High DOA Fish

[RichardS]

Another thread got me thinking about the types of fish I had the highest DOA's on. For me it was small wrasses like fairy wrasses, sand sifting gobies, anthias. These DOA's were usually perfectly healthy looking dead fish. It dawned on me that these are all fish that tend to try and jump there way out of the bag when startled.

One of my freshwater suppliers always put shredded black plastic in the bags to keep the fish down in the water instead of spending the whole trip trying to jump their way out of the bag. I always had very low DOA's from her.

Have any of you tried this on these types of saltwater fish?

 

[swsaltwater]

Signal Gobies , Anthias, and Bangaii seem to have a high DOA for me.

 

[Anonymous]

Wild caught or CB Bangaii?

 

[swsaltwater]

I am sure most at the LA wholesalers are Wild Caught, Once my brood stock starts producing I won't need to order em any more. We have a few thousand clowns now as well. Last year we produced about a thousand Black Percs off one pair and this year 3 more pairs of black should be breeding.. My goal is to be at 100 breeding pairs of clown by end of the year. Only have about 3 pairs of Bangaii.

 

[Anonymous]

I am sure most at the LA wholesalers are Wild Caught,

Indeed they are..I wouldn't have asked if LA was in your post

Sounds like you've got a good handle on clown breeding....I can't wait for you to get more BC going to offset the WC collections/pressure on them

 

[JeremyR]

We have a customer with several pairs of BG's, we have one, and a couple of other people bring us fry to raise. We don't sell wild BG's anymore. We do some limited true perc & black ocellaris breeding as well, but there is enough supply of tank raised standard ocellaris that I don't feel any need to raise them.

 

[JeremyR]

Btw, everyone ships cleaner shrimp with little bits of stuff to hold on to, it really lowers DOA.

Some of the fish on the "high doa" lists probably shouldn't be kept in stock anyways.. most people kill signal gobies & most of the sandsifters, and half the anthias aren't entirely appropriate for the average user either.

 

[swsaltwater]

I am actually going in with a Partner(Marine Biologist) on the Breeding. He is the brains on the breeding as I am not too good with the phyto farming which is the first step hehe. Rumor also says another breeder here in Tucson has successfully bred Yellow Tangs. There is a U of A guy that does the Shrimp for Gila Bend Shrimp Farm in Arizona, I think one of his students bred the tangs. I know he bred Rabbitfish in Guam. I can't wait to read the scientific write up on what system he used for it.

 

[Anonymous]

Bred them meaning they spawned or bred them meaning he got them to a juvi state (settled out and past larval stage)?

Phyto farming needed to raise clowns? Don't tell that to the commercially hatcheries that don't do any of their own phyto production wait, that's most of them :lol:

 

[JeremyR]

Bred, or raised? Breeding doesn't mean anything if you can't raise the fry.. other people have already done that with YT's.

 

[Anonymous]

Great minds think alike

 

[swsaltwater]

That why we await the wqrite up, apparently the word is bred and hatched in captivity. I am thinking they had to use or make a large tumbler system for the eggs / fry.

 

[Anonymous]

Bred and hatched still isn't that big of a deal. Settled and grown to a decent size is the true achievement. Guess I'll await the write up as well

 

[RichardS]

Early on I had high DOA's with Banggai's but no problems once I found a better supplier. I don't think I ever had a cb one come in doa. Although I had a hard time selling cb's since everyone else was selling wc's for $10.

So no thoughts on trying the shredded plastic thing? Here's a pic of what I meant in case my description didn't make any sense.

 

[JeremyR]

It would be interesting to try I guess.. I've never seen it from anyone.

 

[IconicAquariums]

I get Acreichthys sp. filefish from Cebu with the cut up bags like that. I think it helps a little, but there is always one that jumps out on top and another that gets stuck and is DOA. Maybe for other fish it might help, but it might be more of a problem with the fishes jumping on to it when the boxes are stationary.

 

[Anonymous]

Btw, everyone ships cleaner shrimp with little bits of stuff to hold on to, it really lowers DOA.

Some of the fish on the "high doa" lists probably shouldn't be kept in stock anyways.. most people kill signal gobies & most of the sandsifters, and half the anthias aren't entirely appropriate for the average user either.

I've been getting sexy shrimp with sliced rings of airline tubing in the bag. Hadn't thought about why but this makes sense.

Where I work I've seen a bad run on dwarf angels lately with high mortality 24 - 48 hours after arrival on C.loricula in particular.

 

[Anonymous]

I've never seen the shredded bag trick, only double-bagging and creating a liner, either out of black plastic, or folded newsprint.

 

[naesco]

Excellent post.
Good for those that are into captive breeding and those that refuse to buy wild cardinals and fish that can't be kept by the average hobbyist.
Wayne Ryan

 

[Ret_Talbot]

I am interviewing a Banggai breeder in San Diego in the next week or so. His name is Ryan Greathouse, and he is selling to at least one LA area retailer that has announced they are no longer going to sell wild caught Banggais. I'm impressed with him so far, although I don't know how many he intends to rear.