As some may or may not know, I suffered a full on tank nuking not long ago. Sadly, as I have a number of tanks on one system, it was pretty bad. I lost every coral I have (most of which were SPS) a damsel, a comet, a goby and my female Histrio histrio Sargassum frogfish. So first, in homage to her, here are some spawning shots:

First up, are a couple to show how distended the body gets when full of eggs:




And here are a couple of pictures taken mid-lay




And the end results are thus:





Unless of course your starting fish is a female Lophiocahron sp (probably L. lithinostomus) such as :






In which case the eggs look more like




And now we are looking forwards. As of now the Lophiocharon is still with me. I am sad to say that despite the huge destruction caused by the nem nuking, my Aiptasia and Mojano are still with me. However, many of the Aiptasia have gone a blueish white, and look quite interesting (as do star fish close up):

what is nuking?

Sorry to hear about the losses
The Histrio histrio's method of laying eggs is incredible. So, it's an egg raft structure, consisting of jelly with the eggs inside?
What's also interesting is how different the Lophiocahron lays their eggs. Will any of them hatch?
The Aiptasia don't look half bad

his nem died and started to decay causing a spike in waste which caused his water quality to go to sh*t. This caused his corals and few of his fish to die because most saltwater species require very good water quality at all times with very slow swings. The sudden change and increase in waste caused the animals to most likely be poisoned to death.



Sorry to hear bout this andy. Of course the aiptasia and stars wouldn't be killed by it... that would be some thing good to come out of whole ordeal.... why would we want that haha

didn't know about that, v sorry to hear about it Andy, you must be gutted.

pics are excellent though....... I still keep thinking about frogfish...... one day!

None of the eggs will hatch sadly as I have no males. The Antennarius and Histrio genera create floating rafts which allegedly mirror the internals of the femal (once unrolled) in some form.

Some members of the Lophiocharon genus attach the fertilised eggs to the male. I know someone from another couple of fora who has managed to raise a fry to viable level, but lost it in a house move. The other forgfish (Antennarius and Histrio) have a larval stage which makes raising the fry a goal as yet unreported in captivity, though the larger fry of H. histrio would make it appear an easier prospect.



It would appear to be so. The frogfish was still alive when I came home, but despite numerous water changes she didn't make it. On the plus sides my tang, pair of clowns, 2 eels, porcupinefish and trigger all survived. The reef tank is now a FOWLR with porky enjoying his space.




As noted above, I quite like the white Aiptasia, and it has never really bothered me. Shame it doens't flouresce under actinics like my Mojana does.

This post has been edited by andywg: May 28 2008, 12:49 PM

I am sorry to hear about your fish/coral loss I didn't know what nuking was "for sure" and I googled it as well as googling an anemone turning inside out. I found a really incredible website that documented an anemone's troubles. In the end the nem died, but the small round foot still attached to a rock grew a new nem. VERY fascinating! Here's the link to it incase anyone wants to check it out.
The egg "sack" by the frogfish is really cool! It's crazy how there are soo many variations between different spcecies/genuses of all kinds

Sorry to hear about the nuking, that sucks. Very interesting photos though, never knew Aiptasia could look that good .

Very good and interesting pics. Too bad about the losses.
Thanks for showing the excellent pics.

Thats a gr8 pic wonderful. 10x for sharing them. Sorry to the losses.