New group of 6 Microglanis iheringi... or are they? SPAWNED!

[fishguy1978]

Nice, gl.

[bekateen]

Here's one of the new arrivals sitting still in the relative open... @Shane?

This individual looks a lot like

Microglanis sp_Venezuanus.

[bekateen]

All new Microglanis are healing from ich, although some still have a way to go. This individual is one of my favorites in the group. I'm not sure if it's the same fish pictured on the previous page, since I can typically see only one or two fish at the same time, and rarely do they sit still for long in the open.

Cheers,
Eric

[bekateen]

Finally getting serious and taking time to catch eggs from these

Microglanis

. They're egg scatters. Great experiential advice I got from Becca Goldring, who bred them last year (or maybe the year before). She recommended I build a false floor. But instead of a false floor, I'm trying the egg-catching tray. I'm using a kitchen food tray for good transparency and spare parts I have around the house: some knitting canvas and pieces left over from some breeder nets I use.

The blue plugs are surplused from the Imagitarium fry/net baskets I like to use (a fry basket is also shown in the photo for reference). The plugs are intended to anchor the transparent plastic tubes holding the suction cup braces on the fry basket, but I've found in the past these plugs often fail and fall out, allowing the fry basket to dislodge from the wall and fry escape. So I used a hot metal rod to heat-expand the plastic tubes on this fry basket (you can see their melted ends in the photos). This way, I didn't need to use the blue plugs and it allowed me to repurpose the blue plugs on the new egg catcher. I thought the plugs were better than zip ties for this purpose because I want to be able to remove the black knitting canvas to recover the eggs after a spawn. This is the first time I've made anything like this, so it's definitely experimental. Let's find out if (a) it works, and (b) it holds up over time (without the plugs failing here).

Also, related to taxonomy, today I finally got around to separating true

Microglanis iheringi

from the various similar fish which are in the hobby; for now I left those lumped together as

Microglanis aff_iheringi

. I added information on collecting data and slight coloration differences, and I did my best effort to divide the images into three "variants" (plus albino as another variant). The three colored variants are:

1. Variant 1: The large (up to 7 cm SL) fish with a relatively clean yellow-pink base color. This fish typically has a solid-colored posteroventral-slanting V-shaped subdorsal saddle.
2. Variant 2: The medium (about 5-6 cm SL) fish with a solid saddle and wood grain or mottled base color. This fish tends to have an almost symmetrical U-shaped subdorsal saddle, pointing down (no posterior slant).
3. Variant 3: The smaller fish (about 4 cm SL) with a conspicuous pale spot in the middle of the subdorsal saddle and the posterior margin of the saddle has a triangular shape, pointing backwards towards the tail. The saddle and its pale spot (in my specimens and in at least one published photo) are interrupted by a dark-pigmented broken line (the lateral line?) cutting horizontally through the saddle and spot. As discussed previously in this thread (HERE and HERE, where I was trying to associate all these forms with known species), the subdorsal saddle of this fish somewhat resembles that of
   Microglanis zonatus
   (a species of which I've never seen a live or good preserved image; I'm basing this statement on the original drawing of M. zonatus).

For almost two years, I haven't heard from the biologist who's describing these iheringi-like fish, but I hope he's making progress on his manuscript.

Cheers, Eric

[bekateen]

I'm also building an identical setup to put in the tank with our

Microglanis aff_poecilus

from the Rio Nanay.

[fishguy1978]

Looks good. Love diy projects.

[bekateen]

Finally! My first spawn of

Microglanis aff_iheringi

!

Now comes the difficult part of disassembling the tank in order to recover the eggs from under the false floor.

Cheers, Eric

[Shane]

Great job!
-Shane

[bekateen]

Yesterday I put all of the eggs in a German breeder ring. By the end of the day, the eggs all looked white. This morning I awoke to more fresh eggs under the false floor, so this time I'm leaving the eggs there to see if they develop.

I'm hoping that the first eggs laid were just "old/bad" eggs, as a female who hasn't reproduced in a long time was "cleaning out the pipes," so to speak.


Cheers,
Eric

[bekateen]

Although most of the eggs collected Sunday morning looked good, they all turned white within hours of me harvesting them. It reminds me of some of my first Amblydoras spawns, where eggs collected quickly die. On Monday morning, I could see a few fresh eggs under the false floor in the parents' tank, mixed together with some white eggs. I expect that some of the eggs were leftover from the first spawn (but I failed to collect them), but I also suspect that most of them, including all the good looking eggs, were freshly laid overnight Sunday to Monday.

I awoke this morning to wigglers skimming about under the false floor. My strategy is to leave them in the tank with the parents for a few days then collect them Friday to move them to their own container, much like I do with the Amblydoras babies. Hopefully, the babies don't swim up through the false floor and get eaten by the parents.

Cheers,
Eric

[bekateen]

Tonight I removed the adults, removed the false floor and suctioned up about 60-75 fry with a turkey baster. They're now in a German breeder ring. Then I reassembled the tank and returned the adults.

