Jump to content


Photo

Lucania parva eggs


13 replies to this topic

#1 lilyea

lilyea
  • NANFA Member
  • Peace River Watershed, Central Florida, USA

Posted 02 November 2016 - 07:53 PM

This evening I pulled about 20 eggs from the spawning mop in my Lucania parva tank.  I have limited experience with this species (or any salt/brackish killies), but have bred a number of freshwater mop-spawning killies using both damp- and water-spawning methods.  I am looking for any advice on the best approach to hatching the parva eggs and then raising the fry.  Currently they are in a full-saltwater tank.  TIA



#2 mattknepley

mattknepley
  • NANFA Member
  • Smack-dab between the Savannah and the Saluda.

Posted 02 November 2016 - 07:57 PM

No insights here for you, but congratulations on the spawn and I hope all goes well with their development.
Matt Knepley
"No thanks, a third of a gopher would merely arouse my appetite..."

#3 lilyea

lilyea
  • NANFA Member
  • Peace River Watershed, Central Florida, USA

Posted 04 November 2016 - 07:19 PM

Thanks Matt.  I used a standard killifish spawning mop of 120 strands of green yard hanging from a craft styrofoam ball.  Based on the limited information on the internet about breeding parva, it appears that the eggs will hatch in about six days and then have a few more days for the fry to be sustained by their yolk sacs before I will need to provide some type of micro first foods (if they make it that far).  I currently have the eggs in a small dish and will do water changes with tank water on regular basis until hatch.  In future iterations I may use new saltwater instead of tank water for the eggs and will also try damp incubation to see what works best for me with this species.  I will also watch for wide spread fungus on the eggs and use an additive if necessary in future attempts.



#4 gerald

gerald
  • Global Moderator
  • Wake Forest, North Carolina

Posted 05 November 2016 - 09:20 AM

Hmmm ... that's unusual for a killifish.  Most use up the yolk while still in the egg, and hatch out ready to feed on day 1.  They certainly dont need full seawater strength.  Rainwaters live in freshwater springs far inland in central FL too (no salt, but fairly hard).


Gerald Pottern
-----------------------
Hangin' on the Neuse
"Taxonomy is the diaper used to organize the mess of evolution into discrete packages" - M.Sandel


#5 Doug_Dame

Doug_Dame
  • NANFA Member

Posted 05 November 2016 - 09:38 AM

They certainly dont need full seawater strength.  Rainwaters live in freshwater springs far inland in central FL too (no salt, but fairly hard).

 

This is correct. We know a spot off the St Johns River in the middle of the Ocala National Forest that has parva, and it has to be at least 80 miles upriver. 


Doug Dame

Floridian now back in Florida
 


#6 lilyea

lilyea
  • NANFA Member
  • Peace River Watershed, Central Florida, USA

Posted 05 November 2016 - 12:39 PM

Hmmm ... that's unusual for a killifish.  Most use up the yolk while still in the egg, and hatch out ready to feed on day 1.  They certainly dont need full seawater strength.  Rainwaters live in freshwater springs far inland in central FL too (no salt, but fairly hard).

 

Gerald - thank you for the input.  Your comments definitely alignment with my experiences with killies.  However, because the parva eggs haven't hatched yet, my comments about the yolk were based on what I have read and not on my experience with related species.  Specifically, the website http://txstate.fishe...cania parva.htmincludes the statement: " Food habits:  After hatching and spending about one week on the bottom until yolk sac is absorbed, young fish move up into water column and begin to feed (Foster 1967)."  Either my interpretation of the statement or the statement itself may be incorrect.  Hopefully from lived experience I will know soon enough but I certainly welcome further insights.

 

Also, I fully agree that this species doesn't need full seawater strength which is exactly why I pointed out the salinity as a spawning descriptor because some information stated that they prefer to spawn in freshwater and, like Doug mentioned, I am also familiar with the relic population of freshwater parva in central Florida (yes, Doug we missed you on this recent Tampa Bay collecting trip O:)).  While this may or may not be true in general (I am only dealing with a single data point), it seemed to be worth mentioning that they spawned at a specific gravity of approximately 1.024.  

 

These fish were collected about two weeks ago in the grass flats at the south end of Tampa Bay during a collecting trip with several NANFAns.  My intent was to slowly drop the salinity in the tank over progressive weekly water changes in hopes of eventually breeding the fish.  I was targeting a brackish range of 1.015-1.018 or maybe even lower.  Clearly the fish hadn't seen my notes and decided not to wait!



#7 gerald

gerald
  • Global Moderator
  • Wake Forest, North Carolina

Posted 05 November 2016 - 01:18 PM

A guy in our Raleigh club has been breeding them.  I'll ask him for his input.

