Dry Incubation of Pseudomugil Eggs

[Woowala]

Has anyone here ever incubated Pseudomugil eggs in peat like killifish guys do?  Or heard if it works or definitely doesn't? 

I'm trying to get them all to hatch out around the same time, like you might do with non-annual killies.  Couldn't find much info online.  I'm gonna give it a try either way, unless it's known not to work.

[TOtrees]

I couldn't say if moist-incubating would work, but I do know from experience that if you're collecting furcata eggs over a period of say 2-3 weeks, and hatching them, they all stay close enough to the same stage/size that you can treat them as a single cohort, and they end up close enough in size at selling time that you can't tell the early from late hatchers. In a 2-3 week span I hatched out enough to sell close to 200, and that was from only a few females. 

[Woowala]

That's good to know, hopefully these guys are similar. I've been grouping them about 7-10 days apart as they hatch out, and so far the difference been the early and late ones is fairly evident, but we'll see how it goes. 

I'm still gonna try the peat incubation cuz I'm curious now. Worst case they all die and it's a waste of 20 minutes. 

[MrGibson]

Definitely report back on results. It’d be neat if it worked 

[Woowala]

Will do. I haven't collected eggs in about a week, so the plan is to collect tonight and get anything laid in the last week,  then again tomorrow for the peat (actually coco fiber).

I'm not sure if it would be best to collect eggs, place in methylene blue for a day to remove infertile eggs, then put in the peat, or to just add a bit of meth blue to the water I soak the peat in and add the eggs directly. I'll probably try both ways. 

Right now I'm getting pretty bad hatch rates. About half the eggs are usually infertile and about half of the good ones actually end up hatching.  I'm hoping it's just cuz they're young fish, but in case anyone sees what I'm doing wrong, my process is this- pull mops, remove eggs and reattach to some 3 inch lengths of wet yarn that then go into a cup with tank water and a bit of meth blue. They can be out of the water here for a good few minutes while I'm checking mops and I think either drying or temp changes might be a problem.  Next day I pull the bad eggs, and usually check again the next day before changing out about half the water. I change out most of the cup water again around day 10. Cups are just placed on a high shelf and stay between 75 and 80 degrees. Anyone who breeds blue eyes, how do you handle the eggs? 

This is all fine for now with the gerts but eventually I'd like to get some P. mellis and it'd be nice to have the egg procedure dialed in. 

[Woowala]

Son of b**** stole my line! 😄

 

I think I'm gonna try this method first as it doesn't involve me hacking chunks off a brick of fake peat.  If I had some actual peat on hand I'd try it for the acidity, but we'll see how this goes.  I collected 18 eggs last night, haven't checked them yet.  I'll probably do this a few different ways and see what happens.  It'd be really nice to just collect some eggs and throw em in a bag for a week before hatching.  

[jwcarlson]

On 8/27/2024 at 10:54 AM, Woowala said:

Son of b**** stole my line! 😄

Hey hey, we don't talk bad about @Lowells Fish Lab around here.  🤣😆

[Woowala]

Ha, I would never.

I don't know why I didn't think to use paper towel. So easy!

[Lowells Fish Lab]

On 8/27/2024 at 8:54 AM, Woowala said:

Son of b**** stole my line! 😄

It's true, it was the perfect heist. There was even a double cross at the end.

Paper towel worked well. No complaints there. Next thing I'm going to try is some kind of a sponge pad. The finer the better. Maybe melamine.

[Woowala]

I was thinking an empty teabag or even some small micron screen, for being able to just lift the eggs off the paper towel.  I'll post the results. 

Thanks for your video, it's tough being motivated to pick eggs when you think you're probably just gonna purposefully kill them. It was encouraging.

[Woowala]

Mini update. Things seem to be going well. Well enough anyway. About half the eggs are infertile as usual, but that's nothing to do with this. The real question is whether the hatch rate improves or if the timing is better (they all hatch out at once). I collected on the 28th, 29th, and 30th so I plan on putting them all in water on Friday, when the 28ths will be at day 10, the 29ths day 9, and the 30ths day 8.  We'll see what happens.

