Despite the fact
that I have gone to considerable lengths to defeat Murphy's
law (whatever can go wrong will) I was almost a Murphy victim
last week. I have gone to great lengths (often reported on
in my editorials) to defeat Murphy because I have one fish
now for 21 years, other fish for more than 15 years, and coral
colonies that began as fragments more than 15 years ago. I
feel a lot of responsibility for these animals. Nevertheless,
Murphy almost got me the other day - let me tell you how.
I attached a small
piece of PVC to a plastic tube and tied some nori to it and
suspended in the tank for the surgeon fish to graze on. Fortunately,
I came back in about 1/2 an hour to see if the fish ate it
all, only to discover several gallons of salt water on the
floor. The hollow plastic tubing became a siphon and was draining
the tank onto the floor. Had I not come back when I did it
would have been a real mess. Click on the below pictures!
I received the
following series of emails the other day, the first of which
reads,
Hi Terry
just drop'n you a line to let you know that I'm the proud
father of 200 yellow watchmen babies, I have included a
couple of images too!
cheers,
Rich Wynn
Vancouver, Canada.
Proud
sponsor of this column
When I told him
I would like to publish his experience he replied,
Hi Terry,
Wow that's
great news! I will try to give you some brief details; I'm
also sending two different emails with images. The images
in this email are some shots taken of the pair before over
the last few years. The images in the second email to follow
will contain recent images of the egg clutch and the guarding
parents.
My reeftank
is a 27gl long that has been setup for the last 7 years.
The two yellow watchmen were introduced at different times,
the female is about 5 years old and the male is about 4
years. I added the much smaller male to the tank about a
year after getting the female because of two reasons. The
first reason was space, as I didn't want to overcrowd the
tank with too many fish all at once. The second reason was
I had first paired up the female with a blue pistol shrimp,
but over time the clicking from the shrimp got to be a bothersome(waking
me up at night), so I decided to trade in the shrimp for
a small male watchmen shortly after. It took about 6 months
for the two to pair up, and ever since they have been stuck
together like super glue. In the past 3-4 years I'm pretty
sure they have mated at least twice before, but I wasn't
100% sure because most of the eggs were covered by rockwork
and I could only catch a small glimpse off the reflection
from a bare spot on the bottom of the tank to see a small
clutch.
Recently
before the discovery of the clutch of bright yellow eggs
there was some serious fighting or mating dances between
the mated pair, and at one point of the struggle the male
lost one of his fins in the battle or foreplay.
It's really
interesting to watch this event as the male sits guard all
day and night fanning the clutch with his tail and even
blowing water at the eggs through its mouth. The female
will check in from time to time making sure that dad is
doing a good job, but then she's back out in the reef lounging
on the big comfy couch of the green open brain which she
shares with the female skunk clownfish. The female is more
worried about her tan and her appetite rather than her new
babies. I guess she deserves a break, and that's why she's
handed over the job to dad.
I will also
send a hyperlink to my webpage in my second email along
with the most recent images. If you have any more questions
or need larger format images, let me know and I will glad
to be of service. Also if you could say hi to Charles Delbeek
next time you talk to him; I was fortunate to not only meet
him at a local meeting in Vancouver this year, but I also
got to share a couple of ales with him after the meeting
-- it was a great night!
I look forward
to hearing back from you Terry, and once again-wow! What
an honour it would be to have a little piece of my reef
tank published in your great online magazine. I have been
a loyal reader starting out 7 years ago; I never missed
an Aquarium Frontiers Article.
I got a reply
from Charles tonight, and this is what he had to say on
the matter:
"Hey
Rich, thanks for the email. You must be very excited to
see your gobies spawning. Although breeding this species
is not uncommon (they are commercially available as tank
raised) it does not take away from your accomplishment.
I still think it would make an interesting article."
So I guess
I will keep my fingers crossed and hope that you decide
to run an article on this little event.
I hadn't
heard of any breeders raising gobies, but then up here in
the north we only have a few breeders which are mostly concerned
with clownfish.
Charles also
sent along these two links for us to have a look at:
