Tatia intermedia spawned!

[bekateen]

Hi All,

In my 33 gallon long tank with waterfall and kinon I discovered just over 20 new eggs; a couple appear to be empty jelly coats but the rest appear to be fertilized, laying scattered on top of the false floor, most tucked into crevices under overlying cobblestones, but a few in the open. The jelly coats were too large to pass through the floor grate.

I have only two species in the tank that would scatter eggs,

Microglanis aff_iheringi

and

Tatia intermedia

. When I've seen Microglanis eggs before, they were very small. I suspect these are Tatia eggs, although they are not gathered in a single mass as many people have reported and photographed. I'm sure there are more eggs in the tank, but the tank is so heavily planted these are all I could see and collect.

I collected the eggs using a turkey baster and put them in an egg hatchery in the parents' tank. Fingers crossed they hatch. Fingers also crossed that they aren't like

Amblydoras nauticus

eggs and die if handled too soon after being laid.

Water parameters at time of spawning:
Temp: 21.5C
pH: 4.0
TDS: 88ppm

The most recent water change was a 75% WC of mostly RO water and a little tap water which occurred last Wednesday or Thursday, 06-Nov or 07-Nov. Fish were fed a variety of foods yesterday, including live blackworms, Aquatic Foods Blackworm & Earthworm sinking sticks, Pleco Hotels & Accessories catfish sticks, and some freeze-dried tubifex worms (loose & floating, not a solid block of compressed worms).

In case the eggs are light sensitive, I partially covered their hatchery with black plastic.

In my experience, Microglanis eggs hatch within 24 hours, whereas I see in the T. intermedia breeding reports that eggs hatch in 3-4 days... but those are both based on warmer temperatures, so at 21.5C, it might be longer for both species. I'll wait to find out what they hatch into before I create a spawning report.

Cheers,
Eric

[bekateen]

Eggs not hatched yet, but developing well. Given their size and failure to hatch in 1 day, I'm pretty confident that they aren't Microglanis eggs. Also, they look like every woodcat egg I've ever collected, so I'm going with

Tatia intermedia

.

Also, although the tank was cool at the time of spawning, it wasn't my intent for the tank to be so cool. Apparently the 100W heater is not keeping up with heat loss through the uncovered top of the tank and through the back wall of the tank, which is just inches from an outside-facing window (now in mid/late autumn). So early today I added a second 100W heater. Together, the two heaters have raised the tank temperature to 76F/24.5C.

Cheers, Eric

[bekateen]

Eggs day 2:

One embryo died without hatching on day 2. The rest look good.
https://youtube.com/shorts/xp-0mg8iml8

[bekateen]

Day 3 and nothing hatched alive yet, but the embryos are fanning away. Hopefully something hatches soon. I think a couple are missing as I don't count 20 anymore.

Cheers,
Eric

[bekateen]

First egg hatched today. A little baby with a significant amount of yolk is wiggling around in the fry tray. I hope it didn't hatch prematurely.

Cheers, Eric

[characinkid]

Thanks for documenting this in such detail. With the ones that I have hatched, this looks about right to me, they will sit like that for a day or 2 before becoming true free-swimming.

[bekateen]

Thanks for documenting this in such detail. With the ones that I have hatched, this looks about right to me, they will sit like that for a day or 2 before becoming true free-swimming.

I'm glad to hear that sound normal, but in my fish's case, I don't think it was: sadly the baby that hatched out yesterday is dead today.

Two more have hatched today, and the remainder are still wiggling away in their jelly coats. Hopefully they fare better than yesterday's hatchling.

One thing that struck me about the hatchling yesterday was that even though it was out of the egg case, it continued to do the body flipping (left and right) on its yolk sac as if it were still in the jelly coat. That's why I wondered if it hatched prematurely. The two who are hatched today are just sitting still until something bumps them, then they swim away forcefully. That seems like a more healthy response mechanism than what I observed yesterday.

Cheers,
Eric

[bekateen]

Several more eggs hatched overnight, but more still remain to hatch. A few good fry moving about the tray, but one dead one remains. Unfortunately, I don't know if the dead fry is the same one from a day ago, or if that fry disintegrated and this fry I see now is another dead one. I'll just have to wait and count fry when they're all hatched.

Ohhh, this is dragging out. Patience...

Cheers, Eric

[bekateen]

One final inspection tonight before going home (it's 6pm here now): Nearly all the eggs have hatched, but there are about 4 still unhatched. It's now been nearly 6.5 days since I first found the eggs.

I wonder if the lower temp at the time of spawning (and for the first approximately 1.5 days after spawning) could have dragged out the incubation time. My eggs started at 21.5C and I raised them to 24.5C later the next day. I see other people with incubation temps of 24-25C reporting 3 days to hatching. While my first egg did hatch on day 3, it then died, as did the one that hatched the next day too.

Cheers, Eric

[bekateen]

Here are the fry today. The video description is:

Here are my Tatia cf. Intermedia fry on the day after the final eggs hatched. I started with about 20 eggs. One egg died on day 1 of incubation. A couple more disappeared or hatched by day 4. Those early hatchlings also died. On days 5 and 6 of incubation, the rest of the eggs hatched. Today I have 12 wigglers swimming around. Some are definitely strong swimmers, but others spin feebly. IDK if the weak swimmers are just younger or if they are doomed to die. Time will tell.

Cheers,
Eric
Peruvian Tatia cf. intermedia fry 1 day old