Thes guys are around 3" each they have been paired up for several months I thought she was pregnant before but this is the first time I have seen the eggs how would I save them from the other fish I do have empty tanks laying around.

Posted By scraping on 11-26-2009 11:42 AM
Thes guys are around 3" each they have been paired up for several months I thought she was pregnant before but this is the first time I have seen the eggs how would I save them from the other fish I do have empty tanks laying around.

Sorry I didn't notice the "question" the first time around...all I saw were cool cool pictures!

The reality is that ordinarily Watchman Gobies keep their eggs in their burrow.  They do practice some brood care, so in theory, you shouldn' t need to separate the eggs at all.  If you DO remove the eggs, you'll like have to figure out some means of artificial incubation using water or air current to keep the eggs alive.  That can be problematic.  The general concensus is leave the eggs with the parents if you can - they typically (but not always) do a better job.

What you WILL need to do is figure out how you're going to collect the larvae when they hatch, and those would be reared in a separate tank, probably using "greenwater technique" with life T-Iso and Nannochrloropsus for your algaes, and a smaller strain rotifer to start.  You'd probably need to black out the sides of the rearing tank as well.

If you do decide to try to rear YWC's, I'll simply pass along the same advice I give most people.  You're going to have failures and setbacks and false starts.  That's normal.  Your fish will give you many more spawns in coming months.  If you stick with it, you will have success, and it's sooooo worth it!

For more information, here's an article to get you started.

http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2005-.../index.php - Spawning and Rearing of the Yellow Watchman Goby

Thanks for the info

Matt, Are these larve the same as clownfish larve in the sense they are attracted to light? If they are, you might be able to collect them after lights out using a flashlight. From my understanding, normal reproducing(Female babie rotifer prodcers) rotifers are too big for these guys to eat. As the male rotifers are a lot smaller then the females, these may work. To get a good population of male rotifers, you need to overpopulate a culture of rotifers. My understanding is this is a way to get the smaller rotifers. Would love to try this challenging species to rear in the future...

Off the top of my head, I don't KNOW the answer. It would be fair to assume that since other goby larvae are positively phototrophic, these should be too...I found no conclusive info skimming a wide range of forum posts.

I know for a fact that they can be raised with regular L-Strain rotifers, but that the SS will work better. I think radiobot's suggestion of "overpopulating a culture of rotifers" to get male rotifers going *might* have some merit, but the flipside is that males typically show up right as the culture is actively crashing...conditions are deteriorating to the point where the rotifers are "jumping ship", creating cysts that will survive until conditions are more favorable. But don't hold me to that...there are many people who know a lot more about rotifers than myself. "Greenwater Technique", where you are basically co-culturing the baby fish and rotifers in the same tank, will allow for some "smaller" rotifers to be in the population...it's not like they're born "full size". And the phyto in "Greenwater Technique" helps keep all the rotifers enriched 24/7.

FWIW,

Matt

Getting a good population of male rotifers is risky as you mentioned. Had a quite a few crashes myself... Sounds like co cultuing is the way to go.