My Jawfish is expecting........Now what???

BNR210 · Apr 10, 2017

Last night I noticed one of my 3 Jawfish had a mouth full of eggs. Thankfully I know the magic happened sometime the night before. On Saturday night after lights out I noticed him out of his burrow at the front of the glass looking very stressed and not like his normal confident self. I watched for awhile to make sure he wasn't gonna try to go carpet surfing and eventually I went to bed. Yesterday morning I couldn't find him for hours and I feared the worse, however the other 2 were out like normal. After I did a water change in the afternoon he finally poked his head out of his burrow, but only his head, still not acting like himself. Eventually he came out far enough for me to see what he had in his mouth.

I only found a little but of information on Jawfish breeding and most of it was old articles. I need any advice anyone has on how to keep them alive because in 7-8 days I will have hatched baby Jawfish.

Right now the dad is in a 210gallon mixed Reef system with 10 other roommates.

2 other Jawfish
1 decorated firefish
2 clowns
1 spotted dragonet
1 baby blue hippo tang
1 large powder blue tang
1 large yellow tang
1 really large vlamingi tang
Plus
A scarlet/fire shrimp
A cleaner shrimp
A red tile starfish
A sea cucumber
Dozens of blue hermit crabs
Dozens of various snails (some above sand level and some below sand level).

Should I watch for them to hatch and bet them out to another tank?
Should I try to catch the dad and move him to another tank before they hatch?
What should I feed them?

Please help.

chad vossen · Apr 10, 2017

I'd suggest checking out the larval trap, found here - http://www.bulkreefsupply.com/larval-trap-vossen.html
This trap would allow you to collect the larvae when they hatch. You just need to know the night of the hatch, or use the trap several nights till you get something.

Once you have the larvae, raising them is similar to raising clownfish. You'll need live rotifers for sure.

wkscott · Apr 10, 2017

Get your live food now. Most fry can't live much more than a day after using up the egg sack.

taricha · Apr 11, 2017

Awesome! That's my long-shot project too!
Where are your yellow-head jawfish from? Mine are FL.
My Jawfish started spawning a few weeks back. Male held the first batch well and hatched them. I did not have the live food cultures in any kind of shape to support them, so it was a short experiment. After that, he's swallowed 4 of last 5 batches, which is increasingly frustrating because now I have the live foods finally figured out, and ready to go by the gallon.

Bottom line: 2 successful accounts I've found for this species.
Martin Moe in 2007: http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=1053375
and a School project last year: http://www.mbisite.org/Forums/tm.aspx?m=98002
Both involve starting food almost exclusively Parvocalanus Crassirostris copepod nauplii (juveniles). These parvo pods only eat live algae, and they do not eat nanno. They grow well and are nutritionally quality foods when fed T-iso (Tahitian Isochrysis Galbana) or Chaetoceros (diatom) or a mix of the two.
So...
you need guillards F/2 formula to feed the algae, so you can feed the pods, so the pods can have babies, so the baby fish can eat the baby pods. If that sounds like some craziness you are up for, I'll post all the details on getting the live foods in shape.
Also if you decide you want to go down this road, I can send you a bunch of pods and some phyto to get you started. My male keeps eating the eggs so I have lots more than I need, and maybe you can help me out by figuring how to collect eggs/fry and keeping male from eating them all the time

BNR210 · Apr 11, 2017

taricha said:
Awesome! That's my long-shot project too!
Where are your yellow-head jawfish from? Mine are FL.
My Jawfish started spawning a few weeks back. Male held the first batch well and hatched them. I did not have the live food cultures in any kind of shape to support them, so it was a short experiment. After that, he's swallowed 4 of last 5 batches, which is increasingly frustrating because now I have the live foods finally figured out, and ready to go by the gallon.

Bottom line: 2 successful accounts I've found for this species.
Martin Moe in 2007: http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=1053375
and a School project last year: http://www.mbisite.org/Forums/tm.aspx?m=98002
Both involve starting food almost exclusively Parvocalanus Crassirostris copepod nauplii (juveniles). These parvo pods only eat live algae, and they do not eat nanno. They grow well and are nutritionally quality foods when fed T-iso (Tahitian Isochrysis Galbana) or Chaetoceros (diatom) or a mix of the two.
So...
you need guillards F/2 formula to feed the algae, so you can feed the pods, so the pods can have babies, so the baby fish can eat the baby pods. If that sounds like some craziness you are up for, I'll post all the details on getting the live foods in shape.
Also if you decide you want to go down this road, I can send you a bunch of pods and some phyto to get you started. My male keeps eating the eggs so I have lots more than I need, and maybe you can help me out by figuring how to collect eggs/fry and keeping male from eating them all the time

Thank you! That is a lot of good information. I'm not sure where he's from, or the other two which I think are both females. I bought them about a month after I bought the male. I wasn't actually trying to breed them but got super excited when I realized what had happened.
Unfortunately I think mine ate his eggs as well. [emoji22] When I got home from work last night he didn't have them in his mouth and was back to his normal behavior. I was hoping he had just set them down like he did the night before to eat. I watched him for about an hour before giving up hope that they were sitting in his burrow.

I would love some pods and phyto actually. I was already looking into starting/breeding live pods and phyto to keep my target dragonet fed. I haven't had to buy any pods for her yet but it's only a matter of time before she runs out of the natural supply in the tank.

Now that I know my Jawfish are breeding though I am going to prepare myself and my set up to hopefully be successful at raising at least a couple of them.

I will PM you tonight or tomorrow to pick your brain on getting live food in shape. [emoji4]

Thank you again!