Pseudomugil Cyanodorsalis Breeding

[sbash]

I am going to start breeding these little guys, any one out there do the same?

I found a random rainbow fish breeder who is a freshwater hobbyist, but happened to breed this species of saltwater fish. So, I traded a frag for a half-dozen and tested them out. Sure enough, they are teeny-tiny reef safe fish. Even the six I had were too few for my one gallon jar.

Anyway, he is going to set me up with a breeding colony and the wisdom to successfully breed them. I will start with his techniques, but they are very 'freshwater-like' techniques, so I will likely experiment with more marine conventions.

I would love to hear from other breeders, but I will post this little adventure as it unfolds.

 

[Bongo Shrimp]

Which species?

 

[sbash]

Which species?

Oh, sorry, lol... cyanodorsalis, also known as 'blue eyes'

Thanks, I fixed the title...

 

[Bongo Shrimp]

Oh, sorry, lol... cyanodorsalis, also known as 'blue eyes'

Thanks, I fixed the title...

Ok that's what I thought since it can live in SW. They breed the same as others in the same genus as egg scatterers and the fry are pretty easy to raise on vinegar eels or possibly solely on dry foods.

 

[sbash]

Ok that's what I thought since it can live in SW. They breed the same as others in the same genus as egg scatterers and the fry are pretty easy to raise on vinegar eels or possibly solely on dry foods.

(I added some context to the initial post).

Thanks for the information! The breeder I am getting my start-up colony from strictly uses brine shrimp. So as part of this, I will build a hatchery. I would like to get away from that if I can and try to get a technique down using dry food.

 

[sbash]

Just a quick follow up on this thread. I have my starter breeding colony, probably close to 40 fish and a mop with a good jag of eggs in it.

They are currently all in a tub right now (due to having to pick them up 500 miles from home). I am hoping to get everything situation into proper tanks by the end of the week; one for the breeding colony and one for the eggs to mature.

 

[pcon]

I am really interested in how this is going for you. I would love a couple of these for my tanks but no idea how to source them. Can you say a little more on the set up you are using for the breeding?

 

[sbash]

They are neat little fish for sure

So far, I have directly copied my source breeders set up.

I have two tanks, 10 gallon for the breeding (school, colony, whatever the term is) and a 5ish gallon for hatching.

In each tank is a airline sponge filter and a breeding mop. Every couple weeks I rotate them. I will be rotating them today or tomorrow, so I will snap some photos when I do that. I feed them some powdered flake food on an auto feeder as well as a scoop of freshly hatched brine shrimp every day.

The main colony is about 20-30 fish, they are hard to count, lol.

Although I have had them in my set up since mid-November, I have not really had any success breeding them yet, as they are not laying any eggs for some reason.

As for finding them, they are usually in fancy freshwater stores, you know, the type of freshwater that sells lots grass and plants and stuff. You can then slowly crank up the salinity. I have a single one living in proper 0.026 salinity no problems (it started with six, but they kept jumping out of the tank).

 

[Swayne_07]

are these salt water fish do you guys have any pics

 

[sbash]

are these salt water fish do you guys have any pics

Yup, they are living just fine in salt water conditions. The breeding salinity is about 0.014, but they will easily live in anything from fresh to proper salt water.

I'll snap some photos today or tomorrow and post them up...

The breeder I got my colony from has about 150 living in his 20 gallon reef tank.

My goal is to market these fish for nanos and picos. I had six in my one gallon and I could probably have had up to 15.

 

[sbash]

As promised:

Here is the main breeding tank (10 gallon)

Here is the main hatching tank (5 gallon)

And here are the fish (females on the left, males on the right; kind of)

 

[Swayne_07]

those are cool I have a sailfin Molly in my tank and believe its male would love to get a female to get some live food for my triggers

 

[sbash]

Finally making some traction. I have a few dozen fry and a few mature gone into the breeding pool. The last egg mop transfer I pulled another 20ish eggs off and put them in a container to force hatch them:

You can see the little eye balls in each egg. The process to force hatch them is to simply add in fresh water (in my case RO/DI water), I'm not sure what the theory is here, but it works!

Within minutes over half the eggs had hatched...

 

[sbash]

Update, 8ish months in!

I'm up about 100%. I find it extremely difficult to catch the large fry/small fish every two weeks, so I've shifted to a two month schedule. Although I maintain swapping the breeding mops every two weeks, I leave the fry in to grow enough to see and catch easily en mass (but not big enough to start eating each other).

I did run into a problem with this method, because I didn't acclimate the young to the breeding tank properly, so I lost about half of them.

In the next yield (six weeks-ish from now), I'll post up some pictures of the babies during the acclimation process.

 

[lkc]

I know it's been two years but how did this project go? I just saw an article by Reefbuilders on Facebook about these. Lovely fish.

 

[OrionN]

I would love update also. Too bad you are way north of the border, or else I would get some fish from you.

 

[ThRoewer]

I would be interested in these as well. Always liked these but never had too much luck with them in a freshwater community tank. They may actually do better in saltwater...

 

[OrionN]

I would love to set up a small tank. My 40 gal breeder QT is just perfect. Now that I pretty much finish with acquisition, QT not really needed.

 

[lkc]

I googled them. This particular fish is just not out there anywhere......

 

[sbash]

Oh geez... The pressure is on now!

So, I'm down to about 20 fish. These are very easy fish to breed, but it really takes diligence to keep it going. Since I seem to be the only one with these guys, I'll have to step up my efforts. Also, I have a lot of males, so that could be causing some spawning problems due to competition.

My broodstock was good until last year when I had to move a couple times. I was down to 10 fish last February. I diligently fed brine and swapped the mops every two weeks and got up to probably 40 or 50. But my fish room sink broke, so I started slacking with the brine (feeding powered food). Fresh BBS seem to encourage spawning, the last two months I've lost more than have grown.

I just fixed my sink a couple weeks ago, so I'm firing up the BBS reactors today (since the pressure is on, lol).

Thanks for following up folks, don't hesitate to bump the post again in a few months. I promise to keep up with the routine, hopefully I'll have doubled my stock by Christmas.