Genicanthus personatus :)

Hey Everyone

Over ten years ago while I was working at the Waikiki Aquarium I had the amazing opportunity to spend some time over a couple of years to do larval rearing work with the Masked Angelfish, Genicanthus paersonatus.  We succeeded in raising one fish "Geni Babe".

Since then one of my life goals has been to work with G. personatus again. It was a goal that I believed might not ever happen but I kept it swimming around in my head as a dream. This last spring that dream came true with an unbelievable opportunity given to me by rebreather diver Rufus Kimura. The information was to be kept under wraps until it could be announced at MACNA in Colorado this weekend. So now I am free to share the information with you.

The following video footage and photos were taken by me and if you've visited this site before you know that I am not a good photographer. A friend of mine, Leighton Lum has taken some lovely photos of the adults and juveniles as well as other fish from the Faith and Fabio Project. You can visit his site at http://www.photographybyleighton.com

So here's how it went down.

Rufus went down, deep. He collected a pair of masked angelfish.
The male was the largest I've ever seen and became known as Jumbo.
The female is lovely and is known as Hina.
Here is a photo of each. The photos do not do them justice!

The pair was collected in the winter and spawned on March 2. I was busy with the Paracentropyge venusta of the Rising Tide Conservation project and had to fit the G. personatus into my free time. The following two months were the most hectic, exciting, stressful and fun months as I made the journey through the most successful larval rearing run I've had to date.

Here are a couple of photos of the juveniles taken yesterday at six months of age.

The following are video links to You Tube so that you can see how the larvae progressed starting with the most recent.

Here they are at day 91 feasting on Herbivore  Frenzy provided by Larry's Reef Services
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ig1yl66Klo&feature=em-upload_owner-smbtn


Here is day 57. G. personatus juveniles casually swimming around their grow out tank.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DalZuT1HHCc&feature=em-upload_owner-smbtn


Day 49 playing peek a boo.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6YxO3li6H0&feature=em-upload_owner-smbtn


Here we are at day 40 when the first laval personatus settled out to it's juvenile form.
A very exciting day!!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51l9cUX-jYw&feature=em-upload_owner-smbtn


Day 36 when I transferred some of the larvae to a bare tank which had my "magic rock" in it. This is the rock most of my clownfish have started spawning on and the rock that Geni Babe settle on over ten years ago.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4O0pfqTwuwk&feature=em-upload_owner-smbtn


Day 30 of the larval rearing run.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tqi_Tefs14&feature=em-upload_owner-smbtn


This larval run was done using wild collected plankton and I think it's interesting to note that this was my best ever larval run and has been a year of amazing reef fish recruitment in Hawaii.

Rufus requested a video giving my perspective on this "G. personatus Project".
I would like to leave you with the video and a message that I wrote to a friend regarding the video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9_uWZXaxEk&feature=youtu.be


I think that video may come back to haunt me.

I'm not good at being in front of the camera and I'd never done a video with the computer. My husband set me up with photo booth on the lap top and went to bed. I tried four times and on the fifth I thought, that one wasn't as bad. I must have thought that out loud because my husband says from the bed "I heard you say UM at least ten times". So I tried several more times and finally felt OK with it. The sound wasn't very good but I had the volume all the way up so I stuck with it and sent it to Rufus.

The next morning I played it back and it looks freaky with the lighting. I look like a cabbage patch doll! My contact lens had been bothering me and my eye looks swollen. I said to my husband "you have to watch this and tell me how bad it looks". I push play for him and he starts laughing uncontrollably. He says "It looks like you're missing teeth". And sure enough it does! Now I start laughing and he says "I think these people are going to start an Indigogo campaign for you to get your teeth fixed!"

Oh the sacrifices I make for this hobby!

Day 55 for the P. venusta

Just a quick update at day 55 for the P. venusta in trial 8.
I took some video this morning and the larvae continue to develop juvenile coloration. We can now see more blue on the dorsal compared to just two days ago.

http://youtu.be/Gjs_Enh5NpE

I'm very happy with this group since their larval phase has been quite a bit shorter than our previous successful trial and this batch has been reared on only cultured foods, (no wild plankton). They are still on living foods, currently being fed Artemia as we slowly introduce non living foods.