Cheers, Eric

https://youtu.be/7V9vjdyuybg

[Jools]

I think you've now got a really good chance of rearing these. Microglanis are not fussy eaters - do you have a plan for feeding them - newly hatched BS or something else?

Jools

[bekateen]

Thanks Jools. My plan is to treat them like Amblydoras. Move them soon to a small tank 2-5 gallons, aerated and heated, no filtration (just frequent water changes). Feed microworms.

Cheers, Eric

[bekateen]

I moved the hatchlings to a 1- gallon tank today, set up like the Amblydoras fry tank.

Cheers, Eric

https://youtube.com/shorts/QQOusO9-tL8/

[bekateen]

The Microglanis have started eating microworms and pulverized dry foods.

[bekateen]

Sadly, I lost all of these babies across days 5-7 after hatching. Three things I might have done the night before to cause their demise:
1) a 50% water change
2) fed them some dried pulverized food
3) added additional oak leaves to give them more hiding places.



Now I wait for the next spawn to start again.

Cheers, Eric

[bekateen]

At home I've gotten two spawns from a group of 16

Microglanis aff_iheringi

, but this group of 22 adults which I keep at work has never produced eggs (which I've found, anyway). So today I removed the old small egg-catcher and replaced it with a bigger basket, hopefully to encourage their spawning behavior over the basket instead of elsewhere in the tank. From a lesson I learned using the smaller basket, this basket has side vents to allow cross- flow of water so that any eggs landing inside will receive water flow and aeration.

Remodeling the egg-catching false floor basket for Microglanis aff. iheringi

[bekateen]

Long time since I updated here. Good news and bad, as can be seen in this video.

In June, I moved four

Microglanis aff_iheringi

(variant 3) to my new 33 gallon long waterfall tank with kinon (described HERE). I purchased the fish at Finspiration Aquatics in Cincinnati, OH after speaking at the Greater Cincinnati Aquarium Society in Oct. 2023.

Here's a photo of the four actual fish:



Here's the baby:

Here's the description of the video:

While doing a random inspection of my 33 gallon long waterfall aquarium, I discovered a dead fish stuck in a hole on the outflow bar of my eheim canister filter. In this video, I speculate that it's a baby

Tatia intermedia

, but after ending the video, my closer examination of the fish's tail shape and tail coloration determined it was a baby

Microglanis

. Before its bizarre and untimely death, this baby grew larger than any other baby Microglanis I've grown before. I had no idea that anything had spawned in this tank, so the discovery, albeit morbid, is also thrilling. Now I hold out hope there are more babies in the tank.

Well, it's still progress. Time to tear down the tank and search for babies.

My first baby Microglanis aff. iheringi to grow this big, but...

[bekateen]

I tried to get the baby out when I first saw its body, but the body drifted off into the tank and I lost it for a few hours. However, a few minutes ago I was able to find and remove the dead baby. Here it is. 15mm SL. This tank has been set up for only 3 months (since 15 June). How old is this baby? When did the parents spawn?

No matter. I still feel like, "Dang!" And I hope I get more soon.

Cheers, Eric

[Jools]

Do you wonder if the act of moving them to the new tank was the trigger?

Jools

[bekateen]

I would like to think so. The tank style (33 gal long, 4 feet length) and the setup (waterfall, rooted emergent plants and kinon) were set up intentionally with hopes of stimulating these fish to breed.

I wish I knew when they bred, but I don't know how long it takes to get to 15mm SL. I'm guessing 1-2 months.

I just checked the book by @The.Dark.One. It shows photos of baby Microglanis with ages listed up to 50 days old, but not size. Based on the colors patterns visible in those photos, I'd still guess 1-2 months old.

Cheers, Eric

[bekateen]

I added a vaccum-powered egg trap tonight to the 33-long. This is 3-D printed by Lowell Dunnaway and it feeds any eggs collected into one of his 3-D printed egg baskets.

One negative issue with the egg trap is that it has too much space underneath its legs, so fish may spawn under the trap. But fingers crossed some eggs land in the funnel. I covered the funnel with a pile of süsswassertang.

Cheers, Eric

[characinkid]

There are some great videos on automatically collecting Celestial pearl Danio eggs, if you have not seen them they are similar to what you are doing here.
Good luck with this, will be interested to see how it works.

[bekateen]

There are some great videos on automatically collecting Celestial pearl Danio eggs, if you have not seen them they are similar to what you are doing here.
Good luck with this, will be interested to see how it works.

Thanks. I'll check them out. I've also seen a few setups to do this. I do see videos from Lowell spawning CPDs into an egg tray (in this video, he doesn't use the suction recovery): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyNYHRhz1vU Lowell also manufactured another 3-D printed version of this which is, if I recall correctly, a 6x6 grid of 36 small funnels, all connecting into a single upflow. I don't have that version so I work with what I have.

Truth be told I'll be shocked if I get eggs in this because there are so many other places in this tank to lay eggs. But it doesn't hurt to try.

Cheers,
Eric