Amblydoras nauticus spawned

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I may have missed it but how are you collecting them?
-Shane

I'll make a video of the siphoning next time I collect eggs.

Cheers, Eric

Please do. I have been working with some tetra spp (rummynose and wild Bleeding Hearts) to build up some nice schools for Chewy's tank. Your method would seem to work for them as well.
-Shane

I've been travelling a lot between mid-May and mid-July, and I'm finally home for the summer and able to focus attention on my fish again. With that, I've also finally had another

Amblydoras nauticus

spawn two days ago. Was able to video my process yesterday while I recovered the eggs. I hope the video is self-explanatory and helpful. I also added a 4 month update on the oldest 4 fry, which are still doing well but growing oh, so slowly!

As an aside, I'm a bit relieved to find so many bad eggs even at the moment of collection, which means the cloudy eggs may already exist before I harvest them and thus maybe my harvesting method is not solely responsible for eggs turning white. Also, this time I did wait a day to collect the eggs, so that if there were bad eggs at the time of spawning, some of those may disintegrated before I harvested. It's still possible that some of the eggs I observed as bad may have died when I lifted the mop out of the tank, although it's obvious from my video that there are white bad eggs just floating around in the tank, no fault of mine.

I had good hatching last time from that big spawn, but still eventually lost all the fry, I think because the food fell through the floor of the German breeder ring. So this time I will hatch the eggs in the ring, them move the fry to a solid-floor box with a silk fabric cover over the outlet sponge so that fry can't burrow into the sponge and die inside the sponge.

Hopefully I'm successful!

Cheers, Eric

Amblydoras nauticus Collecting eggs through a false floor

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Eggs are developing nicely.

Cheers, Eric

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Eggs hatched overnight, so I moved fry from German breeder ring to a Fluval breeder box with a silky fabric cover over the sponge blocking the exit. Hopefully this keeps the babies safe and doesn't either clog the outflow or allow babies to get stuck.

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Here's the oldest/biggest baby. Now 4 months old, 20mm SL.

It appears to have a damaged left pectoral spine. Don't know how long ago that happened - maybe snagged in a sponge or net when it was smaller?

Cheers, Eric

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Another spawn today, with a few eggs also collected in the mop and potted plant.

This time, I collected a total of 9 "good looking" eggs in the mop and pot, but 6 of them were cloudy within an hour. Obviously there's something about that process (Being in air? Being handled? IDK) that they don't like.

I collected 206 good eggs and an additional 18 bad eggs (already bad in the tank) using the hose to siphon the false floor.

As I cleaned up the eggs and separated the sand and debris from them, I discovered that I sucked up a dead baby (likely from an unrecovered egg belonging to the previous spawn which hatched July 25) from the parents' tank. Without microworms, the fry don't last in the parents' tank.

Also, among the bad eggs, I found two like this. They appear intensely white with an amber center, rather than being overall cloudy. I think these two were in the process of dying when I saw them.

In total, 209 good eggs are in the breeder ring tonight!

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Today I inspected the 209 good eggs which I collected yesterday and placed in a German breeder ring. I found only 4 bad eggs this morning from the 209 eggs added to the breeder ring. Collectively I'm still at 88% survival of the initial 233 eggs I collected. Hopefully these remaining 205 eggs all hatch.

Cheers, Eric

[characinkid]

Thats really interesting Eric, congratulations on another spawn.

Are you doing anything special with the eggs apart from putting them in a breeding ring? Any treatment, leaves etc?

[bekateen]

Thanks!

I have dried oak leaves in the breeder ring while they hatch, although I don't think these leaves are significantly affecting water chemistry, since there are only about 5-10 leaves and the ring is in a 20 gallon tank.

Once the fry are all hatched, then I'll move them all (with their leaves) to a Fluval hang-on breeder box, with a sponge block covering the outlet to prevent clogging of the outlet, and a silky fabric over the sponge, to prevent babies from swimming into the sponge and getting stuck. That's when I'll start feeding them live microworms.

I started using this design on the last spawn from a couple of weeks ago, and I still have (I think) dozens of fry remaining from that spawn. Today I did a box cleaning on that Fluval from the prior clutch of fry, and I pulled out 4 or 5 dead fry. Not great, but way better than in the past, since until now, other than the last spawn, I have only four total fry growing from the first few spawns. Unfortunately, I didn't count the eggs from the late July spawn, but it didn't look like a big spawn. So although "dozens" of fry wouldn't be great survival from 209
eggs, it might be pretty good if I started from, e.g., 60-75 eggs.

