Genicanthus rearing video

[acroporas]

Karen Britain (who raised the fish) and Bruce Carlson (who made the video) asked us to host this video about the raising of Genicanthus angel. More details about Karen's success can be found viewtopic.php?f=204&t=1515



Download full resolution Video (60MB)

Karen or Bruce will hopefully fill in the details of what you are looking at.

(Edit by "Umm, fish?")We also need to let everyone know that this video is copyright (c) by Bruce Carlson. Thanks, Bruce, for letting us see it!(End of edit)

[Jhawkor]

So cool. Thanks for posting this video. Karen, this is really inspiring.

[Midnight Angel]

Karen you are amazing This is the coolest thing I have ever seen How long have you guys had this video ? Well all I can say is thanks so much for letting us all see it and great job And what a cute little baby that is


Amy

[phirefly]

Thank you for sharing! Amazing and inspirational

[fishtal]

Very nice! Thanks to Karen and Bruce for sharing.

[KMB]

Here's some info on the video. It was made by Bruce about 10 years ago when he was the director of the Waikiki Aquarium. He used it as part of his presentations about work being done at the Aquarium. Recently when I was wishing I had a photo of the ciliates used to raise the Genicanthus so that I could show it to "Umm, fish?" I remembered the video. I asked Bruce about it and he was very helpful in getting it to MOFIB.

So the opening is Genicanthus adults in the wild, I assume at Midway atoll. Next are the adults spawning at the Aquarium. These spawnings are actually several years before the spawns that I used. Then you see the larval rearing deck and the larval tank with the white barrels for algae culture and the square copepod tank. The shots done on the microscope are Tetraselmis, then rotifers, then the copepod Euterpina as adults and then euterpina nauplii. The ciliates follow and in my memory they were easier to see (sorry about that).

The larvae come next and are labeled with their age (days post hatch). My favorite of course is the 32 day old picking at my hand, I can't remember how many we had at this age but I think we were at less than 10 individuals. All the food that you see in the water at this stage is Artemia. The larval tank was becoming an Artemia growout tank because I had added too much.

If you look closely at the shot of the rock and sponge filter, there are actually two fish in the hole one is the settled Geni and the other is not settled yet. Unfortunately It died before it settled. The hole in that rock is about an inch and a half in diameter to give you an idea of scale.

And in the final footage of "Geni Babe" swimming around in her rock you can see her slightly deformed pelvic fin. Just like Nemo!

Thanks for all the positive remarks I'm glad you enjoy it

Karen

[Jhawkor]

Karen, you said before that the only foods used as first foods were rotifers and ciliates right? No copepod nauplii was used? Do you have an idea of what kind of food densities you had going in the larvae tank?

[KMB]

Hi Landon,

I started with ciliates which were probably 100 to 200/ml. At day 9 I added rotifers at 1/ml. I'm sure the rotifer numbers climbed but I don't recall what they were. I did flush to get rid of some.

I didn't add copepods until fairly far along. I think it was after day 60 but I'd have to check my notes to confirm. I only had euterpina at that time. If I had had calanoids I would have used them earlier. In fact I probably would have started with them and not ciliates, so it's a good thing I didn't have them.

Karen

[Jhawkor]

Hi Landon,

I started with ciliates which were probably 100 to 200/ml. At day 9 I added rotifers at 1/ml. I'm sure the rotifer numbers climbed but I don't recall what they were. I did flush to get rid of some.

I didn't add copepods until fairly far along. I think it was after day 60 but I'd have to check my notes to confirm. I only had euterpina at that time. If I had had calanoids I would have used them earlier. In fact I probably would have started with them and not ciliates, so it's a good thing I didn't have them.

Karen

That's a lot of ciliates!

[KMB]

Yup, when they bloom they bloom!