clown spawn

[crpeck]

The closer the better, of course. Check salinity and pH, too. All should be as dead on as you can. Don't stress or give up if you can't get it perfect ... just do your best.

I used to make new salt water the day before the hatch. Then I take just enough from the parent tank that I need for the larvae tank when I cut the pumps at lights out. After I've captured what larvae I can, I made back up the water in the main tank and turned the pumps back on.

You don't have to do that if you're already set up. I just felt it was the easiest way to make sure pH and salinity were spot on and the temp can be brought up or down a tad as needed easily.

At this point if they're hatching, do the best with what you've got.

If you get the timing down, you only have to wait up late one night instead of several.

Good Luck!

 

[Fizhstiks]

Thanks for your help

I managed to catch about 15 larvae last night. I added the rotifers to the tank and went to bed. Got up this morning and checked on the larvae, theres a few that are swimming around, 3 are spinning in circles at the bottom, and the rest lie on the bottom and scoot along every once and a while. Is that normal for them to lie on the bottom?

 

[crpeck]

The ones spinning is circles is not good. Sounds like too much current. Hard to say with the ones on the bottom. They will park on the bottom or on the sides some at first, but shouldn't stay that way for a long time.

How much current do you have? You should have just an airstone barely breaking the surface of the water.

Now, your challenge is to keep your rotifer density up. Do you know how to measure that?

 

[Fizhstiks]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=9095850#post9095850 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by crpeck
The ones spinning is circles is not good. Sounds like too much current. Hard to say with the ones on the bottom. They will park on the bottom or on the sides some at first, but shouldn't stay that way for a long time.

How much current do you have? You should have just an airstone barely breaking the surface of the water.

Now, your challenge is to keep your rotifer density up. Do you know how to measure that?

I have the airstone going just enough to push the larvae away from the heater, it seems a little strong but if i turn it down i doubt it would do anything to keep them away from the heater.

I dont know how to measure rotifer density, but i was going to strain the rotifer culture 1-2 times a day, and feed them in the larvae tank to keep them alive.

 

[crpeck]

You should be using a solid black heater or a heater that doesn't show the heating element and put a piece of tape over the red light. If all light is blocked from the heater, you don't have to worry about them being attracted to it. Just to be safe, you can loop the tubing from the airstone under the heater to have the bubbles right at the heater. They can't handle much current the first couple of days.

If you don't measure your rotifer culture, then you're just relying on luck.

Do you have a standard hydrometer? The trick is to draw a 3/8" circle on the hydrometer box. Scoop water into the hydrometer and hold it up to a light. Count the swimming rotifers in the circle. You want to keep the rotifer count above 15 in your larvae tank. You can add greenwater to your larvae tank if you don't over do it to culture rotifers in the larvae tank.

You REALLY need to have Joyce Wilkerson's book on hand to refer to if you're going to do this. There are too many tricks and pitfalls and you're just putting yourself through a lot of frustration if you're not fully prepared with what to do. The rotifer measure trick is right out of that book. She gives a day by day account of what to do and what to expect.

I had someone helping me like I'm trying to help you, but that's not enough. I could have NEVER done it without that book unless I wanted to stress myself with a ton of trial and error efforts.

I don't mean to preach, but I can tell by your questions that you've not followed the instructions in that book.

The first 3 days are critical. If they don't learn to eat, they won't make it and if the rotifer density isn't right, they can't get enough.

Good Luck and keep us posted.

 

[Slakker]

I don't even have a tank, or clowns, yet, but I just ordered her book as I plan on trying to breed clowns.

Good luck on raising the fry, I hope all goes well and I hope to see some healthy babies soon!

 

[Fizhstiks]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=9096551#post9096551 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by crpeck
You should be using a solid black heater or a heater that doesn't show the heating element and put a piece of tape over the red light. If all light is blocked from the heater, you don't have to worry about them being attracted to it. Just to be safe, you can loop the tubing from the airstone under the heater to have the bubbles right at the heater. They can't handle much current the first couple of days.

If you don't measure your rotifer culture, then you're just relying on luck.

Do you have a standard hydrometer? The trick is to draw a 3/8" circle on the hydrometer box. Scoop water into the hydrometer and hold it up to a light. Count the swimming rotifers in the circle. You want to keep the rotifer count above 15 in your larvae tank. You can add greenwater to your larvae tank if you don't over do it to culture rotifers in the larvae tank.

You REALLY need to have Joyce Wilkerson's book on hand to refer to if you're going to do this. There are too many tricks and pitfalls and you're just putting yourself through a lot of frustration if you're not fully prepared with what to do. The rotifer measure trick is right out of that book. She gives a day by day account of what to do and what to expect.

I had someone helping me like I'm trying to help you, but that's not enough. I could have NEVER done it without that book unless I wanted to stress myself with a ton of trial and error efforts.

I don't mean to preach, but I can tell by your questions that you've not followed the instructions in that book.

The first 3 days are critical. If they don't learn to eat, they won't make it and if the rotifer density isn't right, they can't get enough.

Good Luck and keep us posted.

I used water from my main tank to fill up the larvae tank to try to get the parameters as close as possible before they hatched.

I do have the heater indicator light taped off and the airstone right under the heating element. I turned the air down a little and they seem to be doing fine. The ones that were spinning died but i still have 8 larvae and from what I can see, they appear to have full stomachs.

I went to the LFS last week to see if they had the book, and they did. I didn't buy it though because the LFS wanted $40 for it. I'm going to try to order the book off the internet soon.

For some reason, some of the eggs didn't hatch on Saturday so i stayed up last night to catch them. I got 25 larvae last night and all of them were dead by this morning, i don't know what happened but my guess is that they used up their egg sacks and were just too weak.

