Repeat spawning of Dekeyseria picta L052

[bekateen]

Spawn #13 on 30 or 31 May (I was out of town over weekend). Should hatch soon.

This spawn came 19-20 days after previous spawn. Maybe this was my approximately 3 week hiatus.

[bekateen]

Yesterday I finally released the first fry from fry baskets, to roam free in the parents' tank. Release the Kraken!

Cheers, Eric

[bekateen]

Spawn #14, yesterday evening 2020-06-13.

• Spawn #1: 09 Jan
• Spawn #2: 22 Jan (13 days after spawn #1)
• Spawn #4: 03 Feb (12 days after spawn #2)
• Spawn #3: 23 Jan - fresh egg mass found loose in tank (spawn date unknown, but must be 13-14 days after spawn #1)
  
  • Pause
• Spawn #5: 23 Feb (20 days after spawn #4)
• Spawn #6: 08 March (14 days after spawn #5)
• Spawn #8: 19 March (11 days after spawn #6)
• Spawn #7: 04-06 March? New hatchlings found free in tank 18 March (spawn date unknown, estimated 12-14 days earlier = 10-12 days after spawn #5)
  • Pause
• Spawn #9: 09 April (21 days after spawn #8)
• Spawn #10: 20 April (11 days after spawn #9)
• Spawn #11: 30 April (10 days after spawn #10)
• Spawn #12: 11 May (11 days after spawn #11)
  
  • Pause
• Spawn #13: 30-31 May (estimate) (20-21 days after spawn #12)
• Spawn #14: 13 June (13-14 days after spawn #13)

[fishguy1978]

Wow, that’s great. How many juveniles do you have now?

[bekateen]

Well over 100 were just released into the tank, maybe 150 (out of what should have been about 600-800 eggs, although one or two egg masses disappeared before hatching, so probably closer to 600) have survived from earlier spawns (spawns 1-12). Spawn #13 went straight into the tank so I have no clue on them.

[fishguy1978]

That's a lot of babies!!

[bekateen]

Dad either ate or ejected spawn #14 overnight. This morning the eggs were gone and a new female was in the cave.

[fishguy1978]

Dad either ate or ejected spawn #14 overnight. This morning the eggs were gone and a new female was in the cave.

Count your blessings. You have over 100 fry. Now you have a little longer to grow them out before the new ones hatch.

[bekateen]

I do.

[fishguy1978]

Tis a bummer. I lost a clutch of BNP eggs recently.

[bekateen]

Some things fail. For most of these L052 spawns, I've taken the egg masses from the cave before they hatch. Usually the eggs are so forcefully glued to the cave wall that I actually pop one or two eggs during the removal process. Obviously that hurts the embryos more than it hurts me, but it hurts me knowing I did it to them. But even when successful, I find that about 1/4 or more of the eggs hatch early, then die quickly after hatching, I presume because dad isn't tending to them.

A couple of times I've let dad hatch the eggs in the tank, but this as you know is a violent tank. I've seen well over 60 fry from a single hatch in the water- that's a great number... but their survival afterwards in this tank isn't as good as when I have them in the basket to feed them up.

So this last time I tried something different. On about day 7, I moved the whole cave, with dad, into a fry basket. Three or four days later eggs started to hatch. On the first day of hatching, I saw three live fry and one, maybe two dead. On the next day, 5 more live fry and none dead. On Friday of last week (day 3 of hatching, there were over 20 live fry and none dead in the basket. Convinced I'd have more, I left the cave in the basket over the weekend. I came to work today to find all of the eggs had hatched, but nearly all of the fry were dead. I collected 63 dead fry and found only 3 live ones. I guess I should have taken the cave out on Friday.

Regards, Eric

[bekateen]

Our fish club, the Sacramento Aquarium Society, had our first swapmeet this weekend. At it, I sold my last 5 juvenile Dekeyseria picta L052 from last year's spawning frenzy. These fish were about 3" long TL, and were almost sexable.

