Breeding and raising fish in a reef?

i cant think · Feb 23, 2022

Okay, so the title may be a bit confusing however what I mean is, if I had a Gobiodon acicularis pair (Working on it) could I be able to breed them and raise the young in a reef with other fish. I.E. other gobies, a wrasse, and a blenny. And coral that aren’t sticky (I have a plan for an extremely small goby so refuse to have any fish risky coral). As for inverts, I think it’ll be left as a Pom Pom Crab and possibly smaller shrimp (Anemone shrimp, and similar).

How hard would this be to do? And is it actually possible?
If so, how would you go around doing it? And what would you feed the offspring? I have a Gobiodon acicularis already but just waiting for one of the wrasse to out grow the tank to try get a second smaller one. The tank is a Red Sea Max Nano,
Fish in it are:
- Naokoae Fairy Wrasse (Temporary)
- Blue Star Leopard Wrasse (Temporary)
- Black Clown Goby (Wanting to breed)
- Hectors Goby
- Linear Blenny
- Pink Streak Wrasse
- Yasha Goby
- Flaming Prawn Goby (Attaining soon)

Doctorgori · Feb 23, 2022

breed, maybe, raise fry? unlikely. Even if the fry manage to escape predation, a normal sized tank is unlikely to nutritionally support a viable number of fry

Grumblez · Feb 23, 2022

I'm not familiar with this species of gobys but in general the only fish larvae that have any chance off successfully growing up in any sort of community tank is Bangaii Cardinals. That is because they stay in the Dad's mouth to grow for quite some time. Some Sea Horses also can normally grow up in the same tank as their parents.

2 perils make it incredibly unlikely for Marine larvae to make it past 24 hours.
1. Predatation - the majority of fish will eat anything small enough to fit in their mouth. Even the parents.
2. If they aren't eaten your filtration or wavemakers will most likely take care of the rest.

3. If larvae somehow survived both the above they require an extremely dense population off Rotifers and/or Copepods. It would be almost impossible to maintain the needed density in a reef tank with corals and other fish thinning them out.

ISpeakForTheSeas · Feb 23, 2022

i cant think said:
Okay, so the title may be a bit confusing however what I mean is, if I had a Gobiodon acicularis pair (Working on it) could I be able to breed them and raise the young in a reef with other fish. I.E. other gobies, a wrasse, and a blenny. And coral that aren’t sticky (I have a plan for an extremely small goby so refuse to have any fish risky coral). As for inverts, I think it’ll be left as a Pom Pom Crab and possibly smaller shrimp (Anemone shrimp, and similar).

How hard would this be to do? And is it actually possible?
If so, how would you go around doing it? And what would you feed the offspring? I have a Gobiodon acicularis already but just waiting for one of the wrasse to out grow the tank to try get a second smaller one. The tank is a Red Sea Max Nano,
Fish in it are:
- Naokoae Fairy Wrasse (Temporary)
- Blue Star Leopard Wrasse (Temporary)
- Black Clown Goby (Wanting to breed)
- Hectors Goby
- Linear Blenny
- Pink Streak Wrasse
- Yasha Goby
- Flaming Prawn Goby (Attaining soon)

Unfortunately, like the others have already mentioned, while it is definitely possible to get them to breed in a reef tank (conditions just have to be good enough and stress has to be low enough), raising the fry in a normal reef tank is basically an effort in futility due to predation and the tank's mechanical supports (i.e. the filters, pumps, etc.). It's technically possible, but the odds of any of the fry actually surviving to adulthood are incredibly slim. That said, if you're fast enough, you can collect the eggs when they're laid and try to raise them in a fry tank (i.e. in their own tank where they're safe from predators and aquarium equipment), then introduce them into the main tank when they're grown enough (you'd still have to watch for aggression though).

In a very large tank with specialized equipment there might be some things you could do to try and increase the chances of the fry surviving, but, I'd imagine the impact would be practically negligible. (If you have any ideas you'd like to try in your tank, you're welcome to do so - I'm not trying to dissuade you here, as I would love to be shown that it can be done with a decent number of survivors - but I really doubt it would have much impact on the fry survival rate.)

Also, just as a note with clown gobies here, to my knowledge they pretty well exclusively breed on branching SPS corals, and this has been known to greatly upset some of the "host" corals. So, I'd keep in mind that you may end up seeing some coral irritation (anything from very mild irritation to potentially the death of the coral, depending on a lot of different factors).