Hopefully yesterday's spawn and the late July spawn are a turning point for me in terms of successfully raising a significant number of fry.

Cheers, Eric

[bekateen]

Update. No new spawns, but 2-3 weeks ago I did find a lot of dead babies in the breeder box, still managing to effectively commit suicide by burrowing around the foam, even if they can't get in the foam.

So I went a different way. I moved the fry from both spawns (now about 40 and 25 days old, respectively) to a 5.5 gallon tank with just oak leaves, an airstone and heater. No filtration.

I do every-other-day water changes using RO water blended with water from the parent's tank so that I don't have to mess with dechlorinator chemicals.

To date, from those two spawns, I have 17 survivors and sadly I found one dead in the tank. I don't know if it was dead already or if it died because of the process of water changes. I try to be gentle and slow, but these babies seem so delicate.

It's slow progress, but I'm getting better at improving survival.


Here's a video of them: https://youtu.be/AHPvwUJVX6g/

And for comparison, here are the four oldest babies, some 4 months old and one 5 months old: https://youtu.be/9aAXMes0hHY/

[Jools]

Love it, baby thorns!

Jools

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I found more eggs yesterday. For some inexplicable reason, the egg-catching false floor was flooded with silt-like mulm (I've never had this happen before), so the eggs are covered with it. Also, lots of eggs are obviously bad already, something else I've never seen at this level when the eggs are still in the tank.

I collected the eggs as usual and attempted to rinse them in repeated flushes of clean tank water.

Believe it or not, the two photos above are from AFTER I rinsed the eggs 4 times with clean tank water. Imagine how dirty they were before I rinsed them!

I then added them (with remaining silt) to the German breeder ring.

This morning, I attempted to remove as many bad eggs as possible. Some bad eggs still remain with the good eggs, because they were adherent and I didn't have tools to separate them. Here's the bad eggs I removed:

Keep in mind that there were many bad eggs yesterday that I didn't bother to collect, so I left them in the parents' tank. There were also some good eggs inside the terra cotta potted plant which I couldn't recover. Those eggs also remain with the parents.

Cheers, Eric

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About half the good eggs have hatched as of this morning; I saw no fry yesterday, so apparently overnight was the time to start hatching. There are still many unhatched "healthy-looking" eggs, so I expect more fry.

This time, after all are hatched, my plan is to transfer them immediately to an unfiltered 5-gallon or 2 gallon tank with an airstone and heater. As I am with the last group, I'll do 50% daily or every-other-day water changes using a mix of parents' tank water and RO water. With this setup, food (live microworms) can sit on glass floor and there's no sponge for them to get stuck in or under.

Although my survival from the earlier group of babies was only 17, that's still way better than any spawn before. And, those babies seem to be growing much faster than my original four babies did in the hang-on breeder box. (maybe that's my imagination, but these 17 seem to be doing very well). In that group, I had left in the breeder ring for days before transfer to the 5-gallon tank, and in those few days before transfer I lost a lot of them (I presume for lack of food as worms fall through the floor of the breeder ring). So I'm hopeful for even better survival this time if I transfer before starting to feed them at all. Fingers crossed!

Cheers, Eric

[bekateen]

On Sept 21, I moved the "17" babies (I recounted and found it was 19!) to a separate tank and I moved the new hatchlings to the 5 gallon rearing tank. I'd already started losing babies even after 3 days in the breeder ring, but I think I have a good number of survivors still. I can't state what my survival rate is since I don't know how many eggs I started with, but I'd estimate that survival so far is about 50%, maybe better.

Also this weekend the first-hatched baby turned 6 months old this week. It's now 28 mm SL!

In November, James Robinson from Michigan will be speaking on doradids to the Sacramento Aquarium Society. I'll be bringing the six largest juveniles to the auction to go with his talk.

Cheers, Eric

[bekateen]

UPDATE on

Amblydoras nauticus

young: One video, all three age cohorts. FWIW, there are a lot more babies hiding in the leaf litter in that 5 gallon tank than are seen in the video.

