My first hatch - lightning maroons (one day too early)

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andrewkw

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Unfortunately my second rotifer shipment is also delayed, only it's not at a depot close enough to go pick up. 0 for 2.

I'll look at placing another order Monday for next week but I'm really getting frustrated. I still have some babies alive from the second hatch but I believe most starved due to lack of rotifers.
 
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This thread is about as unorganized as my efforts, but somehow they are both still going well.

3 day shipment and rotifers and phyto are alive. I seriously got more then 1000x more rotifers from the second place then I did the first place. NO contaminant either! Sample after sample shows moving rotifers. This is like ordering a non wysiwyg paly and getting 1 polyp from one place and a colony that won't fit in a 100g tank from another place at the same price. and the 1 polyp had zoa eating nudibranchs..

I couldn't be more pleased and I would estimate in 2-3 days I will have a 5 gallon bucket full of rotifers for daily harvest. I have been dumping the old contaminated ones into my current fry tank. I still have 20-30 larvae from Monday's hatch.

Now I also added some bbs - I am well aware this was too early but I was basically out of rotifers with my second package missing in action so I figured what the heck. Now I just hope they don't outgrow my larvae. I think the larvae are eating them though. I have also added tiny amounts of Otohime A. I am planning on doing a water change today or at least some siphoning. I may just add 1 gallon of water if the water change proves difficult. Because I painted the bottom of the tank black it is very hard to photograph anything in the dim light. To my eyes the larvae do look a little bigger. I mean they must be if they hatched Monday and are still alive...
 
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andrewkw

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The next batch will revive 100x more food or more but I do still have some going. One did pass away so I took the opportunity to take a picture.

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KingTideCorals

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The next batch will revive 100x more food or more but I do still have some going. One did pass away so I took the opportunity to take a picture.

E2BED390-77F5-43AD-BFCB-E60AE4E43D4A.jpeg
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Wild seeing these larva stages in them! Cannot wait to see this unfold! Really looking forward to it... Also really excited for you!
 
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andrewkw

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whoa, that’s a super cool picture! It kinda like it had a gut that got blocked with brine shrimp cysts!

I would agree with this. Water quality still seems to be good. I have been doing 1ish gallon water changes the last few days and there is only about 6 gallons total in the tank. Temp has been stable and 16+hr low light cycle.

Feeding them brine was just a last resort. I fully expected the second delayed rotifer shipment to come dead. The first one would have taken months and lots of extra labor to ever get viable. By Tuesday I will have a full 5 gallon bucket with decent density as well as a smaller 2L backup culture. I've been feeding from this backup culture and it still appears dense. Every drop I take from either always shows at least 1 rotifer, sometimes more.

I think there is an outside chance I get a couple through meta, probably not as there are not too many left and they're still not a week old but no reason to give up on those last few when everything is coming together for the next clutch anyway.
 
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andrewkw

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Here is one that died only hours after the previous. Unlike the previous one cannot see gut issues, but you can see orange starting on the body.

You can also see the baby brine are well on their way to adult brine, however they actually look like they are small enough to fit in their mouths. That being said when I do a water change today I *might* try and net out as many brine as I can. I don't have many larvae left and I realize the odds of any surviving meta with so few are not great but this is a learning experience. On Friday I will be starting again regardless.

The other thing I was happy about after removing this dead one I was able to see a couple of rotifers in addition to the few brine shrimp that came with the tiny water sample so the density even in the fry tank is not bad.

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Clutch #3 hatched last night. Unfortunately it looks like the last one from clutch #2 passed away last night. If that had been 1 day earlier I would have sterilized the tank. However the new clutch is in a new 10g tank. I just put white paper around this one since painting it black made it very difficult to see the babies.

Additionally I've decided to light the tank 24/7 (overhead desk lamp) so that they can feed 24/7. They did appear to be eating within minutes of adding to the tank. The Vossen trap worked great.

This clutch was significantly smaller then #2 I would guess only about 50 hatched. Will try and feed the parents more and hopefully get a bigger one in 11 days.

I've also finally sourced some RG Complete which should ship to me last week. Culturing phyto is going fine, but long term I'm concerned with using it as far as polluting the culture and just in case there is a crash ect. Having more then one source of food for the rotifers seems like a good plan. I really gotta organize my fish room so it doesn't just becoming bubbling buckets and bottles everywhere. Saying I'm going to do it means I might actually do it. In which case I'll post some pics soon.
 

