It was completely unexpected, but I was able to catch my frogfish pair spawning and caught part of it on video a couple days ago. I believe the male was able to fertilize the egg raft, and I'm now on a frantic quest to get up to speed on raising fry. Any help, or pointers to info would be greatly appreciated!

Okay i hope you got the egg raft in some sort of egg tumbler or kriesel whereby the eggs are gently rolling in well oxygenated water.

Thats said, the eggs hatch quickly,in a few days, and the planktonic fry require a smallish first food. While there are a few report of successful spawning of these fish in captivity there are very few to report any success w/ the fry. I suspect the fry are prolly gonna require either the smallest rotifers (b strain) or copepod nauplii. I dont recall when the fry settle out, but the egg tumbler or kriesel will be useful during this time. Once the fry settle they will require more zooplankton-like foods for 3 weeks at which point they become carnviorous,(18-20mm).

Unlike most people who only report gravid females spawning you've got yourself guarenteed fertile spawn. Do you have access to a QX3 or other computer-based microscope-this development is gonna be killer.

I'll look up some old references and report back

Frank
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"We are continually faced with a series of great opportunities disguised as insolvable problems."- John Gardner

Yes, these ugly fishes are my favorite. Frogfishes in general, that is. These particular ones aren't ugly in a cute way like some of the others, though.

I did put the egg raft into a container at the bottom of the tank with a gutter guard lid. And the egg mass had been tumbling around with the water circulation. The eggs have hatched by now, and the remainder of the raft is dissolving.

I can barely see tiny clear fry swimming around. They are maybe 1/2mm in length. (I don't have a microscope.) I had turned off the hang on filter, and ran some air line tubing into the tank for circulation. I don't have any live food prepared. I'm still trying to read and get up to speed on what I should be doing.

I did put some Phytofeast into the tank, and a small amount of Hikari frozen rotifers. I suspect neither of these are appropriate, but I'll find out as soon as I read some more. I'm thinking to stir up some of the water in the refugium on my 72 reef and to put that into the fry tank periodically. Or would dissolving some marine flake food into some tank water be of any benefit for the fry? Either directly as food, or indirectly for growing microorganisms for the fry? It may be that I won't have a food source in time for these babies, and that I'll have to prepare for the next time the fish spawn.

I'm concerned about maintaining the water quality on the fry tank. The 2 adults are still in the tank, and I don't see how do water changes with the babies in the tank. I could remove the adults, but what about water changes?

Thanks!

Going to try to get some video of the larvae.

Thanks for all the previous information.

Just a quick post of urls for a couple new vids. This is the 3rd batch of eggs from the dorehensis pair, 5 days after spawning. The 2 clips were taken 15 hours apart.

http://media.putfile.com/egg-raft-with-larvae

http://media.putfile.com/larvae

Lots of free swimming larvae this morning. I have rotifer and pod cultures now, and have added a small amount of rotifers to the larvae container as of late last night. Perhaps too early to add rotifers? I thought it might be too long to wait until this evening after work.

Any recommendations regarding the babies?

Thanks!

RENEE

You're welcome. I'll probably do another video clip this evening.

Sure, I'll give that a shot.

On harvesting rotifers - I'd been refreshing the rotifer culture by straining a portion through a paper coffee filter and feeding it to my reef. I saw a reference to straining through reuseable filters but found that the rotifers passed through the mesh. Here's a url to the type of filter basket:

http://www.hometownstores.com/detail.aspx?ID=75999&ovchn=GGL&ovcpn=Ace%20Hardware&ovcrn=Coffee%20Filter%20Basket&ovtac=CMP

Is there something readily avaiable that would work well? The paper filter method is slow.

Actually, I don't! Though if nauplii are smaller than rotifers, I'm guessing I could pour the pod culture through the reuseable filter to separate the adults, then try to filter out the nauplii on a paper filter?

The fry were between 1-2mm.

So if rotifers are too big for them, the progression of feeds would be, nauplii, rotifers, copepods, then small shrimps or something else?

There was a Thaler article recently about saltwater acclimated and bred guppies as suitable long term food for frogfishes. Any recommendations?

Thanks!