Peacock blenny (Salaria pavo) breeding journal

[althyu]

In this thread i wish to share my experience of trying to breed peacock blennies (Salaria pavo) and seek advice about raising the fry. Hopefully i can close their lifecycle and this can act as a guide for people thying to breed them in captivity in the future.

My pair of peacock blennies have started laying eggs after i have been keeping them for about a month and a half.They are fed frozen food: mysid shrimp 2 or 3 times a day , sometimes brine shrimp and they rarely get some bits of salmon that i feed to a baby Scorpaena porcus in the same tank. Fyi, i'll definetely have to move him because he is a little as$hole that ate my shrimps and baby mollies. Also, there is a small population of isopods and amphipods the blennies might hunt if they ditn't eradicate them already. It seems that the genus Salaria si quite different from Salarias, as the peacock blennies don't have scraping teeth and eat only meaty foods even tough there's lots of algae and macroalgae around.

The tank size is around 10 gallons and the water temperature is 27° celsius or 80.6° farenheit (i would want it lower but there are heatwaves this summer and it gets like 35° outside so this is the coldest it gets even with lots of evaporation.. There is a wavemaker and two recirculation pumps, one of wich runs a large internal filter with sponge inside.

So far they have laid two clutches in a broken rapa whelk shell and the male is guarding/ ventilating them. The second clutch (29 july 2023) eggs were laid between and around the older eggs that already had eyes developed and i managed to catch that spawning on camera. I'll monitor the new eggs to see exactly how many days they take to hatch. The older eggs seem healthy but haven't hatched yet. The eggs are very very tiny so i plan to feed the minuscule fry an unidentified species of copepod (and their naupli) that i am culturing from algae in my tank. These copepods are very small, abiut half the size of freshwater infusoria/paramecium. I have them in two cut up 2 liter bottles on the windowsil, without aeration. If i run out of them before the fry can eat baby brineshrimp i will try to feed them freshwater paracecium filtered trough a coffe filter. I'm not hoping that i will be able to raise hundreds of larvae, but it would be cool if a few survived eventually.

I caught the adults myself at the end of june in the Black Sea wen they were (probably) spawning inside a cola can stuck between some rocks. It's likely their breeding season right now witch probably helped to condition them to spawn. They are a temperate to subtrobical species that lives mainly in the Mediterrannean See so they may not spawn next year if they have a hormonal problem with the temperature not getting low enough for a "winter period".
Footage of them spawning and egg guarding (from 29 july 2023, and the spawning took place around 11:30/45 to 12:00p.m.)
Salaria pavo spawning in aquarum
Salaria pavo male guarding eggs

Photo of eggs:

Web pictures of eggs:

Alright, i'll update y'all when the fry hatch. I'm awaitimg any questions or advice. (especially advice lol)

 

[althyu]

This night (31 july 2023) i think most of the first batch hatched as i only see a few old eggs. Unfortunately i didn't catch any larvae in the trap i made or in the filter. The second batch seems much larger, so i hope i can catch at least a few of them when they hatch out.

 

[bluemon]

Following!

Those eggs look so pretty!

Good luck with the venture

 

[althyu]

Turns out this (1august 2023) was the night that the fry from batch 1 hatched. I got about ten in my trap but i tried to make a setup that recirculates water from the tank to the fry te keep up water quality and some holes were big enough that some fry got sucked in and now i'm down to four. I probably won't be able to raise any this time but i'm looking for advice for future hatchings.

Right now i have them in a round tub with an airstone, but they just keep swimming with their face in the wall. I don't think they could even eat like this. What do i do?

Fry that hatched tonight

I also have this thing, would it be better to keep them in this?

 

[althyu]

Turns out this (1august 2023) was the night that the fry from batch 1 hatched. I got about ten in my trap but i tried to make a setup that recirculates water from the tank to the fry te keep up water quality and some holes were big enough that some fry got sucked in and now i'm down to four. I probably won't be able to raise any this time but i'm looking for advice for future hatchings.

Right now i have them in a round tub with an airstone, but they just keep swimming with their face in the wall. I don't think they could even eat like this. What do i do?

Fry that hatched tonight

I also have this thing, would it be better to keep them in this?

