A Simple Solution to Breeding Clownfish
by Jason Golden, Lead Aquaculturist of Clownfish Sushi
So you've got a pair of spawning clownfish? Great. And you've probably done some research online and have discovered that the process of raising these little buggers can be very complex... if you allow it to be. Today I'm going to share with you my simple solution to breeding clownfish. So put down the Amquel, forget your plans for the massive rack-growout system, step away from the green water and let's get started!
I'm already assuming your clownfish are spawning. If they aren't, go buy some juveniles, pair them up and come back to this thread in about two years. One important thing to note is that the first five or six clutches are generally considered non-viable. The broodstock are still undergoing some physical changes along with learning their roles in the incubation of the eggs. This is a great time to fatten them up. The diet should be very diverse. I feed at least five different types of frozen foods along with Selcon enriched flakes and pellets several times a day. I also add frozen krill to the menu which is supposedly good for the egg casings. As long as I'm on the subject of the broodstock I might as well talk about the broodstock tank.
I've used both a completely private, bare-bottom tank with a clay pot and a reef tank with lots of non-aggressive fish that I stick my hand in several times a week for a broodstock tank. Both work equally well. What is important is that the fish have a definied territory, are well fed and are not overly stressed by any competition. Here is the catch. If you choose to use a reef tank you are going to need to make some minor adjustments to the salinity and temperature. You will need to lower the salinity to 1.024 and raise the temperature to 80-82 degrees. I'll get back to why those parameters are important later.
Thanks to modern food alternatives I've managed to raise fry with only one live food needing to be cultured in the entire food chain... rotifers. There is absolutely no need to culture your own phytoplankton, AKA green water, and a single five-gallon bucket of rotifers is more than enough. I use a phyto product that contains both enriched phyto and an ammonia blocker. The rotifer culture should be kept at a salinity of 1.018-1.020. Rotifers go into shock and die if they are introduced to water where the difference in salinity is .007 or greater. If you keep your reef tank at 1.026 you can only feed rotifers cultured at 1.020. Ideally you want to push your rotifer culture and broodstock tank to be as close as possible, hence the prior recommendation to lower the salinity in your broodstock tank to 1.024. My next solution comes with a bit of a disclosure.
I am not responsible for ruining your carpet. Please secure all drip-lines properly.
I'm going to share with you my secret weapon... the slow-drip fry tank. Basically, I piggyback a 10 gallon fry tank on to my reef tank. Water drips in to the fry tank and back out to the broodstock's sump. The standard method for larval care in a fry tank requires daily water changes of various percentages along with constant monitoring of ammonia, salinity, temperature, PH, nitrates, etc... forget all that mess. As long as your reef system is healthy, the fry tank will be healthy. The slow-drip does not replace the need for daily bottom scraping and siphoning but it makes the water parameters much, much more stable. A good rule of thumb here is that 1 drop/sec results in approximately 1 gal/day. Other standard fry tank rules still apply. You will need to black out all sides, use bubble wands at both ends and use a heater to maintain the fry tank at 80-82 degrees. Temperatures lower than 80 degrees will delay meta and result in losses. Lighting is a very key component. Ambient room lighting is not enough. I diffuse a 7 watt night light with a couple peices of paper towel. The fry need to be able to see to hunt but are blinded by side-lighting and too much light forces them to the bottom of the tank resulting in losses. A little phyto in the fry tank helps to dim the light as well as keep the rotifers well fed. After the first week lighting becomes much less of an issue.
I don't artifically incubate the eggs nor do I transfer them. I believe that the broodstock do a much better job of incubating the clutch then we do. On hatch night, I manually collect the fry. When the lights go out I turn off all the pumps. I place a single LED light over the tank and turn off all external room lights. 15 mins later the fry are attracted to the spot light like moths to a flame. Simply scoop them out with a tea cup at the surface and gently transfer them to the fry tank. Fry tank water needs to match the broodstock water exactly. A single degree of temperature difference or .001 change in salinity will result in losses.
The fry need to be weened onto three different sized foods over a period of about three weeks. During the first week you will want to be feeding them about 300 ml of rotifers three times a day. The second stage of food is Otohime A. The final stage is crushed flake, Golden Pearls and freeze-dried and frozen Cyclopseeze. It is important to overlap food types the entire time. Some fry will develop slower than others. It will be another month before the fry are ready to be introduced to standard frozen foods.
Sometime around the third week you'll want to begin converting the fry tank to a growout tank. Begin increasing the water volume in the fry tank every day as well as adding a sponge filter. After a week it will be safe to take the juveniles off of the drip-line and eventually add the smallest HOB bio-wheel filter you can find. You'll need to begin manual water changes at this time and should be able to keep as many as 100 juveniles in a 10 gallon tank with proper maintenance.
In conclusion, one can breed clownfish with nothing more than a reef tank, a 5 gallon bucket of rotifers and a 10 gallon slow-drip fry tank. The foods you need to add to your collection are a Phyto-feed for the rotifers, Otohime A, Golden Pearls and freeze-dried Cyclopseeze. The entire project can run you less than $150 but there are a lot of things that can go wrong.
Breeding Clownfish requires a lot of patience and willingness to learn from your mistakes. Too many air bubbles will kill the fry. Too few air bubbles will kill the fry. Too much light will kill the fry. Not enough light will kill the fry. Too high a temperature will kill the fry. Too low a temperature will kill the fry. Those are the sorts of lessons you will be learning as you attempt this process. Take good notes and be prepared to lose a lot of fish. I was thinking about writing a book entitiled "101 Ways to Kill Clownfish Fry" but didn't want to sound too negative. It's been a really rewarding project for me and I hope this helps someone looking for a simple solution to breeding clownfish.
