The Mission: Breed the Cuckoo Cat!

[darkdep]

Mini Update:

The holding female is still holding and she seems well.  Tonight I witnessed breeding behavior first hand and it was so interesting to watch!  The male Spilonotus carves out a huge "crater" in the substrate, in a much different way than the brute force digging of my other Africans.  He literally seems to be carving it to perfection, spinning in a circle to grow it larger.  He enticed another female over by sitting on a 45degree angle, showing all his fins, and shaking violently.  She comes over and they do the dance.

Although interesting, the behavior of the Multipunctatus is so much different than normal it's the real highlight.  They are all out in the open, picking on each other, seemingly in a frenzy.  They can smell the breeding somehow!  They pick at each other for a while, seemingly engaged in their own events, and then the whole group will rush over into the breeding pit to harass the big cichlids until the male chases them away.  They are digging around inside looking for eggs.

This just started and I'm tied up with other things so no visible egg drops yet but thinking I may get a second holding female by tommorow.  Fingers Crossed.

[darkdep]

Update!

Last night was the 7 day mark, so I went down to catch her.  I pulled some water from the tank into a bucket, then used a piece of eggcrate to corral her and net her.  She's pretty big (6"+) but once netted was surprisingly easy to handle.  I put her into the bucket for a minute to make sure she was ok, then stripped the eggs into the bucket.  I used a bright white bucket so I'd be able to see if any catfish were in the brood.  The eggs tumbled out, and I momentarily got really excited when three of them were a very different colour from the rest! 

Unfortunately, the three "different" eggs turned out to be pieces of gravel.  Oh well, at least they were well cared for pieces of gravel.  No Cuckoo's.

But, I still have about 45 eggs of a species I haven't bred.  At least this will be an opportunity to test out my new DIY egg tumbler.  It is constructed from a dollar store colander, some styrofoam for buoyancy, and an airstone held in place with some wire.  I adjusted the airflow so the eggs are just gently rolling around.  This morning everything still looks good.  I need to check a couple times daily to remove any eggs that may fungus or it will spread.

Some pics of the eggs and tumbler are attached.

A little disappointed, but at the same time the whole egg tumbling thing is new to me so there is still some discovery and learning happening.  And, again, I haven't bred Spilonotus before so I'm still achieving something.



The good news...A second female is holding, and she looks like she has twice as many eggs as the first.  Cool!  We'll retry this next Wednesday and see if we have any Catfish.  If they keep it up hopefully it'll just be a matter of time.




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[Toss]

Hi Chris
I notice the colander is made from metal wire. Would the one made from plastic safer? Just a thought.
enrico

[darkdep]

I am a little concerned about that, yes.  My local dollar store didn't have any plastic net ones; but I will be looking for one for the future.

Although metal, it seems to not be "rough" in any way, so I tried.

Tonight everything is still going well, the eggs appear to have a little more "tail" sticking out of most of them.

[Toss]

It is not the roughness I am worry about, it is the chance of corrosion happening in your tank. If it cost only $1, it is hard to believe that they are made from a good stainless steel wire.

[darkdep]

Good point, I hadn't thought about that.  I'll keep my eye on that for sure.

[groan]

I find this all so intresting!
I've never heard of such a thing, but I did a google on it and foudn this great article on it with pics
http://www2.biology.ualberta.ca/jackson.hp/IWR/Taxa/Siluriformes/Mochokidae/Synodontis/S_multipunctatus/Images.php

Incredible.
Thats all i could say!

[PaleoFishGirl]

Heheh - I went to grad school with Keith Jackson.

[darkdep]

This morning the babies are very visible, with the eggs attached to their bellies (Pics coming).  There are far less eggs than yesterday!  many of them are half their normal size and have a white puff on the ends of them.  Some of them appear to have completely dissolved.

From what I read, this can happen if some of the eggs aren't fertilized.  So I'm going to attempt to remove the dead ones. 

[bitterman]

Good luck on all the babies. and Best of luck with the second batch having some synos!

[darkdep]

The possibly-unfertilized eggs have all dissolved, and all the remaining eggs have little fish hanging onto them now...the eggs are now just giant yolk-sacs.  There are now 29 embryos, and when I turn off the airstone they are now doing some moving around of their own.  Very cool.  I'm hoping they will be developed enough by Thursday to move into a breeding net, and then I can strip female #2 into the tumbler.

[darkdep]

Update:

There are several embryos who have almost absorbed their egg sacs and who are swimming around a bit.  Still lying around most of the time but movement for sure.  A couple more seem to have "lost" their egg sacs; I don't know how to explain that.

They seemed strong enough to move, so I carefully put them into a breeding net to continue developing.

Back to the big tank to get the second female.  The female I stripped the original set of eggs from still hadn't eaten so I grabbed her first to see if she had any I missed the first time.  Sure enough, out came about 15 - 20 more fry; all with egg sacs but all very much free swimming.  I put them in with their brothers and sisters in the breeding net.  Then I grabbed the second female and stripped her eggs.

AND....no synos. 

I put the eggs in the tumbler to let them hatch, and put the female back in with her mate.  0 for 2 so far.

[bitterman]

APW,

I've been told that Synos need to be adults for about 1 year before they are sexulally mature, so maybe you just need to wait a bit. Just look at all those nice fry you are getting!!!! I be thery will grow fast!

Bruce

[darkdep]

Bruce, you haven't seen my Multipunctatus colony.  I assure you they are old enough

But you're right!  I am harvesting large amounts of fry.  Although since they are still embryos I still don't consider them "fry" yet...I need to see one maintaining it's swimming for more then a few moments without sinking to the bottom.