clown spawn

Oh I really thought you were out of the woods with the one. So sorry to hear he didn't make it. The twirling sounds like choking or overeating. Usually even if flake is too big, it will soften in their throats before it chokes them at this age.

You may need to restart your rotifer culture or at least clean up the water in there a bit. Check the pH, ammonia and nitrites in the culture to see if that is the problem. How old is your phyto/greenwater you're feeding the rotifers? Does it still smell okay?

When you check the density, are the big rotifers mostly just swimming normally or do you have more than usual small ones swimming around very fast? You have to look at the culture with a magnifying glass to see this. An excess of the little fast male rotifers is another warning that the colony is stressed.

If your water quality is off in the rotifer culture, try some water changes in there and see if it turns around. If you're really worried, I'd try a restart in another container.

Good luck!
Cathy
 
My clowns recently had another batch of larvae and i have about 20 live ones right now. I read in the book that one of the reasons for weak larvae is not varying the parent's diet enough. This time i tried to vary the diet of the pair as much as possible and now instead of the larvae only lasting less than a day, they've been alive since Tuesday. Unfortunatly, my rotifer colony seems to have died out even though i tried doing a couple water changes. Before they completly died off, i transfer some of the rotifers to a 10 gallon i setup next the rearing tank in an attempt to get another colony going. I do have some going in the 10 now but its no where near enough to feed the clowns til they can eat brine and they don't seem to be reproducing. I do have some extremely fine powdered food, and i have seen a few of the larvae doing the lunge thing.

I got a pic of them after they hatched, its not that great but its hard taking a picture when you cant see what you're doing :D :
clownbabies.jpg
 
Glad to see you back.

The powdered food is a long shot. It's really hard in a small tank to keep the right balance between enough to feed the larvae and so much that it fouls the tank. And that's if you're lucky enough that they eat it.

But who knows? Maybe your luck is bad with doing things the usually easier way and will be good luck doing things the hard way.

Let's hope!
 
I think there is a lot of good info in this thread that others can benefit from. Also some great teamwork from crpeck and others.
 
Thanks Walker .... where have you been? It's been a long time since I've seen you on the WTMRAC forum.

C'mon back over there and let us know what you've been up to.
 
Congratulations!

Let us know how they do. Are you feeding live rotifers or trying the artificial ones?

Good Luck!
 
Finally found my thread!!! I haven't been on here in awhile and since i never get to use the search :mad: it took me forever to find the thread.

Past few batches haven't made it, haven't had enough money to buy some more rotifers since my colony died out :( and the powdered food doesn't work. My pair has some eggs right now and they should hatch in a few days but i don't have any food for them. Now that im on summer vacation and i will have plenty of time for the larvae, i might try to get another rotifer colony started and attempt to raise some more babies.

Since i don't have any rotifers right now, i'm going to experiment on this batch and try feeding bbs right from the start. Any chances of survival?
 
Good to see you, and sorry to hear that you've lost the last couple of batches.

I believe that BBS will likely be too large or too feisty for the newly hatched clowns to hunt...but I do hope that it works out.
 
frozen rotifers can have some success. I would go that route before using bbs right out of the gate. Hikari is one brand around here that sell frozen rots. When are they due for hatching?
 
I agree .... frozen rotifers are a better bet than bbs. I'm not sure how you will keep them throughout the water instead of falling to the bottom. There will need to be enough water movement to keep them going but not so much that the babies can't swim.

You'll also need to be diligent about vacuuming the bottom of the rearing tank.

Good luck!
 
Couldn't find any frozen rots and bbs didn't hatch (guess they are too old), so i didn't even bother catching the larvae this time.

I've really let this tank go because of school and now there is algae growing everywhere, and the rock structure is not the way i want it but i've been afraid to move it because i do want to try to raise some clowns and i don't want them to stop spawning. If i were to rearrange the rocks, do you think they would stop spawning? I've also wanted to try some snails to help out with the algae. Is it safe to have snails in the tank or will they eat the clown's eggs?
 
If I'm not mistaken, papa clown will keep snails from getting too close to the eggs to do any damage.

Also, moving the rocks might disrupt the spawning cycle, but I don't think they'd stop completely.
 
some clownfish are more sensitive than others. While moving the rocks may stop some it may not stop others. If they do stop they probably will start up some time later. My wife moved a coral that was about a foot away from their "spot" and this caused them to stop for about a month or two. But then they started again. And this time it was in a better place, right in front of the tank so we could easily show anyone who stopped by. As a matter of fact we just had a batch hatch about an hour ago.
 
I agree with both.

Snails most definitely will not be a problem.

Rock rearranging may throw them off for a little while, may not at all, but probably won't for too long.
 
I ordered some rotifers yesterday so i can get another colony or two going soon and try to raise some more clowns.

With the luck ive been having (my 180 gallon freshwater tank cracked yesterday right after i finished treatment on some aggressive form of finrot that ive had for one year that somehow survived bleach!! :( ) my clowns will probably stop breeding and the rotifers will arrive dead....
 
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