I put one in a breeder box (the holes have hair algae so it can't get out) with a tube that brings new water in. It should have plenty of live food in there but it looks like the fish keeps getting stuck on the hair algae.

 

[althyu]

There was a third batch laid today (2 august 2023), but i didn't see it happening this time. I noticed that there's new eggs among the ones from batch 2 that now have the eyes developed.

Unfortunately the fry from batch 1 dissapeared. I assume they starved or somehow escaped in the aquarium.

I'm trying to find live rotifers to buy online, but i live in Romania and i haven't found any that ship here yet. If i don't end up finding anything at all i'll try to culture general microfauna from filter water with spirulina powder. If y'all know anyone that ships to EU and sells live food, i'd really appreciate the contact

 

[althyu]

Batch 4 was laid today (4 august 2023). Batch 3 didn't have very many eggs, but batch 4 seems to be the largest one yet. The female was very very plump yesterday and now she looks kinda deflated, but after eating some mysis shrimp she looks more normal again. The male might be losing weight from continuously aerating the eggs tough. He eats a lot but belly doesn't get as plump as the female and he looks generally "leaner". Idk, might just be sexual dimorphism or something.

I'm also feeding them krill now, but it's a bit too big for the female. The blennies aren't fully grown yet from what i can find on the internet ( i think they're 1 or 2 years old) so in the future i'll probably be able to feed them even larger foods, cut up mussles and stuff.

 

[althyu]

Batch 2 hatched today (6 august 2023). Seems like development takes 8 days at 27° celsius or 80.6 farenheit ( temp got to 29 celsius the day before hatching. Note: appetite of the parent blennies is reduced at this temperature).
These fry will probably starve, but i found a source for rotifers so hopefully they get here by the time batch 3 hatches.

Also, at this point there are so many eggs all over the inside of the nest that it's basically impossible to tell when other batches are laid until more eggs hatch.

 

[DirectCherry]

I'm excited to follow this thread!

 

[danenelsen]

Very interesting thread! I've always wanted to try to raise saltwater fry, but my fish haven't laid any eggs yet. How long were you're blennies together before they laid their first batch?

 

[althyu]

Very interesting thread! I've always wanted to try to raise saltwater fry, but my fish haven't laid any eggs yet. How long were you're blennies together before they laid their first batch?

They were together for about a month. I think they were already in their breeding season when i caught them.

 

[althyu]

I managed to get Branchionus plicatilis for the larvae, but i still had two batches die by the second-third day. They are very energetic at first but they just keep swimming in the sides of the tub and slowly waste away without eating. They only let themselves drift in the current when they don't have the energy to swim anymore. I don't think water flow is the issue, i've changed it to barely bubbling and "boiling" but it doesn't seem to change anything.

I have a theory why this is happenning:
The blenny fry are very attracted to light and the sides of the tub reflects that light. So, by swimming in the direction where they see light, they end up swimming into the sidesand don't see the rotifers. I'll rough up the container with sandpaper until it looks opaque to see if it helps.
Right now, the setup is a tub with quite concentrated rotifers, air pump and a lamp light 24/7. I know that with clownfish the light has to be very dim, but peacock blennies are a coastal intertidal species ( the adults hang out in rocks very close to the surface) so i keep it on the lowest setting without additional light blockage (like tissue paper).

If this still doesnt work, i'll try keeping them under natural light.
Luckily, i have room for a lot of trial and error, since the adults lay about every other day, sometimes even multiple times a day.
Note: the 'ripe' eggs hatch about 3 hours after i shut off the light, and the fry don't get immediately shredded by the wavemaker. They need to be collected with something that doesnt touch them (I use a plastic cup), because after being caught with a net they look half dead and swim wrong. Shutting off the wavemaker and getting a light to attract them helps.

 

[DirectCherry]

I'd experiment with painting the sides of the fry tank black or covering them with thick, black construction paper. That will probably block out more light without permanently altering the tank itself.

 

[althyu]

I'd experiment with painting the sides of the fry tank black or covering them with thick, black construction paper. That will probably block out more light without permanently altering the tank itself.

