day 45 of P. venusta larval run

We're at Day 45 today.
Two smaller larvae have died in the past week and the rest (22 of them) look great.
Two are swimming in and out of the magic rock and here is some really lousy video of them.
The food in the water column is day 1 and day 4 Artemia enriched with Selco.

http://youtu.be/5zP_Y2R4nAY

Happy Holidays Everyone!

Just want to say Happy Holidays to all you larval fish lovers out there!
I hope the holidays are wonderful for you all and that the New Year is filled with fish successes!

The P. venusta larvae are doing well and are 41 days old today on Christmas Day.
There are still 24 left and they haven't changed much in development over the past week but some are really pulling away from the rest in size. I have put my magic rock in the tank in hopes that they will settle in it. It is the rock my first clownfish pair spawned on back in the early eighties and the rock the G. personatus settled on over ten years ago. Last year at this time the G. watanabei were playing in it just after settlement.

The larger larvae are orienting to the sides and bottom of the tank and were so cute a couple of days ago as twelve of them were lined up in a row at the edge where the bottom meets the side of the tank. They all had their tails towards the tank side, facing the middle of the tank with even spacing of  a couple of mm between each larva. I tried to get a photo but there was too much reflection. They looked like tiny synchronized swimmers!

They are consuming amazing amounts of Artemia and I am equally amazed by (and proud of) the amount of feces they are producing! Good quality poop = good quality larvae!

Day 33 of Paracentropyge venusta trial 5

The P. venusta larvae are doing great and eating more food than I can grow! They have pretty much stopped eating food items less than 100 microns in size and have been eating the larger adults of the Parvocalanus copepods. I'm running out of cultured foods so yesterday I started introducing small amounts of newly hatched Artemia and they snapped them up.

I moved them to a clean tank yesterday and we still have 24 larvae. :) I'm very happy with this number at this age. It's a good precent survival and hopefully they'll all make it to settlement...
They are less active now since they can easily catch the Artemia and that makes focusing much easier for the camera.
Here is a video taken this evening.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKPXikLzIgI&feature=youtu.be

Day 26 of P. venusta trial 5

I moved the larvae to a clean tank again yesterday and we now have 24 left. I was surprised and a little disappointed since I had not seen any dead bodies the past week and I was hoping we still had 31. The 24 larvae that I moved all look to be the P. venusta and I think all of the C. acanthops were lost a few days after the last transfer. I think the C. acanthops died when they went though a developmental phase. I did see 4 bodies on the bottom of the old tank after I moved all the larvae and drained most of the water. The dead were the smaller larvae but were now taller bodied than when I last saw them. Hopefully we will have more C. acanthops eggs to work with in the future.

Here is a video of the larvae today. Check out how fat this little larva is!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIdsHTEBiyg&feature=youtu.be

I also took some video from the surface of the tank. It is not very clear (as usual) but I thought some of you might be interested in seeing the fish from this angle as well.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPjFYgF1FOs

Day 20 of P. venusta trial 5

This larval trial is still doing well. :)

On Day 15 I transferred all of the larvae (33) to a new/clean tank.
They continue to grow and develop. One thing I've noticed is that they seem more sensitive to light now so I'm adding more algae to the water which seems to make the larvae more comfortable.

There are 4 larvae that are smaller in size, longer bodied and have a jaw line that looks heavier than the other larvae. I'm assuming these are the African Flameback larvae (C. acanthops) and am happy that out of 20 Flameback eggs we have 4 larvae. That's a good percentage!

Here is another out of focus video taken today of the larvae.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUJZJbysQYs