Breeding Pair of Onyx Clownfish

thanks. i'm in the harvesting stage now to maintain the culture. curious -- do other tank inhabitants besides larval stage fish eat rotifers as well or should i just wash them down the drain?

do grown fish eat them? do SPS eat them?
 
Many organisms in your reef will feed on rotifers. Soft, SPS, LPS, and NPS corals; Sponges; Gorgonians; Ricordea; Shrimp; Anemomes; Stars. When you don't have larvae to feed, feed your reef - it will love it :)
 
seafarm said:
Many organisms in your reef will feed on rotifers. Soft, SPS, LPS, and NPS corals; Sponges; Gorgonians; Ricordea; Shrimp; Anemomes; Stars. When you don't have larvae to feed, feed your reef - it will love it :)
Click to expand...

hm, interesting. thanks for the input. might give it a try. dont want to turn my tank into a culture though so i might just toss in a few and see what happens :) i didnt realize SPS ate animals. i wonder if anthias would eat them... might experiment there too.



on another note, those eggs must be comfy quarters because these guys still haven't hatched! it has to be tomorrow night (because i'm starting to lose my mind waiting)! if the night they layed (2 saturdays ago) was night 0, tonight is night 9, tomorrow night 10. i think either 9 or 10 is when i saw them last spawn, i recall it being longer than the 8 days avg. i have seen quoted in various places.
 
Rotifers absolutely will NOT culture in your reef system. They require far too much algae and get eaten almost immediately.
 
IME the time it takes for your eggs to hatch is temperature dependent. I've had them go 12 days before at 76F, and eggs from the same pair go 8 days at 80F. What's your temp?
 
it finally happened!

i collected about 20 of the fry which is right where i wanted. the nest was not huge, but i didnt want to try raising 100 clowns anyway and was hoping to get 20 to give them the best chance of developing.

now the real craziness stars i suppose!

i'm not feeding them tonight, -- do you all feed the night of hatching?

Joyce Wilkerson's book says to feed the next morning so that's my plan. come on rotifers i hope you are ready!
 
so this morning they are a little easier to count than in the dark with a flashlight zipping around.

i count 14 larva. i did find 4 dead ones unfortunately :(

there are also about a 12 that didnt hatch last night so i suppose i could try to collect those tonight.

i put in rotifers and a little rotiferdiet.

this is crazy! i hope i am doing this right i really want these guys to pull through. it seems like most of them are eating / have eaten some. i think they look ok. it seems like a bunch will congregate at the corner near the top and then a few will branch off and go eat in the middle of the tank and then come back.
 
anyone know what attracts them to corners / seams?

it seems like sometimes they "attack" the water line and bounce away. maybe they are hunting / learning how? would seem like there are more rotifers in the open water than in the corner at the water line. i did see one do the curled tail attack already, that was cool.
 
jonnybravo22 said:
anyone know what attracts them to corners / seams?

it seems like sometimes they "attack" the water line and bounce away. maybe they are hunting / learning how? would seem like there are more rotifers in the open water than in the corner at the water line. i did see one do the curled tail attack already, that was cool.
Click to expand...

Too much light may drive them to the sides or bottom of the tank.
 
Thanks. I assume it would be ok to add any larva that hatch tonight to the same larval tank as the 1 day old larva?


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just wanted to say again to everyone that is helping me out here i really appreciate it. i'm relying on your input to help get me through this experiment and hoping i come out on the other end with some healthy juvi clowns.

i was expecting to collect the remaining dozen or so fry that didnt hatch last night and were there this morning, however i got home late from work and the lights had gone out w/ the pump / filtration still going so i think i lost them. i turned it off when i got home and checked every 30 minutes and no fry so i said what the heck and shined the flashlight on the spot and saw they were all gone so i must have just missed them! oh well.

i have 14 larva in the larva tank. filled it pretty well with rotifers this morning before leaving and they still have rotifers left to munch. i guess i dont need to add any more until they've sufficiently thinned out the current stock. so i guess nothing to do now? i'll just test the water.
 
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jonnybravo22 said:
anyone know what attracts them to corners / seams?

it seems like sometimes they "attack" the water line and bounce away. maybe they are hunting / learning how? would seem like there are more rotifers in the open water than in the corner at the water line. i did see one do the curled tail attack already, that was cool.
Click to expand...

