Spotted Congo Puffer Breeding Project

[mountaintoppufferkeeper]

Day one moved half to this fry tray half to another tray. Every dot is a baby spotted congo

[mountaintoppufferkeeper]

Day 2 

Feeding on paramecium from above. That surge forward move is feeding. They are Very comcentrated in and around the plants. additional subwassertang  cover will be a must in the next batch

[mountaintoppufferkeeper]

Day 3 August 11 2024

This is approximately 33% of the total hatch in this footage. They have the location of the feeding down as they are concentrated beneath where i add in food.

[Woowala]

This is great, outstanding work.  Do they only eat moving food? I imagine so, but was wondering if they might be willing to go for something like 5 micron golden pearls if mixed in with infusoria once they've learned to associate that area with food. 

[mountaintoppufferkeeper]

On 8/12/2024 at 5:30 AM, Woowala said:

This is great, outstanding work.  Do they only eat moving food? I imagine so, but was wondering if they might be willing to go for something like 5 micron golden pearls if mixed in with infusoria once they've learned to associate that area with food. 

Thanks kindly. The hard part will be the next 2 to 3 weeks (or so) until we get to BBS sized foods.

I have not personally been able to get any spotted congo puffer fry to take anything but paramecium for the first 21 days of life. This has included golden pearls, any prepared foods, or vinegar eels in past batches.

My opinion is the food needs to be moving in the water column for them to feed successfully and it probably needs to be small enough for them to take it in one shot until some point in development. I think that could be a function of how they feed when very small. You can see this in the day 2 GIF from the 10th of august where the one surges across the frame with its mouth open. It is also captured from the side in one of the June 2023 GIFs of this thread. This is very different from the older puffers who will do that tail curl and circle food before eating it.

They do crush paramecium and I do have my essentially drip feeding system going for them now. I am attempting walter worms and similar microfoods as manual daily feedings. They will start to eat foods off the bottom like worms at some point in their development I just have not documented that well enough in the past to be able to identify when that transition to worms begins in my tanks.   

[Woowala]

Ahh, too bad. Sure would be nice to cut that 3 week period down to 3 days.

[mountaintoppufferkeeper]

Agreed. Once we get them to even walter worms size ill feel better about their odds.... but so fsr going well

[mountaintoppufferkeeper]

Day 5 August 13 2024

Working on more maco videos and photos to show the development. You can see the fry in focus feed on a paramecium still have not yet seen obe go for a vinegsr eel or walter worm but we will continue to add some and try to get them all feeding on a variety of foods as fast as possible.

The tails are still more rudders with just the tail fin and pectoral fins being used to move. The tail itself still seems to not yet be a flexible body part with the abulility to curl. The tails are starting to bend a bit as you can see in these gifs

Feeding on paramecium

Turns up and on side then lunges mouth open

Edited August 14 by mountaintoppufferkeeper

[MarcT]

Fantastic Videos ! Great Job !

[mountaintoppufferkeeper]

Thanks the phone and I are getting better each round 🙂

[Odd Duck]

On 8/12/2024 at 9:03 PM, mountaintoppufferkeeper said:

Agreed. Once we get them to even walter worms size ill feel better about their odds.... but so fsr going well

Banana worms are fractionally smaller than Walter worms and pretty much identical care.  Might get you to more substantial prey just a few days sooner.  It’s too bad they won’t go for vinegar eels.  Are the eels too high in the water that they don’t go upwards for them?

[mountaintoppufferkeeper]

@Odd Duck. Thanks, I will try the banana worms before the walter as we inch to bigger foods.  I do have multipel cultures of paramecium, vinegar eels, banana worms, walter worms, micro worms, grindal worms, white worms, and a worm farm with a range of small earthworms to large nightcrawlers currently. Once we get past paramecium stage we should be growing quickly.

From my observations I think they have an issue eating foods bigger than they can fit in their mouths in one lunge at this size. I believe once their tail gets a little more flexible, they will be able to eat foods a bit more normally. 

To my eye they do not consider worms food even in the water column at the moment. In that first gif yesterday, they are basically using limited energy to adjust around the worms in the water to avoid being hit. So far, they are only looking for paramecium that they can swallow here. 