 

Here's Matt's response:   I collected 1 m/f small young pair of L parva last December at Sanibel Isl. FL along Ding Darling wildlife drive, high salinity water with tide coming in from gulf.   Larger fish at the collecting site really showed up in the water with their blue top fins reflecting the sunlight.  I lowered salinity to minimal level over a month and the fish easily spawned on mops in a 5 gallon tank, successfully raised about 50 F1 fish from the original pair over 2 or 3 spawnings, removing parents and leaving the mops in the tank, feeding baby bring shrimp as first food.  No problems with eggs fungus.


Gerald Pottern
-----------------------
Hangin' on the Neuse
"Taxonomy is the diaper used to organize the mess of evolution into discrete packages" - M.Sandel


#8 Doug_Dame

Doug_Dame
  • NANFA Member

Posted 05 November 2016 - 02:31 PM

 

....  (yes, Doug we missed you on this recent Tampa Bay collecting trip O:)). 

 

By prior plan, the Fishmap Man (Ryan) and I hit Cedar Key that day. 

 

But I did make the Sunday trip, so got to see Tony again and meet Bill, plus most of the rest of the regulars from the SKS field division. Brought down some F. (nee Adinia) xenica from Cedar Key for the New England visitors, and was kindly gifted some of the Fl. carpio you all caught Saturday. So a win-win on that.


Doug Dame

Floridian now back in Florida
 


#9 lilyea

lilyea
  • NANFA Member
  • Peace River Watershed, Central Florida, USA

Posted 06 November 2016 - 07:04 PM

So far 3 eggs have hatched and most of the rest of the original batch have "eyed up" so I am expecting them to hatch within the next day or so.  It appears that ~6 days is the correct hatching time for Parva.  I have started to set up a fry tank to transition them out of the hatching bowl.  Yesterday I pulled about 10 more eggs from the spawning mop so they continue to provide eggs for me to experiment with until I can figure this out.



#10 mattknepley

mattknepley
  • NANFA Member
  • Smack-dab between the Savannah and the Saluda.

Posted 06 November 2016 - 08:06 PM

Either making it easy for you or toying with you...
Hope it turns out to be the former!
Matt Knepley
"No thanks, a third of a gopher would merely arouse my appetite..."

#11 lilyea

lilyea
  • NANFA Member
  • Peace River Watershed, Central Florida, USA

Posted 20 November 2016 - 07:21 PM

I continue to pull about 10 eggs a week from the mop and have a fairly high hatch rate using water incubation, but initially struggled with the first food.  BBS, frozen BBS, and frozen Rotifers seem to be working better and the survival (and growth) rate is improving.  I am also rotating a small sponge filter from the adult tank that presumably is also bringing more microscopic treats.

 

Goldstein's book says that Parva fry are able to take BBS right away (Gerald, I'm embarrassed to say this wasn't the first book I consulted and it took me a while to find this).  I had assumed because of the small size of the fry that they would need a transition food (e.g., plankton, etc.) during the first few days, but this doesn't appear to be necessary.



#12 Joshaeus

Joshaeus
  • NANFA Guest

Posted 22 November 2016 - 06:15 PM

These aren't L. parva but rather the closely related L. goodei, but I thought it would be relevant to mention this here...anyhow, last Wednesday I got four L. goodei fry as a surprise stowaway on some purple cabomba I bought (I at first thought they were hitchhiking danio eggs from another tank, but they took microworms and BBS right away and have green eyes, neither of which describe zebra danios...the seller stated that the tank the cabomba came from had bluefin and pygmy killies in it and the fry were obviously not pygmy killie fry). Anyhow, they are doing well at - surprisingly - a temperature in the high 70's, PH of 6, TDS of 27 ppm, and almost zero KH and GH (this was - and eventually will be - a licorice gourami tank). I knew our native killies were hardy, but to get this kind of hardiness out of a genus decidedly associated with hard or brackish water is astonishing (and the seller said he had given the cabomba a potassium permanganate bath!) Oh, they're not the slightest bit sensitive to water changes either :)



#13 gerald

gerald
  • Global Moderator
  • Wake Forest, North Carolina

Posted 22 November 2016 - 10:25 PM

If you have the option of moving them to harder water, I would.  They might survive OK in soft, but most likely they'll grow and develop better with a few degrees GH.


Gerald Pottern
-----------------------
Hangin' on the Neuse
"Taxonomy is the diaper used to organize the mess of evolution into discrete packages" - M.Sandel


#14 Joshaeus

Joshaeus
  • NANFA Guest

Posted 23 November 2016 - 07:00 AM

I know...just waiting for them to grow a bit (the presumed L. goodei are still transparent and maybe 6 mm long)





Reply to this topic



  


0 user(s) are reading this topic

0 members, 0 guests, 0 anonymous users