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Re: notho incubation
The article Bob refers to appears in 1991 July-December Special Nothobranchius Issue of JAKA, Vol. 24, Nos. 4-6, entitled The Effect of Certain Behavioral and Environmental Factors on the Art of Nothobranchius Breeding" This issue is chock full of excellent information on Nothobranchius, and should be part of the library of anyone interested in the group.
Charlie Nunziata
Bob Meyer wrote:
> There was an excellent article written in the AKA journal about 8 years ago on this subject. I believe Charlie Nunziata wrote it. It really is a great article. It talkes about temperature, daylight, willingness of females etc. From the best that I can recall, it says to incubate between 21 and 27 C. Which is between 70 and 80 F roughly. At temperatures below this, the fish stays in diapause and does not progress at all. Some interesting experiments could be done with this. Is it possible to keep eggs in storage for years?? Anyway, I would dig through the peat and find a few representative eggs. Are they eyed up, brown or clear. If they are eyed up you need to hatch them now. If brown they are in the middle of incubating and depending on the species I would give them another month or two. If clear, then you have the entire incubation cycle to go. If you have several months to go you might want to slightly dampen the peat so that the eggs do not dry out.
> While we are on this subject, I wanted to mention how I label my bags for storage. You may remember what eggs are in that bag now, but will you remember in six months??. I am collecting peat eggs from 5 species of killies per week and they incubate for about 4 months. I often redry them and try later. It is possible that I could have over 100 bags at any one time. After collecting the eggs I label the bag with the full name of the fish and the date collected (date in) and the hatch date (date out). I then write down the number of males X the number of females X the number of weeks that they spawned X a factor for how likely they are to hatch. This last factor relates to water quality, temp, food, age of breeders. It is really just a guess. Finally, I label the bag either EV or NV for eggs visible or not visible after collecting. I will not sell bags where the eggs are not visible. A recent bag that I hatched out read N. Palmqvisti 2X17X1X.50 EV. That is males !
> times females times weeks times quality, eggs visible. I breed 2 males and 17 females for one week. Because of the unusual nature of the set up, I gave the quality only 50%. Eggs were visible, but not to many. Anyway, I just hatched this bag out and got over 100 fry. Not the greatest hatch, but still a respectable number of fry to raise up.
> Another habit that I am trying to get into is to copy the above info on a 3X5 card and store it in a "tickler file" or notecard box. These are sorted by hatch date. Therefore, when the month comes up, I will know which eggs to hatch out. Someone else was doing a similar system by hanging the bags of peat on a clothesline in the basement in the order they were suppossed to hatch out.
> Anyway, good luck. Bob
> >>> "julian haffegee" <thebomb at clara_co.uk> 10/11/99 06:28PM >>>
> hello all,
>
> What are the consequences of lowering temperature of incubating
> eggs. I appreciate that at lower temperatures development slows down- but
> does anyone know by how much? At what kind of temperature will the eggs be
> damaged? I'm not talking about brief exposures but continous- I've got a few
> bags that are months old- with no sign of development, admittedly they were
> kept a little cooler than I would normally have kept them (probably 20
> degrees)- anyone got any ideas- or done the same thing.
>
> thanks
>
> jules
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