At the same time, in the last few weeks, I've had several more spawns. Recently, the dad was fanning a clutch of eggs when a mom intruded in his cave and wanted to spawn. I thought she failed, but when I stole the "old" eggs a few days later, I discovered that she had succeeded. She forced him to lose most of his old eggs, and she laid her new eggs over a few older eggs which dad managed to protect from her.

This time, the eggs were very easy to dislodge from the wall. At first I didn't know why, but in hindsight I recognize that the new eggs were adhered to the old eggs, rather than to the wall. So yes, I lost a few old eggs when I detached them, but I lost none of the new eggs because they were hanging in the cave rather than stuck to the wall.

Even so,, these are such nice fish! <3. The cycle continues.

[bekateen]

After a long wait, today I was delighted to find fresh eggs!

[Baardman]

mine have gone dormant they should start back up around September hopefully ill have them settled in their new tank in the next couple of weeks

[aquaholic]

Everyone has a slightly different way of fish keeping.

Although it has been a few years since I kept and bred L numbers, I was keeping so many that it became too time consuming to keep checking each tank and each cave for eggs. What I did instead was dedicate a small fish room entirely to L numbers - approx 80 tanks. I kept the whole room always dark and used clear glass tumblers (that couldn't roll away) for their breeding caves. A small dim head torch was used when I entered the fish room which was essentiallya large artificial "cave". This made things so much faster to monitor. Very easy to see when eggs were laid. Extremely easy to rob eggs. I would remove and stand the glass tumbler upright with a slow air stone clothes peg clipped to one side as the egg hatcher. Replace the stolen tumbler with another.

If eggs were hatching but some were too slow or wouldn't hatch, a large drop in dissolved oxygen levels would trigger an urgent flurry of activity which would break egg cases. You get terrible growth rates if you let late weak hatchings mix with the main group.

Your hatching and grow out tanks don't need to be large. Smaller tanks concentrate food provided you can maintain water changes. Diffetent sized buckets with incoming water drippers and an overflow drainage hole allow you to easily move batches by pouring them into bigger containers without netting. And stacked if space is tight.

[bekateen]

I totally agree with grow out in small containers. My personal habit with L numbers has been to leave the fry in a blue netted basket (I've shown them here: https://youtu.be/nZax5USJnaQ) for as long as 6 months. I've raised up to about 100 fry in these baskets to a size of at least 2cm. The biggest limitation of these baskets with Panaqolus is that the adults try to get to the food in the fry baskets and the adults eat holes in the net, then the fry escape into the parents' tank. LOL

I'll look forward to doing it again.

Cheers, Eric

[aquaholic]

Yes, don't remove eggs from the cave if you are damaging them. Just use the cave as your hatcher.

[bekateen]

After a long wait, today I was delighted to find fresh eggs!

Follow-up: The eggs laid in early July were eaten or kicked out by dad after about 9 days (Dang, they were almost ready to hatch!). Then a day later, dad was back on a new clutch of eggs!

On July 24, the day before I went to Peru for a 3 week trip, the eggs were near hatching, so I took them and put them into a net basket. The eggs were so ripe that the eggs all hatched within minutes of being put in the basket. I am raising over 60 fry from that spawn.

Then dad spawned again, and those eggs hatched on August 5th! My care-taking student collected those fry. She collected between 12-20 fry. Some fry got loose in the tank.

I returned from Peru yesterday and went into work today, and I found dad back in the cave, this time with TWO clutches of eggs of different ages! He was fanning one clutch which was attached to the roof of the cave, and he was ignoring another clutch on the floor of the cave.

I was concerned that dad might abandon or eat one or both clutches, so against my better judgement, I pulled out both clutches.

These are both small batches, the older mass with about 20 eggs and the younger mass with about 30, I estimate. I think it's one female who is really "frisky" and she's not resting long enough between spawns to regenerate her ovaries fully.

Collectively, this male had five spawns in 43 days (4 July - 16 August).

Cheers, Eric