Ceylon breeding

[Siosal]

Hi folks.
Around 1 month ago I gave in to what had been niggling me for quite some time. I've kept and bred many species of Cichlid, but I've always been curious about Puffers - I just love owner responsive fish.
My EBJD developed popeye and HITH from a young age and was proving imossible to treat. The bigger he was getting the more deformed he became, so regrettably I had to flush him out of his misery. Time to start over
On visiting my LFS I noticed a tank with 6 Topaz/Celyon Puffers, bye bye Cichlids - hello Puffers. I bought the two in the best condition and through several water changes I gradually turned the tank from FW to BW, adding a nice big Java Fern to the equation along with some driftwood. Around 1 week ago I noticed the smaller of the two, Puff, was constantly hiding and Huff would only stray from the Java Fern long enough to eat. I was beginning to wonder if Puff had been beaten by Huff and had found a place to hide and die. Not so. This morning whilst writing a few emails something caught my eye - a tiny little fry swimming near the surface. On closer examination I spotted nother 6.
I can't seem to find much info on breeding these brilliant fish, but I've put the fry in a floating tank and am giving them Liquifry, as infusoria is hard to come by.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Cichlids are easy, but I get the feeling these baby puffers are going to be a litle more challenging.
Regards

Siosal

[julianchan]

I have nothing constructive to contribute to this thread, but can I start with a WOW......Ceylons breeding in captivity? Can you give some parameters ie tank size, water parameters, temperatures and anything else you might think would have contributed to this? Exciting!

[Siosal]

Hello Julianchan.
The fish are in a 125 litre tank, at 79f brackish water. I do 30% water changes every 5 days, feeding them snails, garden worms and chunks of raw prawn. There is little / no current in the tank as I have attached a spray tube to the filter, which oxygenates the water gently and quietly ie no noisy air pump.

[Corvus]

Have any other fishes been in the tank with the puffers for the last 4 weeks?
Sounds amazing.
I'd try feeding freshly hatched artemia nauplii and Cyclops.

[Myaj]

Can you get photos of the ceylons (just to verify species, they are often mislabeled in the store) and the fry?

Have you fed any live feeders in the past? Livebearers especially? Its a heck of a lot more likely that they are guppy or molly fry than puffer fry, but if they are puffer fry awesome!

[Siosal]

They have been kept with a plec and a clown loach. I've never fed live fish to them.
Here's a vid I took tonight :

http://s570.photobucket.com/albums/ss14 ... 000640.flv

Copy and paste in address bar

[Myaj]

Definately a ceylon puffer, no idea on the fry though, just look like swimming blobs . Bring in any new live plants lately?

[julianchan]

Fingers crossed that they are ceylon fry...that would be amazing.

Just to go off topic for a second. Since you sound like you do quite a bit of breeding, and have a video camera, might you be interested in some macro video footage? If your camera has 43mm threads on it, you could try a Raynox DCR 250 lens on it. Not completely expensive at all, and would be able to see lots more detail on the fry. Just an unsolicited opinion.

Keeping an eye on this thread! Oh, and

[Pufferpunk]

Definately Celon puffers but from the little specks I see, look more like guppies or something similar. Puffer fru would be more round, iMO.

Moving this to Puffer Breeding, just in case.

[Nick]

Really hoping these are ceylon fry! We only recently found out GSP are marine spawners, knowing Ceylons are brackish spawners would be really awesome information.

[Siosal]

Hi folks.

I've managed to get a couple of pics of the fry. Not brilliant, but I'm no photographer. They all seem to favour swimming near the water surface, which differs from other fry I've encountered which tend to stick together looking for food in the substrate.

[Siosal]

[mysifier]

Awww so cute!

[julianchan]

Hard to tell, but we will know for sure soon enough when they get big enough!

[Corvus]

Let's see what they grow to be.
So far not very puffer fry like, see for comparison: http://news.ufl.edu/2009/02/17/puffer-f ... fish3thum/