can we prevent belly-sliding?

[TyroneGenade]

Hi all,

I have been doing a lot of informal experimentation with tea. I have noticed that when I add Rooibos tea to the water I use to hatch SAA eggs I get less belly-sliders---none actually. 2 weeks ago I wet some Simpsonichthys punctulatus eggs and got 16 healthy fry. Not a single belly-slider. This is quite remarkable for me as I suffer chronically with belly-slider fry. Last week I wet some Simp. marginatus eggs and got 48 healthy fry. Not ONE belly-slider. But it gets more interesting… 3 weeks ago I wet some long overdue Simp. santanae eggs and got 5 fry. 1 was healthy and 4 were belly-sliders. I had not added Rooibos tea to the hatching water. I added a tea bag to the water 1 day after hatching and a few days later all 5 fry were swimming normally. I am inclined to think that not only can tea prevent belly-sliding among SAA fry but perhaps even rescue belly-sliding fry if added to the water soon after hatching.

I am proposing three experiments. The protocols are pretty straight forward. The purposes of these experiments will be to 1) find out if Rooibos tea can rescue belly-sliders; 2) if Rooibos tea can prevent belly-sliders; and 3) if it can prevent belly-sliders regardless of the hatching water’s temperature.

I normally use cool (10 to 15 degC) water to hatch eggs. This will be the control condition. This works much better than room temperature (20 degC) water. So for the first experiment we would do the following:
1. divide the peat/eggs up into 4 equal portions.
2. use cool water to wet 2 of the portions and room temperature water to wet the other two portions. (I wet my eggs in 1 L plastic tubs and fill it all the way up.)
3. add a Rooibos tea bag to one of the control (cool water) and experimental (room temperature) hatching tubs.
4. count the number of fry in each tub and how many of those fry are swimming normally.

This is the first experiment and it should tell us if the water temperature has anything to do with number of belly-sliders and if Rooibos tea has any effect on the number of healthy fry. Critical to this is that the experiment is repeated (preferably for the same species) so that large numbers of fry can be obtained for statistical analysis (or just use a lot of eggs to start with).

The second experiment will be as follows:
1. use cool water to wet the peat/eggs
2. count the number of fry in each tub and how many of those fry are swimming normally.
3. remove all the healthy fry and keep the belly-sliders. Divide the belly-sliders up between two fry tubs and add a rooibos tea bag to one of the tubs
4. after a week determine the number of healthy swimming fry in each tub
This experiment will tell us if the tea can rescue belly-sliding fry. Again, large numbers of egg will be needed.

Some species seem more prone to belly-sliding than others (i.e. luteoflammulatus and gymnoventris) but it seems that for many Austrolebias, depending how long you let the eyed-up eggs wait to be hatched and at what temperature you incubate affects the number of belly-sliders. So, for example, we could take eggs of a relatively productive species such as Austrolebias alexandrii, nigripinnis or toba and incubate them at a high temperature, let them wait about a month after eyeing-up and wet them, expecting more belly-sliders than normal.

I currently have the tank space to do the experiments but I do not have eggs. I would appreciate it if someone could send me eggs of Austrolebias or if they do not want to send eggs but would still like to participate, I can send them tea bags (though I think black or green tea would be equally effective).

If you would like to help out please let me know. Martin Foucade has volunteered to help but the more people involved the more data we can generate and the stronger our conclusions will be.

Any suggestions or advice would be greatly appreciated.

[Ivan Martinez]

Hello Tyrone

My name is Iván Martinez and live in Mendoza - Argentina, I would like to join the experiment, I have several austrolebias I would practice with green tea, rooibos tea not available in Mendoza