Seahorse breeding tank - babies meet parents!

Today we removed the partition that separated the lined seahorse parents from their young and they mingled together for the first time. The partition protected the young from being sucked against or into the filter system. As the video shows, the juveniles are two different ages; about three months apart. Seahorses love to cling to each other with their tails and often form chains of three or four seahorse all connected together, often attempting to move in different directions at the same time. In the above video they are feeding on live adult Artemia or brine shrimp, which they get many times a day, but also are fed Cyclopeeze and Mysis. Its easy to tell from the video why people like seahorses so much; they have a gentle and inquisitive nature - and are just a bit silly.

White catfish (Ameiurus catus) spawning

This video shows a pair of our many white catfish spawning. These two have fanned out a shallow depression underneath some woody debris with their tails. They perform a ritual where they swim in circles side by side until they eventually are ready to mate. They press their sides together head to tail-tail to head and curl their tails around each other. They do this repeatedly for several hours: she deposits eggs and he fertilizes them.

A pair of white catfish

Catfish inhabit nearly every aquatic habitat across the world; a testament to their adaptability and biological success. As a group, they are one of the most important commercial food fishes and also extremely popular sport fishes, so it is no wonder catfish are so recognizable. Many tropical species are also quite popular in home aquaria (e.g. plecos, corydoras). Catfish are very recognizable because of their "whiskers" for which they are named. These are actually sensory organs - external taste buds - that help catfish detect food with amazing sensitivity..

The pale to white lower pairs of barbels help to distinguish the white catfish.

Brown bullheads have dark barbels.

In Virginia there are fifteen species of catfishes from two major Genera: the forked-tail catfishes Genus Ictalurus, and the bullheads Genus Ameiurus to which the white catfish (Ameiurus catus) belongs; within Ameiurus the subgenus Noturus contains six small stream species of catfishes called madtoms. White catfishes are the largest of the bullheads and, unlike the larger forked-tail catfishes, are native to Virginia. 

Brown bullhead Ameiurus nebulosus

Channel catfish (Ictalurus punctatus) were introduced in the late 1800’s, but the blue catfish (I. furcatus) and flathead catfish (I. puctatus) were introduced within the past fifty years, all as sport fish. Channels and blues especially have become so pervasive that they have out-competed the much smaller and less prolific white catfish in almost every body of water they share. 

This "white" catfish is actually an amelanistic channel catfish.

Swamp Life - Merchant's Millpond - by Aquarist Patrycja Lawryniuk

In the upcoming weeks, fellow Aquarist Jillian Swinford and I will hopefully get out for our first big collecting trip of the year to Merchants Millpond State Park in NC - about an hour and 20 minutes from the VLM. Merchants Millpond is part of the Chowan River drainage, just south of the Great Dismal Swamp. It is an environment that melds swamp land and forestry together, housing many awesome critters like water snakes, numerous turtle species, mysterious insects, tons of birds, and of course fish. The VLM has only a few exhibits in which we can display these unique swamp denizens, such as the Pygmy Sunfish exhibit, and the Cypress Swamp, so its mainly for fun and the fishes are release unharmed. A few animals we may be looking for however, are the flier Centrarchus maropterus, the warmouth Lepomis gulosus and the swamp darter Etheostoma fusiforme.

Juvenile flier Centrarchus macropterus

Juvenile fliers have a very distinctive eye spot or ocellus (pictured above) that is quite unique. As adults, their fin configuration is very similar in shape to the crappies, but with very different coloration. Most people don't appreciate the simple beauty of these more "common" fishes, but each are interesting and attractive in their own way. A good example of this is the warmouth. Often lumped together as "sunfish" the members of the Lepomis family  may look very similar to each other, but the warmouth has "war paint" around the jaws, given them their name. Also, they usually have a slight purple sheen to them. Sunfishes make excellent display animals as they are hardy and get very accustomed to captivity due to their intelligence.

Warmouth Lepomis gulosus

Another interesting but seldom appreciated - or seen - fish is the pirate perch. Not a true perch, rather a species within its own Family Aphredoderidae. The family name is not a very attractive one, meaning "excrement throat" which describes the unique characteristic of this animal: their anus is positioned much farther forward than other fishes, all the way near its throat! These odd little fishes do NOT make good display animals as they are highly reclusive and nocturnal. But they are neat nonetheless.

Pirate perch Aphredoderus sayanus

The head of the longnose gar has many formidable teeth.

In addition to the small swamp species there are more recognizable large fishes like the longnose gar (above) and bowfin. Most fishermen discard these animals as trash fish, but they have earned their place in the toughest of environments, surviving for nearly 200 million years virtually unchanged. These "living fossils" can gulp surface air when necessary, allowing them to survive in the low oxygen waters of a southern swamp.

Cricket frog

There are even more creatures above the water. If you like snakes, this is the place for you. And of course if there are snakes, there are usually frogs - lots of them: green frogs, cricket frogs, tree frogs, bull frogs, leopard frogs. And many species of turtles, even an alligator!

