Coraltastic clown breeding thread!

[coraltastic]

Well I have been at this for about 6 months now with very little luck. I have tried everything that I have read and still little luck. I have 1 clown that is 5 months old, 1 that is 3 months old, 1 that is 1 moth old, and 7 that is 9 days old. My clowns have been very good parents and have had good clutches, I just haven't had any luck at keeping them alive. The layed a batch Saturday night so will hatch on Sunday night. I will keep uall informed of what I am doing so uall can please tell me what I am doing wrong. I also have got 2 other pairs that I have been trying to get to lay. They have been showing signs like picking at the pot, and fluttering at that area, and eating like hogs. What can I do to trigger them into laying. If I don't stat haven luck soon my wife is going to make me give it up. She says that the reef tank takes to much money to maintain, and if I am going to continue to breed fish I need to start getting some results so I can sale the babies to put money back into there food and supplies. So if anyone can help me continue to breed fish please do. I enjoy a challenge but enough is enough I want some babies.

 

[coraltastic]

Well tonight is night number 10 and I still have 7 babies left. They r starting to get alittle orange to them. Hope my hatch Sunday goes better. I am almost positive that my Rotifers weren't dense enought, and I think the ammonia got up. I had 2 of my cultures die, and I didn't notice until last night when I check to see the density. I think they got to cold. I have 3 cultures and the only one to not die was the one I had put a heater in to just see if warmer waters made for a denser culture. I added a heater to another one tonight and will get a heater for the other one. As far as the ammonia goes I was losing some fry every day from 3rd day on until I started doing water changes with new saltwater instead of tank water. If anyone has any tips of suggestions on something I need to do that is a key element please let me know. I am on my last leg here and don't want to crawl.

 

[coraltastic]

Well home from work 7 still alive.

 

[coraltastic]

Well have 6 left. New batch hatching tommorrow night. Any suggestions or tips?

 

[coraltastic]

Also I was wondering if someone could help me get my other breeders to start breeding. They r super fat, picking and fluttering at there pot, but no eggs. Raised temp to 82.

 

[shifty51008]

what are you feeding them and how many times a day? also running your lights for an extra hour or 2 a day can also help.

 

[shifty51008]

I have just started breeding so I am only saying what I have been doing so far.

when my eggs hatched I already placed a good ammount of rotifers in the tank the day before and kept the water tinted slightly green. for the 1st night I left the lights off and then went to a 15 on and 9 off schedual. I have been doing a water change daily using tank water up till day 8 now I have switched to NSW. syphon out the bottom of the tank and scrape the sides with an old credit card to get all the algae out.

right now my fry are at 9dph and I haven't lost any fry sence the 2nd day so far. I have about 35 and about 1/4 have their 1st head stripe. right now I am feeding small ammounts of bbs and Otohime A.

 

[coraltastic]

I feed my breeders different stuff. All has 50% + of crude protein.

 

[coraltastic]

I missed calculated and the fry hatched on Saturday instead of Sunday. They must of layed a day early and I didn't notice. So no fry this time. I moved the pair to a breeding setup and out of my frag tank so that will probably put a delay on them laying this next batch. I am still looking for more input on tips. Thanks shifty for telling me ur process. I might have to try putting the roti in the night before and let them start populating in the fry tank. Maybe this will make a good dense culture staring out.

 

[Jaypilot]

Take all of this for what its worth because I'm only on my 5th batch and still learning. With that being said I have been able to get about 100-150 past the first month so I'm doing ok but there is still a lot of room for improvement.

So a little more background on where I have been and where I am at now. My first three batches I tried to do in your normal 10g tank with the sides blacked out and.... All three batches had nearly 100% hatch rates and by morning I lost about 75% of those with only about 5 or so past the first few weeks. On the 4th batch (which I kind of call my first batch) I was totally caught off guard one night when I checked in on my fish and their were fry swimming every where and I didn't have anything set up. So the only thing that I had was a 1g mason jar, so I filled it with water and I started filling the jar with fry. I then placed the jar inside of my sump and much to my surprise I still had about 80-90% of the fry in the morning when I checked on them. Unfortunately every time by about day two or three on all batches after that I would have rotifer issues so I would lose a large amount until I got baby brine shrimp going. I also believe that due to the low volume I also lost a few because of the ammonia. I would then transfer the 5-6 day old fry to your normal 10g tank set up for fry with Nearly 100% of the 30 or so fry living to at least the first month.

So my Thierry on all this is that clowns need a lot of water circulation with out any dead spots in the tank, all without being beat to death by the bubbles. I think the mason jar did a good job of this until I would run out of rotifer and or the ammonia levels became to great.

So this weekend I will have another batch of clowns ready and I plan on trying something a little different. I have been doing a little reading on BRT (black round tubs) and realized that a lot of the large breeders use them and my guess is that they are able to give the fry a lot of circulation without beating the fry to bad. I do not have room for this so I am going to try to expand on what I'm already doing. I have a 2g glass goldfish bowl that I have painted black. I will place the bowl inside of a 5g bucket filled about half way with water so that I can place the heater inside of the 5g bucket and not the bowl. The only thing that will be in the bowl is almost 2 gallons of water, an air line and hopefully 100s of fry.

I believe by doing this I will have double the water which will give me much better water quality, I will be able to have GREAT water circulation without any dead spots and I will not have to worry about baking the fry with the heater since it will not be in the bowl. The other advantage I think I will gain from the low water volume with good circulation is the need for a lot less rotifer. So hopefully I will be able to have a well fed, highly circulated and equally heated bowl that will get the fry to about the first week before putting the in a larger 10g tank.

I say all this not to hijack your thread or anything like that but to describe what I do and maybe it will give you a few ideas on things that could improve your success. I don't know if my theories are correct or not but I have more success this way then I did with the 10g tank and I hope to have even more success with the fish bowl then the 1g jar.

 

[coraltastic]

J thanks for ur input. it is very interesting. I really want to see how this go for u. I don't mind if u hijack my thread, u gave me info. That is what I am asking for. Please take pics for me to see how u do this.