Day 53 for P. venusta trial 8

We're at day 53 and seeing some signs of pre settlement in the P. venusta larvae.
Here's a video showing what the larvae look like today. This larva seems to be the furthest along in development.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvRWkFBaxDM

Day 44 Paracentropyge venusta

Well we are at day 44 of trial 8 for the P. venusta and we've started having a few deaths.
In an effort to get all of the larvae moved into clean tanks I had to move some into a 20 gallon grow out tank. I moved a total of 34 larvae to this tank over the last few days and they have settled in fairly well. This is quite a change for them at this early age.
Here's a video of them exploring their new home.
http://youtu.be/P0k1Obu8bBs

Once they were moved and I could set up a new tank where they had been I moved the rest of this batch (56 larvae) to a clean larval tank. So we currently have a total of 90 larvae and I do expect to lose a few more over the coming days after all this moving.

I also have a photo of one of todays dead larvae and would like to share that as well since they are so beautiful at this stage and the video doesn't do them justice.  This is one of the larger larvae which is 1.6cm total length.

It's day 33 of trial 8 for the P. venusta

It's day 33 of trial 8 for the P. venusta and things are going well, (knock wood).
The larvae are currently feeding on Artemia with a supplement of copepods.
We are at approximately 25% survival which is great. I don't know the exact percent survival since I am estimating the number of larvae at 120. We'll know better when all the larvae are moved and counted.

Here's a video taken today. You may notice that I'm getting better with the camera. :)
http://youtu.be/Q7yztLYo2t8

P. venusta Trial 8 day 13

We left off on June 27 hoping to get a good batch of eggs on the new moon. You all did a great job at keeping your fingers crossed and we had another large spawn. I collected the spawn, took it out to the fish garage and set it on top of one of the water storage barrels. As I bent over and reached around to grab an air line I knocked the barrel with my rear end just enough to jiggle the beaker of eggs and cause the top 2mm of water in the beaker to slosh out over the top. About 90% of the eggs were floating in that surface water and were now all over the top of the water storage barrel.  All I could do was clean up the mess and go to bed grumpy.

The following night the venusta pair produced a smaller spawn of 424 eggs. All were fertile and Trial 8 was finally underway.
Today we are at day 13 and the larvae look great. We've had very good survival and I estimate there are currently 120 larvae. I've been keeping the food density at 2 to 4 items per ml. and temp. at 25 to 26C.

Here is a video taken this morning. Like my other videos it goes in and out of focus but there are some good glimpses of the larvae.
http://youtu.be/q4akT-GlvTE

The last 'cultured food only' larval trial with the P. venusta was looking good at day 5. The larvae I sampled had nice full guts and were looking healthy. Then on days 6 to 8 things were not looking so good. The number of larvae was declining rapidly and they did not look as healthy. Most larvae had empty guts on day 6 and I wondered if the larvae I had looked at on day 5 were the best of the bunch and these empty guts were there but not sampled. I think from the way things were looking that most of the larvae did not start to feed and the larvae I had sampled were the fat/healthy ones up in the water column that I could see. At any rate the run was not going well and I stopped it in order to prepare for a new one. The time required to bring up the copepod cultures for the next run would set us up to start around the new moon which is perfect timing.

So here we are at the week of the new moon. I've been watching the P. venusta pair and was able to collect over a thousand eggs on Tues. evening (3 days before new moon). Unfortunately those eggs were not fertile. I collected another thousand on Wed. evening. Also not fertile. Last night (Thurs. evening) there was no spawn. Tonight is the new moon and we're all set to go so please keep your fingers crossed for a fertile spawn!

Here is a video I took earlier this week of the venusta pair 

http://youtu.be/mH44iP4wPxY

I've also been setting the egg screen for Faith and Fabio and checking for eggs from Jaws, Connie and the fish from the Rising Tide project. I have not gotten any eggs from any of them yet. I'll say it again, Patience is a virtue!