While we're waiting.....

While we're waiting for Fabio and Faith to produce more eggs, the Paracentropyge venusta pair that also lives with us has produced a good fertile spawn.

The venusta larvae are heavily pigmented and look much darker than other angelfish larvae I have worked with. Below is a larva 22 hours after hatching.

Here is a larva at 46 hrs post hatch. You can see that the yolk sac is smaller and the eyes are developing. Soon the larvae will be ready to catch their prey and start feeding.

Today is day 3 post hatch and here is a not very good photo but you can get an idea of the developmental stage of the larva. Eyes and mouth are now developed and the larvae are feeding. This larva has a full gut but it's difficult to see at this angle.

Here is a close up of the gut taken at 400x to check gut content. Unfortunately we cannot identify anything in the gut because the content of this gut is very well digested and that's a good thing. The reddish spots show that this larva is consuming some copepods.

This batch of larvae are being fed wild caught plankton and cultured parvocalanus copepods and ciliates. They are being fed more cultured than wild food since I was ready with copepods in hopes of a Faith/Fabio spawn. These larvae look healthy but it's only day 3 so keep your fingers crossed for them to continue on strong in their development.