Ruby Red Scooters Breeding!?

[bshowe]

So I have a pair of Ruby Red Scooters / Dragonets in my 60 Cube Reef and they started mating last month. They would do their dance for several hours every night. Well last week I was looking closer at my tank and noticed the female is getting fat! I am assuming she is pregnant!

Has anyone bread these before or Mandarins which should be similar? I am assuming I would need some other tank with very small live foods which would be difficult. I guess they will become fish food one day? Curious to know if it is even possible to raise them if they ever laid eggs or however they spawn? Thanks R2R!

She is hard to photograph but you can see her belly developing.

 

[Shep]

Congrats! that is awesome, I would assume that they are very similar to Mandarins in breeding care. [HASHTAG]#reefsquad[/HASHTAG] will be able to help a little bit more.

 

[4FordFamily]

Wish I knew more about breeding them, would be glad to pass it along! Very nice accomplishment that you have here though!

 

[kschweer]

I too wish I had some info for you, but I have no experience with this. Hopefully someone can chime in to help. I know @Paul B has mandarins that spawn a lot, not sure if he has raised them though.

 

[4FordFamily]

I too wish I had some info for you, but I have no experience with this. Hopefully someone can chime in to help. I know @Paul B has mandarins that spawn a lot, not sure if he has raised them though.

He was who I was just about to tag

 

[philfree]

mmmm, bread.

 

[eatbreakfast]

Check ut the Marine Breeding Initiative.
http://www.mbisite.org/
And the Marine Breeders Registery
http://breedersregistry.org/

 

[kireek]

* Congrats,that's wonderful!* I hope you find all the information you need.I would guess you need to look into food cultures right away.Be sure to keep us updated,best of luck!

 

[bshowe]

mmmm, bread.

Haha I love bread!

 

[bshowe]

Thanks for all the help everyone! I will look into those sites @eatbreakfast!

Yes if @Paul B has any info or anyone else I greatly appreciate it!

I have never bread fish before so this would be an adventure. I will keep people updated! The only thing successful breeding in my tank is I have tons of small red banded trochus snails growing up all over the place.

 

[Paul B]

Ruby reds and mandarins spawn every few weeks but I never tried to raise them. I could never collect them in my tank even if I wanted to raise them. I am fairly certain that they grow just like any other salt water fish. You just need to feed them constantly with first rotifers, then new born brine shrimp. You would need to have them spawn in a tank with no other fish.

 

[Kungpaoshizi]

From what I recall, you'll need a kreisel tank, smaller rotifiers or constantly hatching bbs, and then 2-3 feedings per day to keep the kreisel to a certain density of bbs/rots.
The fry free-float and capture what's near, so the tough part is getting enough food in there for them to catch yet not enough to seriously dirty the water.
This of course goes on for a good month or so iirc....

 

[Lrood]

I have a pair I'm hoping to have spawn, still pretty small. From my reading, Ruby Reds ( and Scooters) require very small first foods such as parvocalanus naups or ciliates. I think Matt Wittenrich had success with scooters and found them to eat ciliates first. Seems that the Rubys & Scooters have smaller larvae than Mandarins, thus the difficulty. KathyL on the MBI site has made more progress than anyone I have read, getting larvae to about 11 days.

That's a beautiful fat female in the pic, I hope mine looks like that soon! Good luck with yours, I'll be following.