Mating Behavior

[Paul B]

I have always said that if your fish are exhibiting mating behavior they are in the best of health. There are as many varied mating behaviors as there are fish. My fireclowns just get next to each other and shake while smacking each other with their tails, my bluestripped pipefish kind of swim parallel to each other and occasionally wrap around each other. Bangai cardinals just stay next to each other as do seahorses and the male of these gobies drag the female around in their mouth. This male has been holding (gingerly) the female by the area just before the tail for an hour. She is playing hard to get and is probably not ready to lay eggs. This pair has been laying eggs for a few years now.

Here is the female tending an earlier spawning

 

[9supratt4]

Ever have success raising any fry?

 

[Paul B]

Yes but not those gobies. I have only raised seahorses, blue devils, clownfish and bangai cardinals.
The rest I just let do what they do in my tank. The bluestripped pipefish fry can't even been seen and these gobies spawn all the time, someday if I have time I will collect the eggs and raise them.

 

[MadReefer]

Paul,
Been reading your posts and was wondering what constitutes healthy in your opinion. Is it just food or other things? I always felt my fish were healthy as I feed a varied diet but none even attempted spawning.

Mark

 

[Paul B]

what constitutes healthy in your opinion.

Mark, feeding a varied diet is not always the answer. Different fish ned different food. A copperband butterfly does not need vegetable matter nor does a mandarin. They get the vitamins they need from the meaty foods they eat.
Most tangs need greens and seahorses need live food. All of their dijestive systems are different and they need what they were built to eat. You can't have a mixed reef with 20 different types of fish and feed all of them the same food, even if it is a mixture of different foods. For instance, if you blend sardines, pellets and greens and feed that to a copperband, he may eat it but the greens will not give it the nutrition it needs.
I feel that a healthy fish is a spawning fish. Healthy fish spawn continousely. In a tank not all fish will spawn but the ones that can like damsels and most bottom dwellers should be constantly chasing away other males, cleaning a nest and looking great. If there is a female, she will fill with eggs. Only very healthy fish will breed. It takes a lot of energy to produce eggs and a fish "knows" if the tank is healthy enough to lay eggs.
If a fish is spawning, it is as healthy as it can be.
Almost no fish will spawn on a diet of flakes and pellets. They need fresh food full of oils. Fish are about 1/5th oil. It is in their liver and they use it for bouyancy and for general health along with egg production.
In the sea fish eat mostly "whole" fish. Not fillets, squid, clams, Ocean Nutrition,
lettuce or shrimp, they eat whole fish. Whole fish contains calcium in the bones and plenty of oil in the liver. Fish need this which is the reason I feed live worms and salt water fish eggs.
Prepared foods have a problem in that they can't be oily or they can't package it and it does not have to be refrigerated. A food that does not need refrigeration is lacking in oils and vitamins. These things do not last unless they are refrigerated so most prepared foods, while convenient are not the best foods.
We as humans also can't live long and healthy on foods that do not need refrigeration.
If there is nothing in a food to go bad, there is not much good things in that food.

 

[MadReefer]

Are you saying that frozen foods aren't good or good enough? All the food I feed the fish is frozen such as mysis, brine, blood worms, spirulina, and reef plankton. I was always hesitant on using fish eggs only because I wasn't sure what to use. I don't know any stores locally that sell live food except for brine and tubifex.

 

[Paul B]

Mad Reefer, no I didn't say frozen food was bad, I said food that does "not" need refrigeration is not the best food thre is. Frozen food is great, it is almost the same as fresh. I feed almost the same as you do except for the blood worms which are not really worms but insect larvae and not a good food for salt water fish. But it will not hurt them.
Any salt water fish eggs would be great and so is live black worms which have oils very similar to the oils that fish need. I have been breeding fish for many years and in every case (except fot pipefish) I got the fish into breeding condition very fast with black worms.
Tubifex worms are thinner and collected in very pollutted water and I would not use them. California black worms are raised in ponds for the aquarium industry.

Don't get me wrong, I did not mean that all prepared food is bad, I use some of it myself, but it needs to be supplimented to get fish into perfect health. Healthy fish rarely get any diseases including paracites. I have not had to quarantine in over 30 years because of this. But if I resorted to feeding only flakes and pellets, I can guarantee you that as soon as I added a fish in my tank, they would all become infected with ich as all the fish in my LFS carry it heavily.
I can just put those fish in my tank with no worries but I would not recommend that anyone do that unless you have my tank or your fish are all spawning. Even then I would not advise it.

 

[TanksNStuff]

Thanks for sharing the photos and the the topic in general Paul. That was very interesting and informative! 8)

 

[qwik]

Paul, I have a pair(not mated yet) of clowns in my tank . They will not host but hang out together all the time . Do you think if I start them on live worms it might trigger there breeding instinct making them host ? I'm not as interested in them spawning as much as I am with them hosting . I had a pair of jawfish that spawned all the time and lost the female in a tank/rock/squish accident . I have to replace her,any idea in telling sex of pearly jawfish ? Thanks, Paul

 

[mikem]

Thanks for sharing your experience Paul.
One of my yellow watchman gobie fry survived and is living in my overflow. This is the second one that ever made it from an egg for me, without trying.

 

[Paul B]

Qwik, I have no idea how to sex jawfish.
If you feed your clowns libe blackworms they should get into breeding condition in a few weeks. Weather they will hang out in your anemone or not is not so much determined by what shape they are in , but if they consider that anemone host worthy. They will not host in all anemones.

 

[Paul B]

Mikem, thats good news. I don't have anywhere in my tank where I could find them. I have no sump and the overflow is just 2" wide and goes right to a pump that feeds the skimmer so my baby gobies probably become sushi, along with my bangai babies and pipefish babies.

 

[TanksNStuff]

Mike, that is good news! If you are looking for a home for the baby watchman, I'm actually looking for a replacement for mine that didn't make it after an injury. Let me know if you don't plan on keeping it. ;D

Paul, that's just sad that all those potential babies don't have anywhere to grow up. Is there anyway you could alter your system to catch them before they get sent into the pump? :'(

 

[Paul B]

Is there anyway you could alter your system to catch them before they get sent into the pump?

I probably can but where do you think all the baby fish go to in the sea after they hatch?
Almost none of them last a week. My tank is the same, fish and crans spawn every few weeks so I am sure that at any one time there are baby fish all over the place but almost all of them are too small for me to see. I think I will look under my UG filter with a light to see if I can find any. I doubt it but it's worth a shot. Of course, if I find any under there, there is no way to get them out.
If I can collect any somehow I will try to raise them in a small tank like I used to do when Lincoln was President ;D

 

[TanksNStuff]

Heh, when Lincoln was President? I think we get the hint on that one.

I didn't mean to fault you for not saving the fish... it's just sad that (from what I've been reading) some of those fish are "difficult" to captive breed (bangai for example) and yours are spawning often. It would be nice if you could help supply them to a lfs.

It is natural that they don't all make it, even in the sea. It's even harder to raise them in a small tank I would think.

 

[Paul B]

Yeah, and being I eat fish almost every day, it would be kind of ironic for me to try to save a few pipefish while I am dining on their cousins. :