Rearing Gobies

[SoBe]

I recently got a pair of (Eviota Sp. ?) Gobies at the lfs for $15. The female dug a pit under a chunk of live rock and laid a clutch of eggs (without my knowing). They hatched and around a hundred of the fry grew to 1/8" before I finally noticed them. Luckily, I discovered that they are already able to eat (very) finely crushed flake food. Is there anything else I should do, other than feeding and maintaining water quality? Should I be worried about the fry being eaten by my flower anemone?

 

Thanks,

Mike

[pyrrhus]

congratulations!!! remove any predators you can, try feeding newly hatched brine enriched in the fridge, (coral magazine issue 1 on seahorses) and i wouldnt worry about hte anemone.

[SoBe]

Thanks. I have been feeding brine (some) and there aren't any predators that I know of, so far.

 

 

Mike

[pyrrhus]

try keeping the newly hatched brine in the fridge for about 2-3 days with some vitamin supplements (vita-chem, HUFA supplements etc) this technique will keep the nauplii small and help to gow out the larvae faster. in CORAL magazine issue one Wolfgang Mai uses this technique for breeding seahorses and saw a total growth of about 15% more than with regular BBS

[maroonclown]

You know, the Parents might be considered preditors. But congrats, man. Just feed them baby brine shrimps and enriched powdered foords. May I sugest getting a mortar and pestle to make the powdered/ultra fine food?

[1fish2fish]

Most goby larvae are too small to take even newly hatched artemia. The crushed flake food may be your best chance unless you want to get into rotifer culture. As far as enrichments go, keep in mind that until the first molt artemia don't feed. Therefore a lengthy enrichment period with "stunted" artemia is not necessarily all that effective. They also gain a fair bit of size with each molt.

 

If they are actually eating the artemia you should be able to see the redness in their gut, but also keep in mind that if you are feeding crushed red flake food their gut will also be red.

 

I'm currently working with a species that has larvae that are too small even for rotifers. I've had them filter feeding live phyto plankton and some microparticulate diets that I'm working with for my masters. To give you an idea the phyto plankton that they are eating is about 4 -8 microns across and the artificial diets I'm making are 20 - 80 microns.

 

Good luck with it. Keep us posted.

 

[pyrrhus]

1fish get teh mag and read the article. 15% increase in growth over about 2 months is huge. also the artemia werent feeding just being enriched by contact with the vitamins, and the artemia showed nearly zero growth during the time in the fridge. if you dont want to do that try feeding them Hikari first bites, great food for raising fish.

[1fish2fish]

Oh hehe, Sorry I didn't make my point clear.

 

Let me start out by saying I am NOT trying to start a pissing contest here.

 

Because the artemia are not feeding it isn't necesary to keep them in the enrichment for that long a period. After an hour or two there isn't likely to be any improvement to the amount of enrichment sticking to the exterior of hte artemia and the artemias natural nutrition level will actually begin to decrease due to metbolism.

 

A common problem with HUFA enrichments is that bacteria love the fatty acids. Overly prolonged treatments in the enrichment formula can also result in dosing your larvae with increased bacterial loads. Early larval stages are not equiped with the immune system to deal with this.

 

I have also used the method of enriching at cooler temperatures to rear seahorse fry. It was the work I did for my bachelors degree. My reasons for using this technique was actually to reduce the number of artemia hatches I required per day. I was looking at the effects of different ratios of DHA and EPA on Hippocampus erectus fry growth and survival. I found that while my enrichment treatements showed increased growth over the non enriched treatment, the non enriched treatment showed higher survival. My treatment times were 21 days, so this was a short term experiment. Some possible cuases of the lower survival in enriched groups were;

1) bacterial loads in enrichment solutions

2) growth of bone and other structures were unable to keep up with the growth rate of other tissues.

 

It is very possible that had the treatments been longer I would have seen a sudden decrease in the survival of the unenriched group.

 

I would actually be very surprised if Mr. Mai was still feeding newly hatched artemia at two months. I'll have to check out his article. The reason my treatment times were as short as they were is that by the end of three weeks the animals were large enough to take much larger prey. There is a point where the effort to catch a certain size prey size outweighs the energy derived from the prey item. With H. erectus I found that by the end of four weeks I was feeding full sized artemia and weaning on to frozen artemia and mysis (in extra animals that were not in my data treatments, but treated the same and grown out for giggles). By three to four months I was having spawning animals with broods of 200 to 400 fry (Yes, I was very surprised too).

