On November 28th, 2009, the first of our grunt sculpin eggs hatched. We got very excited and decided we would try to raise them. If we just left the baby fish in the tank with their parents, the anemones would have caught them. Every time we would find newly hatched fish, they were transfered to a dark brooding tank with a turkey baster and were fed small brine shrimp three times a day. After a month of caring for the newly hatched grunt sculpins, we realized we weren’t succeeding. They weren’t growing any bigger and they wouldn’t live for more than a few days. So, starting in January, we started releasing them off our floating dock. We thought the eggs would never stop hatching! There were always at least a few new fish every few days. But finally, after five and a half months, they have stopped.
Grunt sculpin watching over its eggs
Since November we have had
1,191 eggs hatch!!! And 1,074 of those were released off our dock in hopes of becoming cute adult grunt sculpins! Here's a graph of the trend of the egg hatching. Look how up and down it is! Some days there were no babies, other days, in the high 80's.
Julia
Marine Exhibit Education Coordinator
What accounts for the survival of the babies off your dock?
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