Advise on breeding with Clark Bassett (serranus tortugarum)

[ElliottWilliamson]

Hi this is my 1st post here .I have been keeping breeding freshwater fish for years and now have moved to reef keeping ( have had reef tanks in 90s and 2000s but been years ) I have always loved chalk basslett and wanted to try breed these at home .if anyone has any experience or advise on breeding ,breeding set up and prep before breeding please share any info .

Basically I'm looking for some guild line so I don't end up spending £1000s on unneeded equipment.i have culture isocrisis before but would like to know of other options .(I'm uk based )

My plan is to get a pair in my nano 60l and give them a 3-6 month to pair when they show sign of breeding , I'll move them to a 2ft by 1ft by 1ft breeding tank with a small air driven filter and round flat rock in one corner ( like ram chiclids) and fake acro shape coral in the other corner with macro for nutrient uptake .

I'll begin feeding oily fish for gamate production at this point and adding some phyto( phyto so that the adult can see there a food source for there young is available)

After the spawning has happened I'll turn off the filter and will use a surface skimming egg collector (if you think this is best) from there will be the hard part .

I plan to set up two tanks for the young and feed two different diet of different phyto and zooplankton if differing amounts (advise on this bit would be the most useful to me )

Any advise anything will be grand .I know I should try clown 1st but not my style .please any advise would be good send .I look forward to getting to know the fish breeding community

 

[Timfish]

I'd suggest getting a copy of Martin Moe's book "Breeding the Orchid Dottyback".

 

[ElliottWilliamson]

I'll look into this book thank you for the advise hope this will work

 

[ElliottWilliamson]

I'm going to order my pair soon would any one have any advise on intro to tank I only have a sailfin molly in there atm ?

 

[Timfish]

How is your system set up? It might be easier to keep a system pretty simple with minimal aquascaping but I would try for a more natural environment for the fish. I'd use a drip acclimation lasting an hour or two.

 

[ElliottWilliamson]

How is your system set up? It might be easier to keep a system pretty simple with minimal aquascaping but I would try for a more natural environment for the fish. I'd use a drip acclimation lasting an hour or two.

I have a coral tank and I would like to start them in a natural set up until they pair and then move to a breeding tank .think this is better ?

 

[ElliottWilliamson]

How is your system set up? It might be easier to keep a system pretty simple with minimal aquascaping but I would try for a more natural environment for the fish. I'd use a drip acclimation lasting an hour or two.

I do weekly water change of 30% I add kalk in manually when water level drops

 

[Timfish]

I guess it depends on how they're spawning. If they lay eggs in a cave seems to me the more natural a system is the better as they will feel like they're able to hide better. If they're broadcast spawners a taller tank might be more to their likeing as they swim up away from the rockwork. I haven't read anything specific so one suggestion is use google scholar and their species name fo rmore info.

 

[ISpeakForTheSeas]

I'm late to the thread, but welcome to Reef2Reef!

S. tortugarum is a simultaneous hermaphrodite; they form long-lasting spawning pairs and stick to specific locations/little territories to spawn. I don't know what makes them choose their specific territories, but I'd imagine that giving them a naturalistic setup would help encourage spawning. These guys are noted as being difficult to aquaculture, so I'd imagine you'll need feeders that aren't just rotifers and BBS - Parvocalanus crassirostris is the feeder I default to suggesting trying for difficult/more recently aquacultured for the first time species, but it may not be enough.

The book suggested above likely has better info that I can provide, but here's some info that might help:

(I really need to get around to organizing this info one of these days.)

"Some general advice that might help:
- Have a tank ready to move the larvae into (basically a tank with an air stone, a dim light, and a heater - a kreisel tank is ideal, but not necessary; you don't want a filter, a skimmer, uncovered pumps/powerheads, etc. - it needs to be as pelagic larvae safe as possible).
- Be prepared to catch the young when they hatch (ideally, you'd be able to move the eggs immediately before hatching into the new tank, but I'm assuming you don't know exactly when they'll hatch) - catch them and move them into the larval rearing tank as soon as possible.

