fish breeders and other urban legends?

mandarinman

mandarinman

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this is my hobbyhorse! i hear of successful breeders of various fish and it is quoted as fact! when in fact fish have accidentally spawned in a tank. fish breeding in my opinion is when a person can recreate or place fish in a specific enviroment for purposes of breeding. having done this,encourage fishes to pair , spawn and for the breeder to successfully raise the young to adulthood or thereabouts. i heard of a guy in the states who is spoken of in breeding circles as a person who has bred mandarins. i contacted him and he told me he hasnt kept any larvae past ten days. yet the urban legends live on. if you have successfully bred any specific species based on intention to do so please put your name down with the specific species that you have bred and the amount of young adult fish you have produced. ( i can if i want to , does not count. and neither does watching fish spawn in your tank. (yes i am grumpy)
 
So successfully raising fry without the intent to actually keep the parents as a breeding pair doesn't count? With the seahorses, the intent to breed was there when the horses were initially purchased. Things changed and that was put on hold. The horses didn't wait for my life to change. They were kept in a shorter tank for a while to discourage breeding. Once their tank got taller all hell broke loose. I can't say that I really encouraged it though.

Maybe it would be a good idea if under the breeding section we added breeding journals. People could document the conditions they kept their pairs and fry in, along with success.
 
mandarinman said:
this is my hobbyhorse! i hear of successful breeders of various fish and it is quoted as fact! when in fact fish have accidentally spawned in a tank. fish breeding in my opinion is when a person can recreate or place fish in a specific enviroment for purposes of breeding. having done this,encourage fishes to pair , spawn and for the breeder to successfully raise the young to adulthood or thereabouts. i heard of a guy in the states who is spoken of in breeding circles as a person who has bred mandarins. i contacted him and he told me he hasnt kept any larvae past ten days. yet the urban legends live on. if you have successfully bred any specific species based on intention to do so please put your name down with the specific species that you have bred and the amount of young adult fish you have produced. ( i can if i want to , does not count. and neither does watching fish spawn in your tank. (yes i am grumpy)
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Are you talking about Matt Pedersen?
As far as I know, probably the first person who raised mandarins is Julian Sprung.
Matt Wittenrich published his results with breeding mandarins in his book.
Don't get me wrong Glen, but do you really know what to expect?
Do you have any idea what a
mandarin egg or larvae looks like? You will be shocked.
I saw eggs from mandarins, dominos, yellow bellies and lionfish.
Except mandarins, I saw all the larvae and it is still a long way to go, before I raise damsels to adulthood. Raising clowns is easy as driving a car, but raising freespawners, even damsels is more like flying a helicopter.
I take my hat off when you succeed.
All the luck to you, you will need it.
 
lol marcel i do know what a mandarin looks like at each stage .and yes they do look weird. i hope to be able to breed mandarins one day successfully and from all the reading ive done since january it is not easy at all. i am not in a hurry to succeed, i enjoy learning the process(i am gathering equipment on a monthly basis as my knowledge increases,) what i am saying is if a person is successfully breeding a specific species and started out with that intention and has got the process right, please tell us about it , if something happened by accident good on you(whoever). i think breeding any species is not a short term project and each step needs to be perfected before moving up to the next level. i do however hate it when i hear about this or that person who has apparently bred this or that species( and make out that they did something special to achieve results when in fact they had the same amount of participation and right to aparent urban legend status as a pimp hiring out prostitutes . i would like to propose a registry for successfully bred species and a breeding challenge per year as per other sites ive seen where they say i will try to breed this species and run a thread or blog on the equipment, trials and errors for the year of the challenge, so that we can learn from each other.
 
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mandarinman said:
lol marcel i do know what a mandarin looks like at each stage .and yes they do look weird.
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Glen, I am not talking about pictures. Have you seen them with your own eyes?
Believe me, it is a really big difference. To be very honest. When I wrote, I am raising the damsels soon, I was sure about it, because I know what the larvae looks like.
The problem was, my mind was playing a fool with me. Yes, I had thousands of damsel larvae every week and I did not know what to do with them, because at that stage I did not even raise a clown. Now, that I am able to raise clown above 95% survival rate in a very efficient way, I thought, damsels are not that big problem.
When I saw the last time damsel larvae and when I saw them recently, there was more than year in between. I could not believe, that my mind was telling me, they are just a bit smaller than clown larvae. I was shocked. They are so tiny and see through, so my damsel project takes a bit longer than expected. Damsel larvae is so small, they get easily caught at the water surface and die. I don´t want to think about it, to play with freespawner larvae. But still, I am going to raise the damsels, for sure. I also know, that does not count. And yes, it is the challenge which makes it so interesting. What is challenging these days? If you got money, the challenges are becoming very limited as you can buy everything.
Breeding marines is very different. I really would like to know how it works to raise freshwater fry. They are also very small. It must be frustrating for a freshwater breeder, who is able to raise fry which you can not see and he can not raise marine fry in the same size or even bigger.
My biggest problem is time right now. Hopefully during the worldcup, the people are not buying taps! That will give me a bit of time to extend my fish room.
 
i agree , boy are they stunning! i saw a mandarin for the first time aboutfive years ago and that was it, i taught him to eat brine shrimp and moved him onto frozen mysis as well as the copepods in my nano(which lasted for the first month and for the next ten months he ate frozen. i only found out later that mandarins are jumpers. but i still really love mandarins. a tank with a decent coral setup and a pair of mandarins is the pinnacle of my fishy focus and if i can help some breed and document it wow! ps i am not into breeding for intentional resale. i am here to enjoy the trip!
 
marcel have you actually physically seen mandarin spawn,eggs and larvae!? if you have i can tell you i am jealous!
 