[Odd Duck]

It might be worth it to try a different species of Paramecium?  P. multimicronucleatum is supposed to be the largest and gets to 300 microns.  Here’s a link to buy cultures of this species.  I’m not sure what the more common species are in the trade or where you got your start up cultures, but I don’t think there’s a significant difference in how the species are cultured.  If you’re already feeding this species, maybe a mixed infusoria culture?
 

https://www.wardsci.com/store/product/8882995/ward-s-live-i-paramecium-multimicronucleatum-i-culture

[mountaintoppufferkeeper]

Much appreciated @Odd Duck. yeas they are mostly the tiny paramecium though i hsve done the filter squeeze mixed culture in a few jars as well. I will grab some of those multimicronucleatum and maybe the caudatum 

Getting bigger

Day 7

Zoomed out they are throughout 2 fry trays now and hunting all the tasty morsels in this clip

[mountaintoppufferkeeper]

Looks like I lost a few in this learning experience. I will be adjusting the temp a bit next batch and changing the feedings to more frequent schedule with a mix of paramecium species.

Still a good batch. Im just slightly off in my feeding system. Plenty of learning to still be had

next round collected yesterday

[mountaintoppufferkeeper]

Day 10 -

I discovered that this batch vanished overnight. Since they were eating and growing and only scuds were in both trays (in seperate sysyems) this morning scuds might have had a hand in the losses. A valuable lesson learned and now incorporated into my process improvements.

It must have been occuring at a slow rate for many days ..... I believe it could have been a combination of scuds running into the fry and injuring them (if not actually attacking them and feeding on them at night), the fry needing more food, and or needing food more often. 

I have adjusted the intake side replacing the intake sponge with 4 layers of 100% nylon. I also have 2 layers on the outflow sponge. Both of these should prevent the scuds from entering the trays as easily. 

I am adding another makemorefish fry tray into the system for additional grow out space for when the next huge batch hatches here. That could be the current eggs which are due to hatch midweek:

I am also continuing to work on  paramecium methods to increase ease of harvesting and density of paramecium feedings. Still sorting out that but getting better daily.  

On to this batch....

Day 3 eggs ( from small female)

 

Plan to move these eggs over from the MB container into a tray on day 4. Just prior to their expeced hatch day. Should be a fun next round this week. 

 

[mountaintoppufferkeeper]

Day 4

All moved to the fry tray for hatching....the process produced more infertile eggs, blue from MB, with the small female.

Im curious to see if that is consistent when the male and a larger female spawn again (likely next week)

i expect these guys to hatcg by 5pm tomorrow 

Edited August 20 by mountaintoppufferkeeper

[mountaintoppufferkeeper]

Day 5 post spawning 

Any hour now 

 

[mountaintoppufferkeeper]

Day 1.... it begins 

And back in the colony .....

[Beardedbillygoat1975]

Thanks for taking us along on your journey. These learnings must be bitter sweet. The innovative nature of your work is inspiring. 

[JMC]

I’m sorry to hear that you lost the previous batch of fry. It would be interesting if the scuds were actually killing the fry. I have been hatching Rich Fish in my scud tank for a few months and haven’t noticed a decrease in the hatching rate, but haven’t been too scientific about counting eggs going in vs fry coming out of the tank.
 

I know that Rice Fish are different than Puffers but I’d convinced myself that scuds were safe to have with eggs and new fry. I guess I should reevaluate my process, or at least start being more scientific about it. 
 

Thank you for taking the time to pass all of this great information along to us all. 

[mountaintoppufferkeeper]

@JMC yeah no worries part of the learning.  I do try and share all the experiences I gain and document the details for myself and others to continue to build off of where it might be helpful.

I can say I never saw a scud attack a puffer fry but I also never saw a puffer body and definately saw some incidental contact when scuds ran into spotted congo fry. They were certainly eating bodies not necessarily activwly attacking them. 

@Beardedbillygoat1975 yeah that was a bummer but I do like the growth I can take from the learning experiences I get myself into up here 🙂

Day 4 Sunday 25 August 2024

So far we have a good amount of fry going from this smaller spawning. I do see some dead fry but it appears like more fry are  living and  feeding than last try. 

Portion feeding on paramecium

Wider angle

A nano shrimp block added to keep mineral up when drip feeding paramecium. 

[Tlindsey]

On 8/25/2024 at 11:59 PM, mountaintoppufferkeeper said:

.  I do try and share all the experiences I gain and document the details for myself and others to continue to build off of where it might be helpful

You are a awesome person for doing that. 

[mountaintoppufferkeeper]

Day 5 26 August 2024

Portion of the group feesing on paramecium

[mountaintoppufferkeeper]

Day 8 29 August 2024

Certainly still losing some but to be expected until we get to day 21 or so ... a big runway left.

I have been feeding the smallest paramecium aurelia since day 1 and paramecium caudatum  since day 3 or so. I have not yet tried paramecium multimicronucleatum but may add those in soon just to have the biggest size option.

The white specks are paramecium. The green is a function of the light on the white fry tray.