Assuming you have fertile eggs, the advice I would give is this:
- if possible, get some Parvocalanus crassirostris pods too (rotifers are great, and I would expect the larvae to go for them, but some fish larvae are picky and prefer pods over rotifers - having both seems like a good way to ensure you have good, small foods for them, and Antennarius pictus was cultured using Parvocalanus nauplii, so it seems likely to be a good food source for them). Artemia and other larger pod species would likely be good to have on hand too for the larvae as they grow.

- Get various sizes of very fine sieves so you can control the size of the feeders being offered to the larvae as/if needed.

- Add phyto directly to the larval rearing tank. It’s a good method of ensuring that the feeders are gut-loaded and healthy, and it makes them easier for the fish to see (better feeding/survival rates are typically observed with this method).
- Observe and note information about the larvae (things like how big the eggs are, how big the larvae are, when the larvae settle, when coloration comes in, etc.) and the larval behaviors (stuff like if they are attracted to light, how they react to light, if they are attracted to certain colors, what feeders they eat and what what sizes of feeders they eat at what days post hatch, what kind of substrate they prefer to settle on, are they cannibalistic, etc.).

- Watch for developmental bottlenecks and issues with your rearing methods.

- A lot of people run into feeder issues their first few times breeding, so I’d have a backup plan in place to be able to get some feeders quickly if you find yourself needing some.

With regards to the sieves and feeder sizes:
- You may need to screen the feed initially to only offer Parvocalanus nauplii.
- Observing the larvae eating when/if possible is important for telling if they are accepting/able to eat the food you are offering them.

Generally the main thing to watch for at this stage is a bottleneck where the young start dying off - these usually happen after a few days (day three post hatch seems to be one of the most common bottleneck days for fish that hatch with a yolk they can feed off of - if the rots and phyto don’t provide the proper nutrition for these guys, you might see a die off sometime around here). Some fish run into multiple bottlenecks, including some that happen around/after 2-3 weeks post hatch, so you really need to keep an eye on how things are going. Bottlenecks typically occur because the food the fry is eating isn’t nutritious enough for them, or they’re not interested in eating the food offered, or the food isn’t the proper size for them to eat.

if you do run into a bottleneck and lose this batch, don’t get too disappointed by it - this happens frequently in trying to breed a new species (even to the professionals), and every attempt gets one step closer to success.

With regards to the substrate settlement:
- Some species need sand, rock, dark areas, specific colors, or other oddly specific things to settle on/in (from what I've seen, inverts are usually a lot more picky with this), so it may help to have a ledge or cave (PVC should be fine for this, if it's even needed, which I honestly kind of doubt) and a little sand in the larval rearing tank.


That’s all I can think of at the moment - hope it helps!"

As a final note:

the last link is not about gobies, but gives a bunch of info on rearing difficult species and troubleshooting problems with the rearing.

Has anyone successfully raised Sunshine Chromis from fry?

Hey all, So I have a breeding pair of sunshine chromis in my reef tank. They have laid 3 batches of eggs that I’ve seen so far, and by the third day, all the eggs are gone (I’m guessing the snails knock them off or my purple tang eats them). I managed to collect and hatch a handful from the...

www.reef2reef.com

 

[ISpeakForTheSeas]

Knew I forgot something:

And to explain the sieving/screening of nauplii to feed:

Yeah, you'd need to screen the Parvocalanus culture prior to feeding them so that you're only offering the baby Parvocalanus pods (the 1st stage nauplii) to the fish larvae. This is what I was meaning when I brought up sieving the culture if the feeders were too large.

Adult Parvocalanus pods get up to 400 microns, whereas stage 1nauplii are about 40 microns. This means that they should be ~1/10 the size of the adult pods (which looks like it would fit with the ~20% gape rule). So, basically, before offering the feeders to the fish, strain them through a 45 or 50 micron mesh - this ensures that you're only getting the smallest available feeders (those that are small enough to fall through a 45 or 50 micron mesh), which should be more appropriately sized for the larval fish.