So what other fish has been successfully bred? This list is not happening.
 
Boegie said:
So what other fish has been successfully bred? This list is not happening.
Click to expand...

Okay Boegie, I was thinking of a list like that for a long time.
The problem is, I could come up with a list of 50 species or so, but than everybody would post another species and we still would not have list.
I will have a chat with Dean about it, how to install a list here in the breeding forum, which could be added.
Let's see what the possibilties are.
 
mandarinman said:
marcel have you actually physically seen mandarin spawn,eggs and larvae!? if you have i can tell you i am jealous!
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Now, I am making you very jealous.
Besides that I watched the mandarins I had in Germany on a weekly basis, I also watched them here in SA.
Every Wednesday around 9pm, the mandarins were spawning.
Many attempts were needed every week to swim up to the surface, because usually one of the other fish came in between the two mandarins.
So I never could tell, they will spawn just now.
Depending on the activity of the other inmates, it took them three to six times before they finally spawned. You also could say, sometimes the forplay took a bit longer.
The eggs are only visible in the moment of the release in a cloud of sperm. They drift in all directions and all other fish go crazy. It looked like the other fish is striking nothing.
The eggs are so tiny and look like the tiny air bubbles we got in our tanks.
Actually surprising, that somebody really raised them in quantity.
Once the mandarin pair is in the spawning rythym, you can set the clock and watch them every week. The good thing is, you can try to raise them on a weekly basis.
Catching the eggs is the first big challenge, the second one is to keep the eggs floating until they hatch and the larvae is fully developed with eyes and mouth.
That will take roughly three days from spawning.
 
Some commercially available captive bred marine species:

Pomacanthus maculosus
Pomacanthus maculosus (WHITE BAR)
Arusetta asfur

Chrysiptera cyanea
Pomacentrus moluccensis
Chrysiptera glauca

Premnas biaculeatus--gold bar

Amphiprion frenatus
Amphiprion rubrocinctus
Amphiprion clarkii-Australian
Amphiprion clarkii Solomon islands
Amphiprion ocellaris
Amphiprion percula
Amphiprion polymnus

Pseudochromis Fridmani
Pseudochromis Vlavivertex
Pseudochromis Aldabraensis

Elacatinus Oceanops

Hippocampus Kuda
Hippocampus Reidii

Paracanthurus Hepatus

Cromileptes altivelis


If I remember correctly, red sea fish pharm raised captive bred mandarins over 10 years ago...and the marine betta I think.
 
The list should include only captive bred species and not captive raised species.
I doubt the Arusetta asfur as an example was captive bred.
If they can raise the asfur, they should be able to breed any other angel and dwarf angel!
 
LuckyFish said:
The list should include only captive bred species and not captive raised species.
I doubt the Arusetta asfur as an example was captive bred.
If they can raise the asfur, they should be able to breed any other angel and dwarf angel!
Click to expand...

The Asfur angel is being captive bred in the east for a years now...
 
LuckyFish said:
Now, I am making you very jealous.
Besides that I watched the mandarins I had in Germany on a weekly basis, I also watched them here in SA.
Every Wednesday around 9pm, the mandarins were spawning.
Many attempts were needed every week to swim up to the surface, because usually one of the other fish came in between the two mandarins.
So I never could tell, they will spawn just now.
Depending on the activity of the other inmates, it took them three to six times before they finally spawned. You also could say, sometimes the forplay took a bit longer.
The eggs are only visible in the moment of the release in a cloud of sperm. They drift in all directions and all other fish go crazy. It looked like the other fish is striking nothing.
The eggs are so tiny and look like the tiny air bubbles we got in our tanks.
Actually surprising, that somebody really raised them in quantity.
Once the mandarin pair is in the spawning rythym, you can set the clock and watch them every week. The good thing is, you can try to raise them on a weekly basis.
Catching the eggs is the first big challenge, the second one is to keep the eggs floating until they hatch and the larvae is fully developed with eyes and mouth.
That will take roughly three days from spawning.
Click to expand...
boy marcel to find out if you have successfully bred mandarins or to what level you have got may take some water, a car battery and a set of jumper leads! lol
 
mandarinman said:
boy marcel to find out if you have successfully bred mandarins or to what level you have got may take some water, a car battery and a set of jumper leads! lol
Click to expand...

Glen, I did not even collect the eggs. That is what I meant, when I wrote that there is a big difference between looking at pictures or seeing it in front of your eyes.

Glen, when you think your life was challenging so far, then you will find "A REAL CHALLENGE" with breeding mandarins.
 
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