The rearing setup is already covered with a black trash bag and isn't somewhere with any direct sunlight, i don't think it's light getting in from outside, but the lamp's light that is getting reflected by the plastic. The setup is just a cheap tub anyway, so it's not a big deal to destroy it.
Well, if that doesn't work, i'll cover it with thick cardboard and see if it helps, or try a batch with very strong light and one with dim light.
Lots of trial and error lol

 

[DirectCherry]

I'm very tempted to buy a male and female starry blenny to experiment alongside you. I know they are different species and in a different genus, but I'm sure there are a lot of similarities.

How much time do you dedicate every day to maintaining your food cultures (phyto, rotifers, artemia, copepods, etc.)?

 

[althyu]

I'm very tempted to buy a male and female starry blenny to experiment alongside you. I know they are different species and in a different genus, but I'm sure there are a lot of similarities.

How much time do you dedicate every day to maintaining your food cultures (phyto, rotifers, artemia, copepods, etc.)?

I don't really have that many saltwater cultures. I keep brine shrimp in a tub with natural sunlightight and give them spirulina every few days. They also probably feed on what i assume is bacteria that makes their water very yellow and barely see trough. Flies and other bugs keep drowning in the culture, witch may be what feeds the bacteria.
I have some copepod cultures that similarily don't require much maintenance. I start them with wc water and algae i scrape off the glass of the aquarium. After about a month there are a lot of little microorganisms and the water starts to smell bad from the decomposed algae. At that point i change the old water with clean water and leave the dirt at the bottom. After a while the copepod population peaks ( only small copepods for some reason) and other tiny critters are rarely visible. At night, i can look with a flashlight and see something like barely visible very fine dust troughout the water. I think they are unicelular organisms, they look waay smaller than rotifers.The cultures receive natural sunlight and seem to be self-sustaining.

I can't culture the rotifers since i still couldn't find any live saltwater phytoplankton in Romania and they didn't multiply with spirulina or chlorella powder. I have freshwater phytoplankton, but it's some weird type that only gets dense when the water is very cold (it grew very well in early spring and now was only visible when there were a few stormy days when it got under 20°C outside). Unfortunately the branchionus plicatilis cultures i bought were contamined with some kind of copepod. Now i see significantly less rotifers and some larger copepods with egg sacks.
I've found another source from Germany that would ship here but it's more than double the price for the same amount and the shipping cost is higher than the rotifers, but i might cave in and buy since they also have phyto.

I think that the notable difference between breeding peacock and starry blennies is that mine are completely carnivorous, while starrys are herbivorous as far as i know. Maybe the diet difference could mean a different food regime to get them into "breeding mode".
Peacock blennies are a temperate or subtropical species, so a "winter period" would probably be enough to condition them. Starry blennies are more tropical, so they might need something like an algae bloom instead ( just a theory, i have no actual experience with them).

 

[ISpeakForTheSeas]

Meant to comment on this earlier, but it sounds like you're on the right track. If the rotifers don't work out feed wise, you may a tiny copepod species (such as Parvocalanus crassirostris or Oithona colcarva) to feed, or you may need to figure out how to supplement the rotifers somehow (such as with Selcon or something).

 

[althyu]

Meant to comment on this earlier, but it sounds like you're on the right track. If the rotifers don't work out feed wise, you may a tiny copepod species (such as Parvocalanus crassirostris or Oithona colcarva) to feed, or you may need to figure out how to supplement the rotifers somehow (such as with Selcon or something).

The rotifers are mixed with some small copepods with green egg sacks, so they should have both rotifers and copepod nauplii available to eat, altough small rotifers are probably being hunted by the pods. I still have fry constantly hatching, but there's very high mortality in a few hours after hatching. It's probably because of water temperature (another heat wave and water getting to almost 30°C). I'll have to wait until they aren't dieing right away to really see if the opaque plastic prevents them from swimming into the sides all the time like before.

 

[ISpeakForTheSeas]

Any updates on this?

 

[althyu]

Any updates on this?

They are still spawning every few days. I have not managed to raise the fry past the two day mark and I'm taking a break until spring. When temperatures rise i will culture a very large quantity of live food so i can experinent a lot knowing the fry aren't dying of food shortage. I wil try high flow and high food density at first. For food i have plicatilis rotifers, very small copepods and some unidentified infusoria even smaller than the rotifers wich stays in large numbers at the surface of the water.
Hopefully I'll figure it out in the future...