Pics, about 5.5 days old/after collecting. It's hard to get a clear pic with a cell phone and a jeweler's loupe.

[MrGibson]

Any updates on how this worked out?

[Woowala]

I was planning on putting them in water on Friday, but jumped the gun a bit and did it tonight. I dunked all 4 sets of eggs I had, collected on 8/28, 8/29, 8/30, and 9/1. So 9, 8, 7, and 5 days incubation respectively. I noted the number of viable eggs in each, so we'll see when/how many hatch out, but it'll probably be anywhere from a day to never lol. The infertile eggs did fungus up a bit, but it didn't seem to spread to the good eggs.

The 8/28 collection I just put on a paper towel.  All others I cut an empty tea bag (the kind you fill up with loose tea) into ~3x3 inch squares and put that on top of the paper towel.  There's a rougher side to the tea bag which made transferring the eggs from my fingers to the tea bag easier, and it lifted off the paper towel easily with all the eggs when I transferred them to water. So I'll likely do that or something like it going forward.

[beastie]

I have the luminatus and one girl who did the tour with Keeping fish simple on youtube, she just plucks the eggs in a cup of water, no aeration, no nothing, and in 2-3 weeks they hatch. Mine take a long time too and while my hatch rate is super low, I had some eggs hatch in a closed bucket filled with moss. Crazy fish. My group just reached dying age and I am super sad as I didnt breed enough of them and think now is too late

[Woowala]

That's essentially what I was doing, and it worked, but low percentages. This is actually less effort so if I got the same hatch rate this way I'd be happy, but hopefully it can improve.  I've got enough fry now that it's no big deal either way, but when I get some P. mellis it'd be nice to know what I'm doing. 😄 

[Woowala]

So quick update- half the eggs from the 28th have hatched, and one from the 29th the next day. Took about 13 days, but it's been cooler here lately so I'd attribute the slight delay to that and not this method.  Still waiting to see what the final hatch rate will be, but so far so good.

[Desktop Aquatics]

On 9/6/2024 at 12:26 AM, Woowala said:

That's essentially what I was doing, and it worked, but low percentages. This is actually less effort so if I got the same hatch rate this way I'd be happy, but hopefully it can improve.  I've got enough fry now that it's no big deal either way, but when I get some P. mellis it'd be nice to know what I'm doing. 😄 

I have 2 locales of mellis. They have significantly lower egg counts than other psuedomugils (1-5 eggs a day on a great day). I have 1 local inside in a well planted 15 gallon and they produced so far 8 fry in 4 months. Probably 15 eggs total. My other local are out  a tub and I’ve probably counted 60-80 fry over the summer but a total of probably 15 have grown out. Hopefully by next fall I’ll have big enough colonies I can start selling some!

[Woowala]

That's too bad about the low numbers, but great that they're increasing.  F2 generation might be more prolific for you. Definitely keep us updated. 

[Woowala]

Just wanted to give a final update on this trial run.  Not quite final results- 7/8 eggs hatched from the 28th, 4/4 from the 29th, 4/5 from the 30th, and 7/8 from the 1st.  Still giving the last 2 eggs from the last 2 days time, but overall a much improved hatch rate.  I didn't notice any difference in the fry or anything else really- no deformities, and the hatching was still spread out over multiple days for each collection. Seemingly no difference either between the eggs that were submerged a day before they hatched and the ones submerged 5 days before. I'll have to wait for another try to see how the fry develop later as all these fry were put into a tank with other normally hatched fry.

Overall I'd say this was pretty successful- a bit easier than dealing with cups of water and methylene blue, and a higher hatch rate.  I think the conclusion is that I could do a better job keeping the hatchout water really clean, and if I did I might see a similar hatch rate with either method.