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Clutch #3 hatched last night. Unfortunately it looks like the last one from clutch #2 passed away last night. If that had been 1 day earlier I would have sterilized the tank. However the new clutch is in a new 10g tank. I just put white paper around this one since painting it black made it very difficult to see the babies.

Additionally I've decided to light the tank 24/7 (overhead desk lamp) so that they can feed 24/7. They did appear to be eating within minutes of adding to the tank. The Vossen trap worked great.

This clutch was significantly smaller then #2 I would guess only about 50 hatched. Will try and feed the parents more and hopefully get a bigger one in 11 days.

I've also finally sourced some RG Complete which should ship to me last week. Culturing phyto is going fine, but long term I'm concerned with using it as far as polluting the culture and just in case there is a crash ect. Having more then one source of food for the rotifers seems like a good plan. I really gotta organize my fish room so it doesn't just becoming bubbling buckets and bottles everywhere. Saying I'm going to do it means I might actually do it. In which case I'll post some pics soon.
Awesome posts. Hope we some develop from this batch. Good luck
 

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you will want to remove the white paper on the tanks, the main reason for blacked out fry tanks is because the fry can see the live food better and to keep away from the sides, they use up so much energy and need to catch as much food as possible, you can use white on the bottom of the tank to help if needed, also looking at the pics of the dead fry my opinion is the fry starved, doing the 24/7 photo period does help but if the light are too bright it will make the fry go to the sides of the tank, any fry on the sides will die as they need to be hunting in the middle of the tank, adding greenwater (phyto) to the tank to green it up will help this, back in the day i used to put a piece of cardboard over the tank and cut a hole in the center to keep the light only in the center, now i use LED's and duck tape over the lights... keep up the good work... trial and error is what this hobby is all about
 
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you will want to remove the white paper on the tanks, the main reason for blacked out fry tanks is because the fry can see the live food better and to keep away from the sides, they use up so much energy and need to catch as much food as possible, you can use white on the bottom of the tank to help if needed, also looking at the pics of the dead fry my opinion is the fry starved, doing the 24/7 photo period does help but if the light are too bright it will make the fry go to the sides of the tank, any fry on the sides will die as they need to be hunting in the middle of the tank, adding greenwater (phyto) to the tank to green it up will help this, back in the day i used to put a piece of cardboard over the tank and cut a hole in the center to keep the light only in the center, now i use LED's and duck tape over the lights... keep up the good work... trial and error is what this hobby is all about

Thank you for your insight. The black sides and bottom has just been too dark for me. I only found my one surviving baby as I was tearing the tank down.

I will remove the white paper today but checking on them all of last nights hatch were in the middle of the tank. I tinted the water with live phytoplankton and added a ton of rotifers plus some more this morning.

I will add marinepure gems today to help with ammonia although it didn’t seem to be a huge issue the first time.

My first rotifer culture never got dense in mason jars. I have a 5 gallon bucket that I am running 1 gallon or so through the screen twice a day and the amount of rotifers I’m pulling out is 1000s of times more. Can’t believe the difference between cultures. Even my backup culture that is a 1-2L pitcher has way more then I ever would have got from the first.

The light im using is just a 60w equivalent bulb that is above the tank. During the day there would be some light spill from frag tank but shouldn’t be too bright as well as indirect sunlight. The only reason I went though the night cycle was I didn’t have enough rotifers for 24/7 feeding.
 

californiarob

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that is great on the one lone juvenile, i had one of those batches where i only had one dude left... my wife named him Han Solo... because he was solo,....heheeee, I still have him and he has his own reef tank, he's spoiled now
 
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This guy continues to do well. No more rotifers. Eating B1 for now, plus there are a ton of pods in his tank. If you've been following you know I originally started with contaminated rotifers. It wasn't just little creatures there are at least a couple of different pods too.

My clean culture which is on the other side of the room to avoid cross contamination is doing great. Tomorrow I'm finally getting RG Complete so I think I will split it again and do 2 5 gallon cultures along with one smaller backup which is near the other tank so potentially contaminated. I will probably continue to feed live phyto and alternate with the RG Complete as it wasn't cheap in the least to get a bottle shipped, but I am fortunate a former LFS was able to do me this favor.

Feeding live phyto has been fine for now but worry about ammonia issues and I also have to remove more water since obviously live phyto has a lot more liquid to it.

I have approximately 15 left from the second clutch that are 7 days behind the one pictured above. I actually got to watch the last clutch get laid and saw a few fly away. Likely what happened to the previous ones is many of the eggs were not attached to the rock. That's why I only got approximately 50 larvae. Next Monday I hope to catch 200-300 or more again as it looks like there are a lot more eggs.
 

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