 

Please don't take this as a pissing contest. I'm only trying to provide extra information. I've been actively working in the aquaculture industry since 1994 and have specialized in live foods and currently work in the area larval nutrition dealing specifically with marine ornamental fish. This doesn't mean that I know everything there is to know on the subject. Not by a long shot. There isn't a single person out there that could claim to know it all. That's why we do research. Something else to keep in mind is that often when you read an article from a periodical or an paper from a scientific journal the publication has space restrictions. Often information that doesn't seem to be important may be edited out.

[adinsxq]

get them on the cyclopeeze

[1fish2fish]

SoBe,

 

Try to keep an eye out for another spawn. Goby eggs tend to be round and clear. They generally look like little air bubbles on the spawning substrate. They should hatch in about 5 days or so.

It is possible that they will take newly hatched artemia, but as I stated, most marine fish larvae are too small.

 

Have you noticed them striking at artemia?

Or redness in the gut?

 

If you are stoked to try and raise some larvae you could take a pvc tube and put it in the tank. The gobies may choose to use it as their cave. Theis makes it easy to remove the spawn. I generally place it in a larval rearing container the day of the expeted hatch and bubble air up the center.

Water quality will be very important. i would recommend 1/3 to 1/2 water changes daily (on the larval tank). You could either mix up new water or you could jsut keep swapping back and fourth with the tank the adults are in and let that tank take care of filtration.

 

You may be able to raise them on pulverized food. I have seen clownfish raised this way. Just be careful not to over feed as once the food hits the bottom it will just rot if it isn't removed.

 

Keep us posted on your progress.

[SoBe]

I did notice a redness in their gut, but unfortunately I will have to wait for another clutch. The babies have dissappeared. There were around a hundred the first time I checked, then fifty or so, then only a couple, then none. I don't know where they went (possibly chopped up by the pump)? Next time I'll try the pvc pipe, and setup a separate rearing tank with an airstone for water movement. Even on the lowest setting, my pump still sucks up fry.X)

 

1fish2fish,

Thanks for the info, I'll keep it in mind for next time.

 

Mike

[pyrrhus]

fish, didnt mean it to come out as a pissing contest, i was just trying to convey the info available to me from the article and didnt realize your expertise in this area. to correct myself the period of the experiment lasted for 40 days feeding the newly hatched artemia and enriched artemia, at that point he switched over to enriched artemia nauplii for both groups and started feeding thawed cyclops and bosmids. over that time the total losses for the control group were 4 of the original 38 lost, and the losses for the enriched artemia group were about the same with 5 of the original 38 lost. this experiment was conducted with H. fuscus.

[1fish2fish]

No worries at all, and I hope I didn't come across as overly defensive.

 

The gobies I'm working with are actually a different species (Asteropteryx semipunctata). They're a pretty non descript goby from Hawaii. My reason for using them is that they lay clutches of up to 2200 eggs every 10 days or so. This leaves me with plenty of larvae to work with. ie. more replicates per treatment per spawn. Some of the gobies will feed on rotifers from day 1, but many require something smaller like ciliates, so pulverized flake food or pellets may be worth trying. I have not yet heard of a goby larvae that will take artemia from first feeding, but then it's a big ocean and there are no rules.

 

I would try one method. See how long you can get them to go, and then make adjustments and try to work out what will work best. You could try rearing in a bucket or similar container. Round tanks are nice for the even flow pattern. You will want a medium rate of bubbleing over he eggs to hatch them, but try to keep the air bubbles from actually hitting hte eggs. You only want to set up a current over them. They will hatch about an hour after the lights go out so you should check with a flashlight an hour or so after the lights go off for the night. After tehy hatch reduce your bubble rate. I usually just use a rigid air line with no stone and a bubble rate of about 1 bubble / second. Too much aeration will stress out the larvae. Lighting should be dim. It's been my experience that fish larvae are either VERY positively or negatively phototactic, meaning that they will either be very attracted or repulsed by the light. It will vary from species to species. Clownfish larvae are positive, my goby larvae are negative. If the lights are too bright all my gobies dive straight for the bottom. You want them up in the mid water column where they can feed.

 

Good luck

[Whitten]

Cyclopeeze seems to be the trick with all of the Mandarins at my lfs here. I watch as they put in new ones every tuesday, and they immediately take to the cyclopeeze.

 

On a side note the cyclopeeze they use is a frozen bar, and is very concentrated. A pea sized pinch will feed an entire ten gallon and all of it's inhabitants.

 

I swear just the site of me walking into the room with the bag brings every critter to the front of the tank.

[White_Queen]

Let us know what happens with the next hatching!!!

 

Angela <><

[EtOH_is_good]

i just found this goby article