Anyway, all of that said, it would be a cool project if you decide to try and raise the fry!

i cant think · Feb 23, 2022

ISpeakForTheSeas said:
Unfortunately, like the others have already mentioned, while it is definitely possible to get them to breed in a reef tank (conditions just have to be good enough and stress has to be low enough), raising the fry in a normal reef tank is basically an effort in futility due to predation and the tank's mechanical supports (i.e. the filters, pumps, etc.). It's technically possible, but the odds of any of the fry actually surviving to adulthood are incredibly slim. That said, if you're fast enough, you can collect the eggs when they're laid and try to raise them in a fry tank (i.e. in their own tank where they're safe from predators and aquarium equipment), then introduce them into the main tank when they're grown enough (you'd still have to watch for aggression though).

In a very large tank with specialized equipment there might be some things you could do to try and increase the chances of the fry surviving, but, I'd imagine the impact would be practically negligible. (If you have any ideas you'd like to try in your tank, you're welcome to do so - I'm not trying to dissuade you here, as I would love to be shown that it can be done with a decent number of survivors - but I really doubt it would have much impact on the fry survival rate.)

Also, just as a note with clown gobies here, to my knowledge they pretty well exclusively breed on branching SPS corals, and this has been known to greatly upset some of the "host" corals. So, I'd keep in mind that you may end up seeing some coral irritation (anything from very mild irritation to potentially the death of the coral, depending on a lot of different factors).

Anyway, all of that said, it would be a cool project if you decide to try and raise the fry!

I have a small box that I could try put in the tank when I do try raise them. The BCGs would be a nice thing to try get CB in my LFS. My thought process was if I got a Staghorn Acropora it would be able to grow fast enough to not be harmed by the breeding. It would be a nice project and I think I will do it in the future to try, any ideas on a good way to try and get it to work other than a HUGE pod population?

ISpeakForTheSeas · Feb 23, 2022

i cant think said:
I have a small box that I could try put in the tank when I do try raise them. The BCGs would be a nice thing to try get CB in my LFS. My thought process was if I got a Staghorn Acropora it would be able to grow fast enough to not be harmed by the breeding. It would be a nice project and I think I will do it in the future to try, any ideas on a good way to try and get it to work other than a HUGE pod population?

Doing a bit of research, it looks like rotifers are the recommended first food for similar Gobiodon (clown goby) species, so I'd recommend trying to culture some rotifers to start them off on (I'm not sure what strain of rotifers would be the best, but I'd start with small strain rotifers and try moving up size-wise from there if it doesn't work out). It looks like around day 14 post-hatch you'll want to start transitioning from rotifers to newly hatched Artemia nauplii (baby brine shrimp), and you should pretty well exclusively be feeding the Artemia nauplii by day 25. At some point they should start preying on available pods, but I'm not sure when (it wouldn't hurt to have some available in the tank). By day 40 post-hatch they should be ready to start on dried foods too. If the idea of culturing rotifers and baby brine shrimp is daunting to you, then you could look into doing something like setting up a geosapper feeder (there's an old reefkeeping magazine article on it). The only other thing I can think to add about the feeding is that you'll likely want to make sure you have another source of food readily available for the fry in case your culture crashes (i.e. have someone you can get more rotifers from that same day), and you'll want to make sure that your cultures don't get too dense, as at least pods will stop reproducing if the culture gets too dense (and then the fish fry can starve because of the lack of baby pods/rots/etc.).

Beyond the food side of things, it looks like clown gobies will have the male (most likely the bigger of the two - they change sex as needed to ensure they can pair up) guard the eggs (so you can probably expect some aggression if there are other, small fish nearby in the tank, and you'd probably want to just protect the coral the eggs are on so other fish can't get to the eggs), and the eggs should hatch after 4-5 days. They typically lay the eggs on the host coral, and after about 33 days post-hatching the fry will undergo metamorphosis and start perching (typically) on the aquarium walls. They should start coloring up around day 40 post-hatch. After about day 40 they should also be large enough to go find their own coral perches. As a reminder for while the fry are young, you'll need to keep the fry safe from the mechanical pieces (filters, powerheads, etc.) of the tank, and you'll need to be careful while doing water changes not to remove them. Obviously, you'll need to maintain good water quality throughout the rearing process as well.

On the breeding side of things, the bigger (and emptier/safer) the tank, the more likely the broodstock (parent fish) will be to breed. As long as they are comfortable enough, though, they should still (at least theoretically) breed fairly regularly in just about any size of tank. Twenty gallons might be a bit on the small side, so don't be too discouraged if they don't breed super readily/regularly (I've seen recommendations from 30+ gallons all the way up to 100+ gallons). One source mentioned that you might be able to trigger a spawning event for them by raising the temperature a couple of degrees (keeping it in a safe, not detrimental to the tank range), but, again, as long as the conditions are good enough and peaceful enough, they should still spawn unprompted.

Hope this helps, and good luck!