Clownfish breeding set-up in line with 100G reef

[FelipeBastos]

What would be the pros and cons of this?

Please give your opinion, especially if you have experience with breeding fish.

Thanks,

Felipe

 

[mwp]

Felipe, all the seasoned breeders here will tell you that larval rearing and juvenile growout is best done NOT connected to a reef setup. Seeing how my GBG's are growing out with a constantly elevated ammonia level, I can only agree with that. Get Wilkerson's book if you don't already have it...she has a nice little "side note" about the time she tried to rear in a tank connected to the broodstock tank (thinking it wouldn't be affected by the waste)....

Other than that, there's probably no reason why you couldn't keep the BROODSTOCK pair in a tank connected to a reef...

FWIW,

Matt

 

[FelipeBastos]

Matt,

I read her book, though I don't own it.

I remember reading about not doing the rearing connected, but if it a large enough system, I still am failing to see what the harm would be, especially if you have more than enough live rock and a DSB in order to do some filtration, as well as a UV light.

Felipe

 

[mwp]

It's your reef....

Seriously, considering that the larvae and juveniles can handle so much more than the reef life can, why risk it? They do just fine offline...running ammonia and nitrite...why would you want to dump more ammonia and nitrite into your reef than you have to?

My GBG tank is running at 1 ppm free ammonia right now in a 10 gallon tank...imagine having that dumped into your reef...

FWIW,

Matt

 

[FelipeBastos]

I just think that in a 100G system the ammonia would never rech those levels. Neither would the nitrites.

What do you think?

And do you have any juveniles yet, and what "flavor" are they?

 

[Kathy55g]

why risk your expensive display tank?

 

[mwp]

All the Greenbanded Gobies are juveniles at this point...approximately 20 fish, between roughly 3/8" and 3/4" I'd say...

It's only going to get worse once there's 100 clownfish in the other 10 gallon tank.

Basically, you wouldn't run larval tanks online anyways...that'd just wash the phyto and rotifers into your tank as well. Juvenile growout, where you want to feed them as much as they'll take and grow them as fast as you can..that's basically 100% against everything we do to keep water quality pristine in our reef tanks. FWIW, all my broodstock is housed in "reefs" with corals etc..that works fine. It's the growout that's the problem (when attached to the reef).

Matt

 

[FelipeBastos]

I don't think I ever thought of it as a risk.

I think that everything I feed the breeding tank will get to the reef, where it will be consumed by the corals, fish and clean up crew.

I am still not able to see why this is such a bad idea.

If I hook up a 10G now to the display and the refugium, and as the clownfish lay eggs and they hatch, they go in the 10G, I am leaning towards thinking they will never reach those levels of ammonia and nitrite.'

My display is 65G, the sump is 10G, and the fuge is a massive 20G packed with macroalgae and a DSB.

How does this sound?

I am just curious here, not starting this up anytime soon. Just trying to think outside the box.

 

[FelipeBastos]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=8743146#post8743146 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by mwp
All the Greenbanded Gobies are juveniles at this point...approximately 20 fish, between roughly 3/8" and 3/4" I'd say...

It's only going to get worse once there's 100 clownfish in the other 10 gallon tank.

Basically, you wouldn't run larval tanks online anyways...that'd just wash the phyto and rotifers into your tank as well. Juvenile growout, where you want to feed them as much as they'll take and grow them as fast as you can..that's basically 100% against everything we do to keep water quality pristine in our reef tanks. FWIW, all my broodstock is housed in "reefs" with corals etc..that works fine. It's the growout that's the problem (when attached to the reef).

Matt

Matt,

Thanks for the explanation. it's much clearer now.

Thanks!

 

[mwp]

Sounds like a recipe for disaster

The only benefit to this type of setup is better growout conditions for your larvae (which they don't need) at the expense of everything else..

Matt

 

[tanglovers]

We have a 250 gallon SPS reef system and to be honest I would never consider hooking a growout/juvenile tank to it. Just doesn't make sense to expose your corals to all those wastes and bioload if you do not have to. I would think even a softie reef would do better without the increased nitrate and ammonia. Just my opinion but we keep all our fish growout and reefs seperate.

 

[mwp]

BTW Felipe, I didn't mention before that I have to do sizeable water changes to keep the GBG's ammonia levels in check...i.e. last night they got a 30% change, and they'll probably get the same again today, if not more. It's much easier to keep things under control when you're dealing with 5 or 10 gallons of water vs. 100+, and the "exposure" to problems is limited to the babies you're growing vs. your entire collection.

Bottom line, larval growout doesn't NEED to be hooked up to the system...there's many more cons and only one "pro" (that I mentioned a post or two up).

Matt

 

[David M]

Totally unnecessary and a really bad idea IMHO Along with all the reasons already mentioned is the fact that there seems to be at least anecdotal evidence that juvies don't fare well in systems containing the broodstock. This may be beyond our understanding at this point but it may be natures way of insuring a healthy, varied genetic pool. ( drive away your own progeny)

 

[mwp]

Well, David, I might hypothesize that perhaps there's more than just social pressures that keep the smaller clowns in a wild group from growing...i.e. some sort of chemicals involved that adults put off, which slows the growth of neighboring juvies...

HMM.

Matt

 

[Kathy55g]

That's what I'm thinking.

Even in a nest worth of juveniles, if I don't seperate the runts from the larger ones, they never grow! So far the best growth of all fish occurs when they are housed with same size fish.

 

[ediaz]

Felipe no les hagas caso ( the translation website is gonna crash!)

All points brought are correct, the only way you can get away with this is if you have unlimited rotifers to add up to 3 times a day when they get flushed out to the reef.

Regarding the ammonia, even so when larval tanks get very high concentrations it happens over days, larvae don't just release tons of ammonia in the first day, is the tank is hooked up to the reef it may be able to cope with it.

The thing is that larvae do pretty good in crappy water and there is no need.

I have raised dotyys and clowns in my brod stock system, but is 800 gal with heavy filtration, I did not noticed any growth retardment in any fish.

Ed

 

[keefsama2003]

my only thing to add is most tanks with larve in them have a nice green tint which im thinking is for the rotifiers which feed the larvae so how do you keep a tank thats emptying into a larger tank with the nice green water?

seems you would have to have the 100gal plus the rearing tank all green thats alot of phyto

i could be wrong about that but just going by what i have seen tho i would expect that setup this way you would never keep enough food for the rots to keep feeding.