You may recall that I removed the now-2-month-old fish a while back to get video. At the time I counted 17 fry after searching through the leaf litter. Then two weeks ago, before adding the new hatchlings to that tank, I meticulously culled through the tank to remove the 2-month old babies; I removed what I thought were the 17 juvies only to find that I caught 19! Great! So then I added the hatchlings to the now-empty 5 gallon tank. Two days later, while feeding the hatchlings, I saw a (relatively) giant commotion in the leaf litter, where I found another 2-month-old juvie still in the tank. I don't know if it had been feasting on the hatchlings, but it's a possibility. With that surprise find, I removed that juvie and added it to the container with the other 2-month-olds, so now I have 20 2-month-old juvies. As a precaution, I scoured through the 5 gallon tank's leaf litter (but gently so as not to harm the hatchlings) looking to see if I missed any more juvies, and I found none. Okay, all is good... Two days later, I get a repeat of the (relatively) giant commotion in the hatchlings' leaf litter and discover ANOTHER 2-month-old juvie hiding in there. Dang! (in a good way). Now I'm up to 21 juvies, 2-month-old (not counting the 4 5-month-old and 6-month-old juvies in another container). That's terrific! But how are they so good at sitting still while I'm sifting through the leaf litter that I can't find them!

Well, I hope I got them all now, because I still don't know if they were eating their younger hatchling siblings. That's in part because I don't know how many hatchlings I started with, and also because I don't know how many hatchlings I have remaining... Why? Of course, because they too are really good at sitting still in the leaf litter! I never see more than about a dozen swimming about at a time, but when I stir the leaf litter more come out.

Time will tell...

URL: https://youtu.be/DGm8wCz-qhk

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The oldest babies, 6 months old

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Another spawn today.

Cheers, Eric

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Another

Amblydoras nauticus

spawn overnight yesterday!

And here's an adult, hanging out.

Cheers, Eric

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Collected eggs today from the spawn I found yesterday.

Before collecting eggs, I tested water parameters:
TDS: 40ppm
Temp: 25.6C
pH 3.6

I saw a few eggs in the terra cotta pot, so I meticulously searched the pot. To my surprise I found about 40 good eggs in the pot! (plus about 10 bad eggs)

Then I went back to the tank and did my normal siphoning of the false floor. There were about 10-20 bad eggs in the false floor.

Here are all of the good eggs combined, after my best effort to sift debris away from the eggs: 493 good eggs recovered!

With the bad eggs, that's about 520 eggs, just in the false floor and in the pot. But 2/3 of the tank is just a normal floor, so I don't know if more eggs were laid there.

Cheers,
Eric

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Five bad eggs removed from the breeder ring today. That's a pretty low number, considering what the eggs went through yesterday as I harvested them.

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Collecting Amblydoras nauticus eggs

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Big disappointment today. I was away for 2 days. I knew the eggs would hatch by today, so I was hoping to return to 400+ fry. I found out that the sheer number of eggs overwhelmed the German Breeder Ring. As the fry hatched, their jelly coats floated to the drain sponge and clogged it. This clog caused the GBR to fill with water and overflow across its top edge, letting fry wash into the parents' tank, with some of the fry dying atop the foam float of the GBR because (presumably) they didn't wash over the foam fast enough.

Today there are a few fry left in the GBR. I'll recover them and move them to a grow out tank. At this time I don't know how many fry remain, but I'll try to get a count when I move them.

Okay, I moved them into a grow out tank. Only 54 fry out of about 490 good eggs.

Cheers,
Eric

P.S., by coincidence, I counted 55 older (4‐ and 5-month-old) fry remaining (after donating 6 to my club's BAP program) of my older August and September spawns.

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After transferring the surviving 54 hatchlings to a grow out tank, I siphoned the false floor and rinsed out (repeatedly) the spawning mop, both which were situated under the GBR. I was able to recover at least 20 more live hatchlings, getting me up to about 75 hatchlings live. That's a lot better than 54, but still a big disappointment compared to almost 500. I know there are more live fry loose in the parents' tank, as I can see them jetting around occasionally. But to collect them without some kind of containment like the false floor will be challenging, so I'm going to let them be and if any survive, that will just be a bonus.

Cheers,
Eric

[bekateen]

Ugh, the smallest of the 4 month-old Amblydoras are so stealthy! I cleaned out the 5 gallon tank they were being raised in, and moved them all to a bigger tank in order to use the 5 gallon tank for the newly hatched fry. I netted out all the leaf litter in the tank to make sure I got all the older fry out, then I returned the leaves to the tank after removing the juveniles; I then added the 75 or so hatchlings to the tank.

Today I look in the hatchlings' tank and see one of the 4-month old fry running around inside.

Did they eat any of the hatchlings? I don't know. UGGGH! I remove that fry and search the tank again, to make sure I didn't miss any more older fry. Don't see any... Come back an hour later and there's another! UGGGH! I remove it and again sieve the leaf litter and I find one more... then another.... then another... and so on.

