miket
08-16-2007, 08:54 PM
OK,
I know this is pretty rare, but it seems my two Six Line Wrasse are breeding.
History:
----------------------------
The 125 gallon tank I have acquired from a friend has been set up in my place for 5 weeks, it was running 2.5 years at my friends place. There was a larger (almost 3 inch) Six line wrasse in the tank for almost the entire time. 4 weeks ago I introduced a smaller (1.5 inch) Six line wrasse I have had for about a year. The fought like crazy for the first week, lots of mad chases, a few nips, the little one was living behind power heads or overflows during this madness (I almost removed her). After this first week they started hanging out together.
Another thing I noticed after this pairing. The larger Six Line started to perform cleaning duties on other fish (the previous owner never saw this, nor had I). He cleans the tang, manderin, Eibli and sometimes the Tomato Clown (who has no idea he is trying to clean and fights back).
My guess is maybe the larger Wrasse was female when kept alone, now turning male due to the smaller female, and this maybe triggered a natural urge to clean fish? The female never cleans anyone.
Sunday night:
---------------------
My wife and I noticed that the larger six line was swimming odd, on his side, all bent, fins spread out, extremely vibrant color. On a closer look we saw he was courting the smaller six line. We noticed she was very fat in the mid-section (eggs). They did some neat dances, swam around like mad-fish, then disappeared behind a rock.
Monday afternoon:
--------------------
Smaller Six Line was normal sized (no eggs) so I figured some kind of spawning event took place. Both fish seemed to ignore each other, larger six line still continuing to clean other fish.
Wednesday night:
-------------------
During a midnight flashlight check of the Anemone's I recently gotten (making sure they aren't out trekking around) I noticed something tiny with bright eyes zipping around the rock work, not crawling on legs like a pod, but swimming. Looking around the tank more i found around 10-20 of these things. I have bred fish before and they look like tiny fry to me. They didn't swim out into the open that much, but clung to the rock structure and caves inside it. They were centered around the large rock I saw the wrasses disappear into after the love dance.
So...
I am not hopeful for any surviving fry to grow in the tank, there are too many other fish.
It looks possible to extract the fry if I catch the hatching event, 3-4 day incubation seems pretty short to me, I wonder if these fry is from an earlier batch where i missed the spawning dance.
They are the only pair of fish in the tank, and I know it isn't shrimp fry or pods so I am pretty sure the fry were from the wrasses.
There is no info about these spawning in captivity... so it appears I would be treading new ground trying to raise them.
Any suggestions?
- MikeT
I know this is pretty rare, but it seems my two Six Line Wrasse are breeding.
History:
----------------------------
The 125 gallon tank I have acquired from a friend has been set up in my place for 5 weeks, it was running 2.5 years at my friends place. There was a larger (almost 3 inch) Six line wrasse in the tank for almost the entire time. 4 weeks ago I introduced a smaller (1.5 inch) Six line wrasse I have had for about a year. The fought like crazy for the first week, lots of mad chases, a few nips, the little one was living behind power heads or overflows during this madness (I almost removed her). After this first week they started hanging out together.
Another thing I noticed after this pairing. The larger Six Line started to perform cleaning duties on other fish (the previous owner never saw this, nor had I). He cleans the tang, manderin, Eibli and sometimes the Tomato Clown (who has no idea he is trying to clean and fights back).
My guess is maybe the larger Wrasse was female when kept alone, now turning male due to the smaller female, and this maybe triggered a natural urge to clean fish? The female never cleans anyone.
Sunday night:
---------------------
My wife and I noticed that the larger six line was swimming odd, on his side, all bent, fins spread out, extremely vibrant color. On a closer look we saw he was courting the smaller six line. We noticed she was very fat in the mid-section (eggs). They did some neat dances, swam around like mad-fish, then disappeared behind a rock.
Monday afternoon:
--------------------
Smaller Six Line was normal sized (no eggs) so I figured some kind of spawning event took place. Both fish seemed to ignore each other, larger six line still continuing to clean other fish.
Wednesday night:
-------------------
During a midnight flashlight check of the Anemone's I recently gotten (making sure they aren't out trekking around) I noticed something tiny with bright eyes zipping around the rock work, not crawling on legs like a pod, but swimming. Looking around the tank more i found around 10-20 of these things. I have bred fish before and they look like tiny fry to me. They didn't swim out into the open that much, but clung to the rock structure and caves inside it. They were centered around the large rock I saw the wrasses disappear into after the love dance.
So...
I am not hopeful for any surviving fry to grow in the tank, there are too many other fish.
It looks possible to extract the fry if I catch the hatching event, 3-4 day incubation seems pretty short to me, I wonder if these fry is from an earlier batch where i missed the spawning dance.
They are the only pair of fish in the tank, and I know it isn't shrimp fry or pods so I am pretty sure the fry were from the wrasses.
There is no info about these spawning in captivity... so it appears I would be treading new ground trying to raise them.
Any suggestions?
- MikeT