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

[bekateen]

The fry look like they are ready to start feeding, but they are weak swimmers.

[bekateen]

Found another fry in the tank today. It looks the same age as the fry in my feet tray, so for now I suspect this is another Tatia intermedia, maybe from an egg I missed when collecting from the tank.

In the photos, the baby is center-screen, between the two pieces of brown plant matter; the baby faces opposite directions in each photo.

Cheers, Eric

[bekateen]

I saw two fry loose in the tank this evening and I was able to capture one and move it to the fry box with the other fry. This guy is 6mm SL.

[characinkid]

Good stuff, congrats on hatching them. What do you plan on feeding them? Ive found that decap BS and microworms work best, and only in the dark.

BTW, your fry in the tank is like a "where is waldo!!"

[bekateen]

Thanks! I've got live microworms for them, then as they grow I'll switch to frozen cyclops and frozen baby brine shrimp.

Yeah, Where's Waldo is pretty accurate. Lol

Cheers, Eric

[bekateen]

Quoting Gomer Pyle, "Surprise, surprise surprise!"

I got to work this morning and inspected the tank to check on the fry in the fry tray and to look for new eggs. The fry in the tray are okay, and I saw two more fry loose in the tank over the false floor. But that's not the surprise. The surprise is that I found almost 30 more fry wedged inside the Matten filter by the front glass. When my Amblydoras nauticus did that, they got stuck and died. I hope these babies don't repeat that fatal outcome.

The unknown of this is, if there are about 30 fry against the glass, how many fry are in the Matten overall? Obviously there's another glass edge at the back of the tank, plus there's the entire Matten face, a 12"x12" area!

Only time will tell how many fry I get out of this, but obviously the "potential" is for way more than the 8 or so I have in the fry tray now.

Cheers, Eric

Are Tatia cf. intermedia fry suicidal?!?

[bekateen]

Here's three examples of what should happen vs. what is happening:

The first photo shows what's supposed to happen: a fry is hiding in the spun coconut husk fibers. The fibers are loosely packed and the fry can get out of it easily.

The second photo shows what's in the video: A lot of fry wedged in the Matten.

The third photo shows what I suspect might have happened in the past with the baby Microglanis, which would explain how the baby Microglanis was able to get inside the canister filter and then get shoved half-way out the spray bar, where the fry got stuck and died: One fry had successfully navigated across almost the entire thickness of the Matten and now its tail is sticking into the chamber housing the heaters, the 800-gallon-per-hour pump, and the Eheim Professionel3 intake hose.

[bekateen]

Using a turkey baster, I was able to recover about 6-10 fry from the front of the Matten filter. These are now added to the fry tray with the original fry I had hatched. I now have about 20 fry in the tray.

At least two fry crossed the Matten into the hidden pump chamber. I have no idea what will happen to them now.

Cheers, Eric

[Jools]

They will probably grow in there and breed.

Cheers,

Jools

[bekateen]

I'm delighted to see that although many Tatia intermedia fry died in the foam, many others are not stuck in the foam but are moving in and out of it rather freely for now. IDK how long this will last; I expect at some point they'll grow so big and then get stuck. So today I collected more fry and moved them to the tray. Now I have over 97 fry in the tray.

Cheers, Eric

[bekateen]

I found three dead fry today, which I expected since a few were deformed when I last checked Friday. On the good side, I collected almost 30 more fry, so even with the losses I'm over 120 fry.

Growth check at the start of week 2, about 7.5mm SL.

[characinkid]

Congrats on finding that many fry! Are you seeing them eat? Hope you can raise many of them as they are super fun when they get 1inch plus and you see them all flying around the tank!
Good luck.

[bekateen]

Congrats on finding that many fry! Are you seeing them eat? Hope you can raise many of them as they are super fun when they get 1inch plus and you see them all flying around the tank!
Good luck.

Thanks! No, I haven't seen them eat, but I've read they only eat during the night (so hopefully they eat after I go home at night). They're alive, so I expect they're eating. That said, on Facebook, someone mentioned that they look thin for their age, so maybe they're eating but not enough.

Fingers crossed.

Cheers, Eric

[bekateen]

Got back from 4 days out of town. Had a student feeding the fry while I was gone, but even so, about half of the fry are dead. The rest look good and vital. Fed them frozen cyclops tonight.

[bekateen]

Three weeks, 8mm SL. This photo was taken along the inches side of the ruler, so the marks are 16ths of an inch.

[bekateen]

One month old, this is the largest at 10mm SL. This character would not sit still for photos! UGH

Cheers, Eric

[Jools]

Great pics!

Cheers,

Jools