Painted turtle Chrysemys picta

Roanoke Logperch mating video

Many of the fishes in our Mountain Stream exhibit have been displaying mating colors, but also have been actually mating. The video shows a small portion of the extended mating behaviors of our Roanoke logperch. In the foreground is a (presumably) gravid female and around her are several males in mating colors; their body banding becomes more pronounced and the red band on their dorsal becomes much more vivid. All the males (5) had been following this female the entire day, and this was the second mating session observed. The males jockeyed for position, arched their backs to show off their dorsals and nipped at each other waiting for her to settle in. Two different males appear to mate with the female.

We are proud to have these animals mate in our exhibit, not only because they are a Threatened and Endangered species, but because it is a strong indicator that we are providing them with ideal care.

Juvenile brook trout video - beginning of collecting season

These are juvenile brook trout  in a side channel of the Tye River, approximately 200 yards downstream from Crabtree Falls. Native Virginia Brook trout spawn in late Fall, and take two to four months to hatch depending upon water temperature. After hatching, larval trout acquire food from their yolk sacs for a few weeks before becoming true free-swimming fry, like the ones in the video. They typically station themselves in a side current off the main stream flow facing upstream awaiting food to wash by. These young trout voraciously feed on aquatic insect larvae micro-crustaceans, and the occasional fish larvae. The Tye River has an excellent population of wild brook trout and the fry were abundant.

Banded sunfish Enneacanthus obesus can be beautiful aquarium fish

April is the month most native freshwater fishes become active and signals the beginning of our collecting season. This year we have only a few freshwater needs for the live collection: juvenile Lepomis spp., bowfin, a flathead catfish, a blue catfish, banded sunfish and some bluespotted sunfish that were captive bred by Nick Little at the National Aquarium in DC. 

Video of the Week! - Coral Reef: engineer goby feeding

 
This is the second installment of our "Video of the Week!". This is a routine morning feeding of our tropical tank, but the most obvious focus is on the sinuous and ever-hungry engineer gobies Pholidichthys leucotaenia also called convict gobies or convict blennies. The nickname "engineer" comes from their burrow-constructing behavior. They will excavate the substrate of a tank with their mouths to construct an elaborate network of burrows where they spend most of their time. The "convict" nickname is for their black and white striped coloration, reminiscent of the old-fashioned prison convict uniform. Whatever you call them, they are technically neither gobies nor blennies but a shallow water tropical fish species native to the Indo-Pacific, with only one other species in the family Pholidichthyidae. These beautiful fish were acquired as juveniles from the Steinhart Aquarium (10 of the fish) and the Houston Zoo (12). This exhibit is a replication of tropical seas that once covered this area millions of years ago and is one of the few exhibits in which we display non-native fishes. Along with the engineer gobies are several other tropical fish species including: clown tang, firefish, cardinalfish, hawkfish, flame angel, and several damsel species, including clownfish.

Clown tang

Flame angel

This tank gets a wide variety of foods to accommodate all the different fishes in the tank. The majority of them eat enriched Mysis relicta, but we also add Mazuri gel diet, live adult Artemia (brine shrimp), newly hatched Artemia nauplii, cut shrimp, squid, and Ulva a green macro-algae.

 Clownfish in one of the bubble-tip anemones

Pajama cardinalfish

Video of the Week! Underwater Cypress Swamp Tour

This is the first video of the new series, "Video of the Week". It is a brief underwater tour of the Cypress Swamp Habitarium. Immediately you may notice a very...uh...healthy amelanistic channel catfish, then a pair of shy largemouth bass, and most prominently several longnose gar Lepisosteus osseus. This ancient species has been around for over one hundred million years and they retain several characteristics of "ancient" fishes: heterocercal tail, ganoid scales, and the ability to gulp and utilize surface air. This last trait makes them very well suited for survival in low oxygen environments such as a swamp or slow moving rivers such as the Chickahominy., the upper Pamunkey and Mattaponi Rivers.

Getting ready to film

By mounting a Panasonic Lumix waterproof camera on a PVC pole (pictured above), we are able to film underwater in many exhibits without having to SCUBA dive, but also get further into the exhibit than from outside the exhibit. In the future, I will use this rig to film a variety of  feedings and animals that I have been previously unable to film properly; the videos will then become video of the week!  

White catfish Ameiurus catus

 
Black crappie Pomoxis nigromaculatus

Back to the Swamp. This exhibit features carp, chain pickerel, largemouth bass up to 10 lbs., huge redear sunfish, black crappie, flier, bowfin, channel catfish (the common morph and the amelanistic one) white catfish, and eleven longnose gar (many of which are in the video). In addition to the fish, there are many turtles: red and yellow bellied sliders, and a separate enclosure featuring an alligator. The VLM is very near to the Great Dismal Swamp - among many others - which are unique and exceptionally rich ecosystems that feature these and many other interesting species. In addition to the aquatic portion, this exhibit also attempts to recreate a terrestrial cypress swamp ecosystem, complete with live cypress trees, woodpeckers and bobwhite quail.

Common carp Cyprinus carpio

American alligator  Alligator mississippiensis

 

The fishes in this exhibit are fed during a public program at 11 am on Tuesday and Thursdays, and the gator is fed by the herpetology staff on Wednesday at 1 pm and Friday at 12:30. 

Maybe one of the the feeding will be the next video!