baby onyx and darwin babies have flared gills.

[lizardlady]

I have been breeding clownfish for a few years now, and am still learning lol, lately I have noticed that two of my batches of clowns, specifically onyx and darwins have a significant number of babies with flared gills. I normally get about one or two out of a batch of thirty or forty. As far as the husbandry goes, nothing has changed, water quality is always good and I feed a variety of foods, I suspected maybe it had something to do with nutrition so I have started adding iodide on day one and six, also once a week I add vitamins, and their artemia are always huffa enriched. Rotifers are always gut-loaded (they are put into a small container of greenwater and when it starts to turn light I feed the rotifers to the babies. I also add a small amount of greenwater to tanks being fed rotifers. I keep a close eye on ph, s.g., temperature and rotifer density. I also suspect that the parents might be related since I couldn't verify that they weren't.
Any ideas or suggestions would be appreciated.

 

[temper76]

Any chemicals you are using chemicals?

 

[lizardlady]

I'm not using chemicals but I do make my own greenwater and am wondering if maybe the greenwater added to the baby tanks was high in fertilier.

 

[reefstew]

Their is a lot of debate on this problem. This happens around meta time & what I have tried is 40 - 50% water changes. I might get 2 or 3 per batch but the last few batches were 500 + fish. I also never use bbs. Rotifers To Golden Pearls to TDO A & then move them to grow out.

 

[syrinx]

Could be genetic or enviormental. Of course you could do what everyone else did with their culls and make up a fancy name and charge high prices! How about Lion head clowns?

 

[billsreef]

Is this from a pair you've previously had good babies from, or new pair without a track record?

 

[temper76]

Try getting RGComplete go from rotifers straight to tdo .and change water every 2 days and see if anything changes .if you are keeping up with water changes then it should be chemical .other than that is when ammonia burns their gill plate. I don't think is genetics 2 different kind of clownfish pair don't sound right.its something that you are putting in .ammonia batch is good but don't go by that keep up with water changes and do just for one batch what i told you on both pairs.water changes, rotifers, tdo. I know this sounds silly are you using rodi water or tap and you just add conditioner???

 

[lizardlady]

Both pairs don't produce many babies but previous hatches turned out healthy and hardy. I will try more water changes and see what happens. I feed the babies tdo from day five appr. one hour before I add brine shrimp and it usually takes about three days or so before the babies start eating the tdo,,,I feed the babies four to five times a day and sipon regularly, especially when I start tdo. I use rodi water and add a drop of amrid to the replacement water.

 

[billsreef]

How often do you siphon and do water changes? I like to siphon daily, especially when feeding dry foods. It's lot's of effort, especially when using small airline hose siphons to prevent sucking up larvae, but it's worth it.

 

[Scubasteve13]

Could be ammonia burn caused from high levels of ammonia in the fry tank.

 

[mwilliams62]

Not sure about it being ammonia burn. My true percs fry ended up with 3 flared gills and many with misbars and I always used the parents water which was from the DT and there was never any ammonia in the water and I did daily water changes / siphon during the first week to two weeks then backed down to 3 times a week. But I was told it was due to water quality still not truly convinced with that because I did some reading and I ran across that it was damage to the gills from food they would eat… So maybe the food was too big for their mouths during the meta stage of life.

 

[lizardlady]

Quick update. All subsequent batches of babies are showing a very low incidence of flared gills (one out of sixty). Still not quite sure why this happened but am glad it hasn't happened since!