to get some successful protocols going here to lay out proceedures that will help people be successful. Hopefully I will be able to contributeto that once I get through the research stages and start figuring things out.

 

[sabeypets]

I have raised seahorses, cuttlefish, shrimp, dottybacks, blennys, cardinals, gobies, and berghia as well as clowns.
There is lots of information on Marine Breeders Initiative (MBI).

 

[sabeypets]

I have raised seahorses, cuttlefish, shrimp, dottybacks, blennys, cardinals, gobies, and berghia as well as clowns.
There is lots of information on Marine Breeders Initiative (MBI).

 

[sabeypets]

I have raised seahorses, cuttlefish, shrimp, dottybacks, blennys, cardinals, gobies, and berghia as well as clowns.
There is lots of information on Marine Breeders Initiative (MBI).

 

[sabeypets]

I have raised seahorses, cuttlefish, shrimp, dottybacks, blennys, cardinals, gobies, and berghia as well as clowns.
There is lots of information on Marine Breeders Initiative (MBI).

 

[sabeypets]

I have raised seahorses, cuttlefish, shrimp, dottybacks, blennys, cardinals, gobies, and berghia as well as clowns.
There is lots of information on Marine Breeders Initiative (MBI).

 

[sabeypets]

I have raised seahorses, cuttlefish, shrimp, dottybacks, blennys, cardinals, gobies, and berghia as well as clowns.
There is lots of information on Marine Breeders Initiative (MBI). Foods, feeding, water, larvae description, ect.
There is not much activity outside of clowns due to only a small handful of us doing it.

 

[SaltBabies]

MBI does have good info. Sometimes you have to find just the right journal because lots are started and not finished or didn't experience success. The truth is for lots of the other fish the protocol is fairly easy (except the doing it part).

Catch the larva. Most are phototrophic.
Feed the larva copepods nauplii for x number of days until they are large enough to accept bbs. Keeping ammonia down.
Many need really small copepods like parvocalanus available from Reed Mariculture (but you need T-iso to keep alive).
Tisbe can be used for some of the fish though I have observed the adult tisbe jumping on the larva sometimes and I"m not sure if they aren't attacking or what.
Apocyclops has been used for some blennies.
Another consideration is to kreisel or not..

clowns, cardinals, seahorses can use rotifers or baby brine shrimp right out of the gate but still do well with some copepods which have better nutrition.

It's the execution that give people difficulty. I know I have trouble keeping my copepod population up and my ammonia down. My T-Iso is constantly crashing making it hard to keep parvocalanus in stock. I took ruby reds past starvation on tisbe's but couldn't get past I think day 14 (been a while). I have trouble catching my blue strip pipefish babies.

One trick is if you settle on a species type in the scientific name of the species and then breeding or fundicity or egg quality. Try combinations of that. It will usually pull up some scientific research done at the university level. Lots of info there but hard to get to.
But again most of the fish follow the recipe above. The trick is getting a pair of fish, conditioning them to breed and creating the environment for them to breed. Then being able to supply enough food until they graduate to easier to provide foods. I know there are some dry feeds in very small sizes but I haven't had luck with them.