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[Ummfish]

Here are photos of a sixline wrasse egg, an hour or so old!!!

At 4x under the scope, with backlighting:



At 4x under the scope, with no backlighting:



To give you a sense of scale, I took a photo of millimeter marks on a ruler at 4x:



At 10x, with backlighting:



At 10x, with no backlighting:

[The Escaped Ape]

Wow, those are some pretty cool shots.

[Ummfish]

Thanks, Tom!

Moving on ahead, sixline egg at 17-18 hours.

[The Escaped Ape]

It's going to be excellent if you can follow this whole way through! Looking good so far.

[Ummfish]

Well, the examination tonight didn't go so well. It looks like the egg might have been unfertilized and now it seems like it's starting to disintegrate. Looks to me like it's also starting to get invaded by bacteria. I still need to download photos from the microscope, but it's not going to be tonight.

But, that's the good thing about fish that spawn every day. Plenty of chances to practice.

[The Escaped Ape]

That's a pity, but looking forward to the next attempt!

[Ummfish]

Sixline wrasse embryo, 15 hours post-collection and somewhere between 15 and 18 hours post-spawn!!

[The Escaped Ape]

Very cool. Did the original egg turn out to be OK, or is this a new one?

[Ummfish]

Nope. The original was a dud. Egg counts have been rising this week. I managed to collect 81 last night. I'm having to bathe them in an antibiotic bath because the eggs were fouling really quickly. That seems to be helping.

[Ummfish]

151 eggs last night.

But here's the kicker: Sixline wrasse prolarva!!!



This is killing me. I thought I was taking a bunch of video, washed the little one back into the petri dish, and then found out that the microscope hadn't saved any of it. So, this photo is the only one I have right now. Details: the prolarva is looking close to 2+ mm. Measurements were one of the things I was going to use video for. The yolk sac looks pretty depleted at this point, though still present. The larva looks pretty close to Figure 2, B ("1 day, 2.44mm TL") from the Kimura & Kiriyama paper referenced above.

[mwp]

Andy, can you elaborate on the antibiotic bath you're giving the eggs?

[Ummfish]

It's very scientific. I'm breaking the Maracyn SW into tiny pieces and allowing the smallest I can get to dissolve in the petri dish with the water movement while I'm pipetting. Very controlled. I haven't been giving a water change afterward. The antibiotics didn't seem to be slowing the little guy down any.

111 eggs tonight. I made a new egg incubator this afternoon, so the eggs went in there. That's a water pitcher from Target.



And here's my egg collector with pipette.

[The Escaped Ape]

It's pretty impressive, even it's achieved through trial and error (perhaps even more so because it is!).

[Ummfish]

Thanks! I don't really know what I'm doing, but I'm trying. The dose on the package is 1 pill per 20 gals. So, I could mix up 20 gals. of this stuff and do it the safe way. But, I'm not quite sure how I would exchange out the water. The batch tonight, the pipetting put too much water in the petri dish and I had to concentrate the petri's water and it was very difficult and time consuming to do without pulling eggs back out again. But, the Maracyn stains the water yellow and I now know by sight what dose will allow hatches and still leave the ciliates alive. That seems like a good place to aim so far.

News from tonight: 218 sixline wrasse eggs. I had a petri dish open, so that's where they went.

And, here's a short video of a sixline wrasse prolarva from earlier today! It's still not too far from hatching. You'll see that the mouth hasn't developed yet and there's still part of the yolk sac where the mouth will be. Also, does it look like the heart is in front of the eyes?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKm8R7f3R8o

Stills from the video:







Without backlighting:

[The Escaped Ape]

You should post a link to this thread in the GRD forum. This thread is too good not to have more viewers.

[Lawdawg]

Wow...just wow! How cool is that

[MartinE]

I to have been impressed by this thread and will continue to follow along.

[Ummfish]

Thanks, y'all! I hope to move past the "watch them develop" stage and on to the "try to raise them" stage soon. This parts fun and necessary, but it's time to get on to the hard part.

[MartinE]

I hope you get to as well. I admire your patience, I have often wondered if I could accomplish breeding and raising marine fish.

[Ummfish]

Well, you could always start off like me and find some Banggais (captive-bred, please ). The big mystery there is just getting the male to hold to term. Otherwise, they are really easy. Careful, though. I think this is the most addictive part of the hobby. There's lots of new ground for challenges and captive breeding needs all the help it can get.

I left the water flow a little too strong through the collector and when I went down there was flow coming over the top. So, lame collection tonight. I only managed to find about 30 eggs.