In total, I found seven very small 4-month old Amblydoras in the tank. When they're mixed in the leaf litter, they sit still and drift with the leaf fragments so you can't see them easily unless they start actively swimming.

It's wonderful to collect 7 more Amblydoras juveniles, but I hope it wasn't at the expense of 75 hatchlings.

Time will tell.

Cheers, Eric

P.S., by coincidence, I counted 55 older (4‐ and 5-month-old) fry remaining (after donating 6 to my club's BAP program) of my older August and September spawns.

Bump that number up to 62 fry now.

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Octuplet UGGH! I found an eighth small Amblydoras juvenile in the hatchling tank this morning. OMG, it's like the babies are breeding! LOL

P.S., by coincidence, I counted 55 older (4‐ and 5-month-old) fry remaining (after donating 6 to my club's BAP program) of my older August and September spawns.

Bump that number up to 63 juveniles now.

[bekateen]

I was sick last week and mostly neglected my fish. This morning I discovered hatched Amblydoras nauticus loose in the parents' tank. It will be difficult to collect them now that they are free swimming. Given today's date, I'd estimate the spawn was around 29 March.

[bekateen]

The Amblydoras nauticus spawned again, this time while I was away this last weekend at the NEC annual convention. I collected 186 unhatched eggs, hatching eggs and hatched fry. Given that the fry are hatching today and that I did a big water change last Thursday (and there were no eggs Friday morning when I left), then these eggs were probably laid Friday.

Cheers, Eric

P.S., on April 4 (Thursday) when I did the last water change, I collected about a dozen swimming fry from the spawn I missed the week before. That was better than I expected.

[bekateen]

I had another spawn this last weekend while I was away at the SAKE event in Phoenix, Arizona. I found the eggs Sunday afternoon but didn't collect them until this morning.

The eggs weren't there Friday morning, so they were laid on the eve of 12 April or 13 April.

I collected 134 good eggs, 31 eggs out of the potted plant and 103 eggs from the false floor. I found only 1 bad egg, but I also collected a lot of empty jelly coats. Also, I caught two small fry (circled in photo) from the previous spawn. I suspect the low number of bad eggs is due to me not collecting the eggs when they were fresh (which I suspect kills some eggs).

Given how many eggs (a lot!) I observed Sunday afternoon against the glass, I was expecting this to be a bigger spawn. Maybe the empty jelly coats explain the relatively small number of good eggs. That said, I don't know what to make of the empty jelly coats - I didn't collect any hatchling fry so I don't think they are hatched eggs from this spawn (especially since the other eggs aren't close to hatching) and I doubt they're left over from the previous spawn... but maybe the latter? Or did the adults manage to harvest and eat some eggs?

I'm short on German breeder rings right now, but since the eggs are at least two days old already, I decided to simply add the eggs directly to the 5 gallon grow-out tank with the fry from the last two spawns, and I added an extra airstone to ensure good aeration until the eggs hatch.

Cheers,
Eric

[bekateen]

Another

Amblydoras nauticus

spawn overnight, 18 April. Will collect the eggs tomorrow. That's only 5 or 6 days since the last spawn!

I also managed to siphon out about 5 hatchlings this morning from the parents' tank and add them to the hatchling tank.

Over in the hatchling tank, the older babies are developing nicely and the remaining eggs from last weekend's spawn have started hatching.

Cheers,
Eric

[bekateen]

Impatient as I am (I blame ADD), I harvested the eggs tonight. I collected 173 good eggs, 3 bad eggs, and 32 more hatched fry from last week's spawn. About 1/4 of the eggs and fry washed out from multiple rinses through the terra cotta pot.

Reflecting back on the last spawn being only 130 or so eggs, the fact that I collected over 30 hatchlings here and another 5 or so this morning helps explain why my egg count last week was so low. Now the egg count for last week's spawn is up around 170, similar to this spawn I collected today.

Cheers, Eric

[bekateen]

Another spawn in the last 24 hours, 9 or 10 days since the last spawn. Babies from the previous spawns are growing well, but I'm noticing that some of the younger fry are dying in the tank. IDK if it's a water quality issue from overfeeding (1x or 2x per day with live microworms and pulversized dry foods), insufficient feeding, or if maybe the bigger fry might be stressing the smaller ones - to be clear, I've never observed any intraspecific aggression among fry (or adults for that matter), so I think not the latter, but IDK why it's the smaller fry dying.

Cheers, Eric