I've had some trouble with the P. venusta larvae and bullying. There had been some minor chasing and displays of dominance over the last month. Last week one larva went missing and I noticed the bullying had escalated. Three of the submissive larvae were removed from the tank leaving the two more dominant larvae and the unknown blonde. I had hoped that the two venusta would pair up but that was not the case and they had to be separated as well. Currently the most dominant is living with 30 picasso clowns of her same size in a clownfish grow out tank. She is very happy with them. The second most dominant is still in the original tank with the unknown blonde and they are now buddies. Unfortunately the three submissive larvae  died from what I think was a bacterial infection. When I moved them from their original tank they had no signs of physical damage but I think the aggressiveness towards them had weakened them and along with the stress of moving the infection was able to overcome them. I had treated them with antibiotics and I wonder if it may have been too much for them as little as they are and in a weakened state. I feel so sad for their loss and have learned more about this species which brings up more questions for their future captive rearing and especially grow out techniques.

To end on a happier note, here is a more recent video of the unknown blonde larva taken a week ago. You can see the dark blue on her pelvic fins. We are into 5 months now and this larva has still not completely gone through meta and I'm still not sure what she is!
http://youtu.be/SdK2nq_esYk

Hi Everyone,

I've posted a short overview of the larval rearing for the P. venusta on the Rising Tide Conservation blog.
http://risingtideconservation.blogspot.com

The last P. venusta larval trial with only cultured foods came to an end after two water quality issues. One was a heater that went nuts and over heated. The other was that I had purchased a food grade Rubbermade trash barrel for water storage and after conditioning it with fresh water and letting it sit out in the sun I stored some salt water in it. A few days later the area around the barrel had an odor similar to cat spray (urine). Sometimes neighbors cats do visit my fish garage so I grumbled to myself about cat spray and went on to use the water in the barrel. Then realized the odor was coming from the inside of the barrel! This was strange since I've always used these barrels without a problem. I don't know what the cause is with this one but I rinsed and dried the barrel, refilled it and a couple days later it smelled again. So it is no longer a water storage barrel and I just wanted to pass along this info in case anyone else has a similar experience. Don't use the water if it smells like cat urine! (How crazy is that)!
Otherwise, the cultured food only P. venusta larval run was going fairly well (not great but good) and I will be starting another as soon as eggs are available.

Still no spawn from Faith and Fabio or any of the other pairs.