SJO breeding experiment

[TyroneGenade]

An update:

20% Pisa tap, 24°C: egg viablity is 25/201 = 12.4% which is not much better than 10% at 22°C. No Wright, warmer water doesn't seem to improve the quality of the males' ammo one itty-bitty bit. I did observe however, that witht he softer water many more eggs were "soft" to the touch than when I was using harder water.

So now we must return to Wright's statement that the sand may damage the eggs... I will now harden the water again while keeping the temp the same and see what this does. But first, I'm going to add some tea to the tank.

There has been a lot of talk on the BKA list about using tea in killie tank to improve fertility and encourage spawning (SJO need no encouragement as those 200 eggs came form 2 days spawning!).

(If you wish to continue the tea debate please start a new thread.)

tt4n

[erikthur]

Sorry, I could not find the thread in question - please, give link

[RonWill]

Erik,
The thread is linked in bold text within my message but this is where you posted;
http://www.killies.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1148

[erikthur]

Sorry, I meant the link of the tea discussion in BKA forum...

[TyroneGenade]

The BKA email list... not the forum. If you go to the archives on Yahoo you will find all the info.

Regards

[erikthur]

The BKA email list... not the forum. If you go to the archives on Yahoo you will find all the info.

So that is where the discussion is going on in BKA - I have really been disappointed about the low activity of the BKA forum. But now I understand why that is so...

BTW - is there any other hot "killi discussions" to belong to?

Thanks, Erik

[stormhawk]

Hi Erik, most if not all of the killie mailing lists are closed to the general public unless you're part of their association. With the exception of Killietalk and this forum I don't see much elsewhere.

Others of note are the NMG and the SAA mailing groups.

Since you're from Sweden how's the discussions going on in the SKS group?

[TyroneGenade]

The BKA list is open to all.

As far as I am concerned killies.com and the BKA are the two best forums available for killifish discussion.

(The SAA is nice for dedicated SAA stuff though.)

tt4n

[erikthur]

I am trying to join SAA as Tyrone knows but nothing seem to happen...

Concerning SKS we have a forum with better activity than the BKA forum (but that don´t say much since the activity of BKA is elsewhere).
Latest post in SKS was Jan 21 by Svein BTW.

[TyroneGenade]

An update:

Current conditions:
20% hard pisa tap water
24°C
2 Rooibos teabags

32% (61/189) survival after 1 week. More than double what was had previously (max: 12%, same conditions as above -tea bags).

Now the questions:
1) could the males simply be older and hence more fertile?
2) is it only the effect of the tea or a combination of one or both the soft water and higher temp?

Next phase of the experiments:
1) Drop the temp down to 22°C again and see what happens.
2) Raise the temp, increase the hardness
3) drop the temp and increase the hardness

Now for the serious science.:-)

tt4n

[nonamethefish]

I will be setting mine up right now...it will be

2 gallon critter keeper

-peat substrate(they refused a bowl last time for spawning around the ten gallon).

-normal tap water.(Ph 7.5 and should be moderately hard) I might mix in a bit of RO water for good measure but I don't have an RO unit here.

[nonamethefish]

After letting the fish spawn for a few hours I removed them and let it stand for around 2 hours. After that I removed the peat and squeezed it out gently and then carefully went through it-nothing. Perhaps I didn't wait long enough before dealing with them-or maybe I just missed them?

Suggestions appreciated.

How does some fishy hanky-panky go around? I didn't want to overly disturb the fish so kept lighting dim.




And the happy male back where he belongs

[erikthur]

Looks like spawning to me.
But the question is if there is any female involved?
The partner seems to be a little bit too colorful for my liking.
The females I have seen so far show no striations on the sides at all.
Could it be a male not showing his true colors because of the dominant male?

[TyroneGenade]

I'm afraid I share Erik's sentiments. your female also doesn't look fat enough. In any case, the eggs are hard to spot in peat.

You may want to try the sand method and see what you find.

Regards

[nonamethefish]

You guys may be right on plumpness-but I am sure this is a female. She has laid eggs for me(but they turned white). Praps I'll have to up the feeding a bit more than I had. They went through all the motions including the jerking which sends the egg into the peat so I am a bit perplexed.

[TyroneGenade]

Hello,

2 weeks back I started hardening the water in my SJO tank. Tuesday I pulled some eggs and put them on peat.

The tanks conditions are:
hard Pisa tap water
24°C
tea-bags

84 eggs were collected and as of today 0 survive. This is THE worst result so far.

It is my guess, based on the results from the experiments, that hard water is unconducant to breeding SJO and that the best results seem to be had by having a temp of 24°C, soft water and tea extract.

The experiments will continue...

I now have a group of about 15 fry growing up.:-) Incubation time is 6 weeks at 20°C.

tt4n

[promethean_spark]

I've only been spawning my SJO for a month now, but here's how I do it. I keep them in a 10g with java moss and a mesh divider so that they can fuel their passion for eachother without contact. Then every week when I do the water change, I syphon 3g of water into a bucket with two bottom-mops and throw them in overnight. The next morning they go back in the 10g and I pick the mops. So far I've gotten ~500, 200 and 150 eggs from the three spawnings and the 1 and 2 week old batches have only had a few eggs turn white and fungus.

Temp is 74'F, hardness ~12dh.

I squeeze out the boiled peat and pat it down in a small tub, then lay the eggs on it so they're spaced out a bit and store them in a dark closet. We'll see how they hatch, so far the fertility seems high ~98%, but I'm not counting my fry until they hatch. Maybe your pair has fertility issues?

[TyroneGenade]

Hello Sparky

How old are your fish? I'm told that the males don't reach full fertility till about 1 year of age.

Thanks for the info.

[promethean_spark]

I got them last June when they were 3.5". Now they're about 5", I guess they were a couple months old at that point, so maybe they're 10 months now?

I left them together for most of the time, hoping some eggs in the java moss would water incubate and provide hassle-free fry, but after 6 months I gave up on that and decided I'd better get them to spawn before they get too old - though they've probably got at least another year in them yet.

I alternately feed them frozen brine shrimp and frozen blood-worms to condition them, and they were conditioned for about 2 weeks before the first spawn, and 1 for the other two, hence the size of the first one. I was amazed that so much roe came out of that female.

[TyroneGenade]

Alas the SJO breeding experiment (on my side of the globe) has had to be put on hold for now. The lab's new tank/racks arrived last Friday and everything had to move. My SJO are now in the central system so I can't fiddle with the water parameters anymore... This is quite a pitty as they are now in hard Pisa tap and all the data suggested soft acid water works best.

I also just added a peat tub in place of sand, which they took to willing (as opposed to the kribianus/fallax which seem on driving the females all over the place). I'll pull the peat later this week and see what happens.

Adding insult to injury, my 60 good SJO eggs eyed-up last week but because I was busy I couldn't check on them and wet them. When I looked yesterday there were just 16 eggs left... the rest had just disintegrated on the peat. I see one of the fry has 2 heads... (Great! an extra mouth to feed. )

I plan to take the SJO home and set them up in soft water again. My tanks at home are now at 19°C and everyone is begining to wake up from the winter rest at 15--17°C.

Regards