I have a few questions about the larvae. How long do i feed rotifers? The next food after rotifers is brine shrimp right? Is it better to use live brine or frozen brine? At what point do you start switching the clowns over to prepared foods?

I also have a few questions about my rotifer culture. I need to top off the culture because its lost quite a bit of water but I'm afraid of dumping freshwater into the bucket. Is it safe to add freshwater directly to the culture? Can i just dump it in or should i drip freshwater into the culture?

thanks for all your help

 

[Fizhstiks]

1 more question

The larvae are eating when they curl their tails up and lunge forward right? I thought i read that somewhere but i just want to make sure.

thanks

 

[t5Nitro]

That sounds cool trying to raise the larvae. How hard is it so far Fizhstiks? I just put another clown in my with mine last Thursday, hopefully they will spawn someday. Good luck!

 

[crpeck]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=9109376#post9109376 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Fizhstiks
"I used water from my main tank to fill up the larvae tank to try to get the parameters as close as possible before they hatched."

Good


"I do have the heater indicator light taped off and the airstone right under the heating element. I turned the air down a little and they seem to be doing fine. The ones that were spinning died but i still have 8 larvae and from what I can see, they appear to have full stomachs."

Good ... sorry. Do you have the larvae tank sides covered, too in order to block light from the sides? This will help them find their food better, too.



"I went to the LFS last week to see if they had the book, and they did. I didn't buy it though because the LFS wanted $40 for it. I'm going to try to order the book off the internet soon."

Ouch! That's high. You can probably find it on Amazon or Half.com used for less. It will really help you a lot and make things more interesting to understand what's going on with the babies.



"For some reason, some of the eggs didn't hatch on Saturday so i stayed up last night to catch them. I got 25 larvae last night and all of them were dead by this morning, i don't know what happened but my guess is that they used up their egg sacks and were just too weak."

You're probably right. The larvae might have been weaker, too not to be able to hatch with the rest.


"I have a few questions about the larvae. How long do i feed rotifers? The next food after rotifers is brine shrimp right? Is it better to use live brine or frozen brine? At what point do you start switching the clowns over to prepared foods?"

You'll keep the rotifers going for about 2 weeks, until they're feeding well on brine shrimp and pulverized flake. Keep the rotifer density at about 15 until you see them kinking their tails and hunting well. But don't let the rotifer density get past 25 or you will lose larvae from having too many rotifers.

You can start newly hatched brine shrimp as early as 5 - 7 days, but definitely by 7 or 8 days. Live brine is better. The babies still don't see well and are used to hunting moving rotifers. You'll need to hatch new shrimp each day because after 24 hours, the baby brine develop spines that will choke the babies. I used to harvest my hatch into a separate container with an airstone and some rotifers to feed them, then clean out the hatcher and start another batch for the next day.

After about day 16, you can start dropping the brine shrimp one day a week and gradually drop more and more until you eliminate the brine because they're eating prepared food.

Start with the prepared food at about 8 days. You need to really pulverize it down to a fine powder.



"I also have a few questions about my rotifer culture. I need to top off the culture because its lost quite a bit of water but I'm afraid of dumping freshwater into the bucket. Is it safe to add freshwater directly to the culture? Can i just dump it in or should i drip freshwater into the culture?"

You need to keep the salinity in your rotifer culture similar to the rearing tank or the rotifers will shock and die when you harvest them and put them into the baby tank. Yes ... drip the freshwater in.

thanks for all your help QUOTE]

You're welcome!

 

[crpeck]

The curl and lunge is a good sign! Yes, that means they're starting to get their food. When they're good at that, you can start dropping the rotifer density.

But if you watch, you'll see that at first they curl and lunge, but miss the rotifer.

 

[Jovreefer]

Just food for thought.

If your getting such a low yield of eggs & they are not all hatching the same night the parents might need a better diet. That will make for stronger babies & more of them.

 

[crpeck]

That's a really good point.

I notice that when I've gotten lazy and dropped off from feeding a good variety that the nests will be smaller and have some straggler eggs the day after the main hatch. I haven't really tracked it for real evidence, though.

There's been some discussion among the regular clownfish breeders about different foods they feel helps egg viability.

 

[Jovreefer]

More food for thought!

Are you taking any science right now in school? If so, you could probably ask your teacher if you could do this as an extra credit project if you document everything & change some variables.

For example.
Change the amount of food you feed for a few spawns. See how many eggs hatch & if they hatch all at once.

Next time feed double & see if that changes anything

Next time feed a different kind of food and so on...

Also document the survival rate of the fry from each batch.

 

[crpeck]

Another good point.

Its science fair time.

My daughter helped me the last time we raised babies.

She kept a journal, took pictures, and did a bunch of research on spawning, metamorphosis and rotifers as plankton. Won a red ribbon in the science fair.

 

[Fizhstiks]

Yep, I have the sides of the tank covered in black construction paper and the bottom of the tank covered in white paper. I have 7 larvae left today and they are all doing the lunge thing so I hope they'll live.

About the food I feed to the parents, what kind of foods should I be feeding? I feed the parents NLS and Kent herbivore pellets twice a day, and mysis shrimp once or twice a week.

 

[Kmiec123]

The more variety the better...have read keeping lower than 40% shrimp based is a good idea. Couple times a week is great. one feeding per day to saturation, till they wont take anymore food is also a good idea...Hope this help...Carl

 

[Fizhstiks]

thanks

if the brine shrimp develop spines after 24 hours, what happens if some of the brine shrimp make it past 24 hours in the larvae tank?

 

[Tbones]

how to tell males from females

how to tell males from females

i have a question. i would like to know how to tell a male from a female? will the clowns protect the eggs from tank mates?

 

[Kmiec123]

Mama Bigger, Papa smaller, and Papa will protect the eggs. Hope this helps...Carl