Larvae development of Lion/Scorpion Fish

LuckyFish

LuckyFish

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Hi guys,

it is not easter yet, but I got the chance to play around with some real tricky eggs.
I collected the eggs today and study the development over the weekend. Lets see how far it goes.

The pictures were taken around 3 to 4 hours posthatch. The amazing part is, I took these pictures with my old Nokia N95 in macro mode. The lens from this phone is small enough to take a picture through the microscope. I dont know how to explain it better. Maybe like that...
I got a stereo microscope, so two things to peep through. Through the one side, I peeped through and through the other I took the pictures.

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This set of pictures will be probably the last from this batch.
Because of the very short notice to collect the eggs, I wasn´t prepared for what I have seen so far.
Usually the eggs are coming in a ball/egg mass. This ball breaks because of bacteria activity and the eggs are free to dissapear all over the show in the ocean. The membrane that forms the ball is like jelly and it is toxic. Which makes sense, otherwise a predator swallows the whole ball and that´s it.
I haven´t seen this ball/egg mass myself, but next time, I will post pictures from the beginning. I have to build something to keeep the larvae in the water column.
After hatch the larvae floats close to the surface, but at the following morning they are all at the bottom. Not good.
From what I have seen so far, I reckon first feeding will be at day 5 or 6. First food should be sized around 20 to 40 micron. Rotifers are in average around 250 micron.
So I have to culture food, which I can´t even see with the naked eye. Got some ideas how to develop a food culture of ciliates.
Worldwide no success in raising Lion/Scorpion fish and the longest survival was 6 days posthatch. That´s a real challenge. As long as I get once in a while some eggs to play around, I can build up my pool of experiences. Guess, this thread will be running for a very long period.

So, now the latest pictures taken 24 hours after hatch (posthatch).

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This Nokia N 95 is a brilliant camera to take pictures through a microscope. Who would have thought, pictures like that could be taken with a cellphone.
 
Marcel - this is REALLY SUPER AWESOME! I cannot believe that you were able to achieve that with a "normal" cellphone camera (over a microscope of course!)

BTW: What do you mean? Does this mean that the larvae does not/did not/will not survive, and you will have to "try again" as soon as you can get more fertilized eggs?
 
jacquesb said:
Marcel - this is REALLY SUPER AWESOME! I cannot believe that you were able to achieve that with a "normal" cellphone camera (over a microscope of course!)

BTW: What do you mean? Does this mean that the larvae does not/did not/will not survive, and you will have to "try again" as soon as you can get more fertilized eggs?
Click to expand...

Yes Jacques. As expected, all larvae died during the last night.
And yes, I will try it again, as soon as I get the next batch of eggs.

And yes again, I also cannot believe, that I took these pictures with a cell phone.
 
I haven´t even started to build something to the larvae in the water column and I have to fetch two egg balls today. Lets see how far I can get with the next lot.
 
Pterois miles

Finally, I know what eggs I collected today. Two egg sac with each around 2.000 eggs. It´s from the Lionfish Pterois miles.
Hope this time I will get a few days further with these guys. Which means, there are many pictures to come.

Took these ones against the sun, which was already setting.

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