Larval fish are phototropic. Thus we can collect them in a larvae catcher or other method by guiding them with light. In the early stages say day 1-15, Their movement is largely governed by light placement, strength and duration. If your larvae are crowding the corners, it is ikely that they are being side illuminated. This can cause dis-orientation and will affect the efficiency of their feeding. I have had some success breeding clowns, but have also had several miserable failures, and have as such done a enormous amount of reading on the subject. I'm certainly no expert, but the most recent book I read was written by a scientist who has breeding projects set up at several colleges/universities here in Florida, and what he says is that there are 3 principle consideration for the pelagic larval stage of marine fishes. 1. light - according to his book light should come only from an overhead source and should not be allowed to penetrate the sides of the larval rearing vessel. Also it should not be too bright, and should be on a regular photoperiod, such that the larvae are given a chance to rest at night. 2. water quality - The smaller the rearing vessel, the more difficult it is to maintain water quality. A nitrite spike in a five gallon bucket can cause total die off, while a twenty gallon container will buffer these swings more effectively. 3. food density and quality - Too many rots will degrade water quality. improperly enriched rots will ahve little nutritional value, and to few will cause your larvae to starve. For clowns he suggests 10-20 per ml.

I've lost my last four hatches. I've been trying to raise them in three gallon white buckets. It worked ok for the first hatch, but has failed ever since. I am currently setting up a larval rearing station with black 30g tubs. My lights will be flourescent shop lights mounted to the ceiling and have a 14 hour photoperiod. I hope all goes well as I have two batches set to hatch on Mon then Tues. I'll let you know how it works ... or doesn't work, but his book makes sense to me, and overhead diffuse overhead lighting will be my principle concern for the next batch.

A few questions you may have already ansewered, but I can't remember
1. What kind of tank are you raising them in glass/platic/size?
2. Do you have the sides blacked out?
3. Are you tinting the water green?
4. What kind of lights postioning/strength/photoperiod?
5. How are you measuring the density of the rots you're feeding?
6. Are you using enrichment feeds for the rots and if so are you adding this feed to your larval tank?

Not claiming super brain type knowledge, so don't take what I'm saying here as statments of fact, just stuff I read that seems to make sense.
 
thanks for the interest and for offering your insight duncaholic! do appreciate it.

here are some pics of the larval tank

IMG_0152.jpg


IMG_0151.jpg


have the sides covered pretty well by newspaper. the light is only overhead.
they are are swimming around the tank, a few of them just seem to ultimately like to rest in the corners after they swim around / eat


1. 5.5g glass
2. yes
3. slightly - not as green as rotifer culture, but a few drops of rotifer diet in there
4. just a standard room floor lamp about 3 feet above the tank facing down
5. havent measured the density, just put enough so that they dont have to travel more than a body length to eat a rotifer. they probably only have to go half a body length so density has been pretty high for days 1 and 2. i havent added any rotifers since day 1. they are thinning them out so i'm planning to just add them as needed.
6. only enrichment is rotifer diet. thought about adding selcon or something but i dont want to pollute and dont know if they would even make use of it if i put it tin the water. any insight there?
 
Never heard of anyone using selcon for fry, just the different algae strains. Some of them are really oily is why I was asking. last time I put rotigrow plus in the fry bucket and the next day I had an oil slick and a bunch of dead babies. As for the rest of your setup, it looks like you are much better prepared than I was for the first batch.

Good luck and post lots of pics please
-M
 
duncaholic said:
Never heard of anyone using selcon for fry, just the different algae strains. Some of them are really oily is why I was asking. last time I put rotigrow plus in the fry bucket and the next day I had an oil slick and a bunch of dead babies. As for the rest of your setup, it looks like you are much better prepared than I was for the first batch.

Good luck and post lots of pics please
-M
Click to expand...

thanks.

no oils slicks thus far.

it is the start of day 4. so far i have only "fed" once, the morning of day 1. the rotifer density has come down a bit but it was very high on day 1 and there are only about a dozen larva in the 5.5g tank so perhaps that's all that's needed. if it ever seems that the density is too low i'll add more but for now they seem to be eating fine and don't have to travel far. at what stage would people start adding Otohime? i've seen days 5/6 tossed around. does it coincide with meta phase or no?

anyone have a suggested timetable for progressing through the various sizes of otohime?
 
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