Four Year old Clowns Mating

Here we go again, the fish are alive and swimming around again. How is this even possible? Is it normal for fry to sleep by laying on the bottom of the tank? There are at least 50 of them swimming around again.

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im not sure about them going in the bottom and then up. but it could be from lack of food. ill ask some friends. but usually when they go to the bottom from lack of food they are usually to weak to feed from lack of rotifers. seems like you have some fighters. hehe

i would tint your water more. tint it so you can just see the bottom. what are you using for algae paste? i use the reeds nanno 3600. its very thick and i thin it out a bit. i add like 4 - 5 drops to make it look green. this will keep them off the sides of the glass and the bottom.
if you keep your rotifers colder like 72 - 75ish they will grow slower. if you bump it up to 80 - 82 they will grow alot faster. i got my 43micron strainer from ebay. like 10 bucks. works great. you should change buckets every week. i strain out half the bucket and put that in a new bucket and toss the rest. you could strain the left over out and put in your reef tank if you have one. corals with polyps go nuts for it.

as for selcon i use it in my frozen food for the parents and also the rots. best way to use it for the rots is when you strain them out before putting them in the fry tank, put them in a container and drop in 4 -6 drops of selcon. let the rots in there for 30 minutes or so. rotifers have no nutritional value for the fry, they get it from the foos that the rots eat. so if the fry are soaking up the selcon they will become good food for the fry.
 
i would tint your water more. tint it so you can just see the bottom. what are you using for algae paste? i use the reeds nanno 3600. its very thick and i thin it out a bit. i add like 4 - 5 drops to make it look green. this will keep them off the sides of the glass and the bottom.
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I buy 12 oz bottles of liquid phyto from a local reefer where I also purchased the rotifers. It's a blend of Nannochloropsis and Tetraselmis. To get the green tint you saw was about a 6oz of phytoplankton solution. After putting in a heavy dose like this last night, shortly after, that is when I noticed all the fish laying on the bottom, so I have been hesitant to add more as I do not want to shock them. I don't have any LFS nearby that carry frozen phyto so I'm short on options.

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if you keep your rotifers colder like 72 - 75ish they will grow slower. if you bump it up to 80 - 82 they will grow alot faster. i got my 43micron strainer from ebay. like 10 bucks. works great. you should change buckets every week. i strain out half the bucket and put that in a new bucket and toss the rest. you could strain the left over out and put in your reef tank if you have one. corals with polyps go nuts for it.
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I keep them in my garage which is pretty warm, over 80 degrees in there. I split the rotifers into another bucket today so that I can hopefully get higher numbers. Right now I only have about 100 rots per 5ml of water in the main bucket so it's pretty weak. I have strained about a gallon already today through coffee filters and the fish still have barely any visible rots in the water. At one point when I was out of phyto for a day, the rot bucket lost the green color, so I may have lost a good number at that point. Judging from the pics of others rotifer density in the larvae tanks, I could pour my entire culture into the tank and still not have that kind of density. :sad1:

Here is a sample from my main rotifer culture to give you an idea of the density:

TzKQN.jpg


as for selcon i use it in my frozen food for the parents and also the rots. best way to use it for the rots is when you strain them out before putting them in the fry tank, put them in a container and drop in 4 -6 drops of selcon. let the rots in there for 30 minutes or so. rotifers have no nutritional value for the fry, they get it from the foos that the rots eat. so if the fry are soaking up the selcon they will become good food for the fry.
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I don't have any selcon Selcon, but I do have Kent's Zoe, would this work well as a substitute?
 
This is the current density in the tank after filtering a gallon of my rotifer bucket and adding it to the tank this morning:

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PS: I have been covering all sides of the tank with black construction paper as well, it's just taped onto the top so I can lift it out of the way. And I did add more phyto solution to the tank, about 2oz worth.. if everyone is ok in an hour I'll add another 2oz.

Nanoposeiden
 
I'm going to be picking up some more rotifers this evening to supplement my two buckets and also to feed directly into the hatchling tank. Hopefully with this booster shot of food they will fine. Also now that I have two rotifer cultures going, I should hopefully be able to keep up within the next day or two.
 
Ok, so I got home about 30 minutes ago with the new batch of rotifers. I immediately put about half of the new batch directly into the tank so that the density is much higher than it was previously. The other half has gone into the two separate cultures I have going now in my garage.

I counted at least 35 fish still swimming around, although there are probably a few more than this.. it is hard to see all the way to the bottom of the tank due to the amount of phytoplankton that is now in the water column.

Time will tell if my cultures can keep up with the demand. Pretty soon now I will need to do a water change as well, so I will be working on a siphon with a coffee filter attached so I can swap some of this water without siphoning out the rotifers.

Here's a video of the tank as of 5 minutes ago:

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You are going at this like a real pro. Hehe awesome. I love your measuring your rots and doing a count and keeping track.
Your using phyto that's made for adding to a reef tank. Like DT's phyto. Its too thin to keep your rots going. I suggest you buy a liter bottle from reeds. It's thick as melted milkshake. The 1 liter bottle will last you 6 months. You can freeze it. I put 5 oz into a small water bottle with a squirt top. So I can squirt in a few drops easy. Then freeze the rest. Keep it in your fridge when not in use. You'll get like 8 - 9 small bottles full.

You can buy Selcon at any online store from marine depot to thatfishplace.com or others.
If you get the liter bottle of nanno 3600 I would get the otohime starter kit for $50. This way you don't need to hatch bbs. Start the otohime on day 4 or 5. Then by day 10 they are eating the otohime and you can let the rots die off after they go thu meta.
I seen alot of people use bbs to good success. The problem they face Is that the babies love it so much it hard to ween them onto pellet or flake. Otohime will be easy since it is that. The otohime starter kit will last you almost a year.
 
Thanks Whip for your most excellent advice! I already have a brine shrimp hatchery on the way, although I think I will order some otohime A and possibly some rotifer diet, so that I'm not going through so much of the non-concentrated phyto. If my Clowns continue to lay eggs I will probably invest in the starter kit and the larger 1qt or liter bag of Nanno. For now though, I've already done enough damage to our monthly aquarium budget.

So check this out, the larvae did the same thing last night as they did the night before. All of the fry were laying on the bottom of the tank again. I could see them twitch every now and then and even swim up a few inches, only to go limp and float back down to the floor. I didn't post this because I wasn't sure what things would look like in the morning, and low and behold.. I've got lots of larvae swimming around again this morning. I'm not having very high hopes that this first clutch will make it through metamorphosis, but who knows. I counted at least 40 of them this morning. It's harder to get a count now that they are more active. Anyway, here's the video.. thanks for watching!

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fry that have a hard time swimming might be from defect in their swimming bladder. but they seen to be swimming ok though. do you tint the water during the day and at night before lights out? might help tinting the water at night to keep them off the bottom.
keep watching them and when they start getting their their stripe, you know the worst is over and meta has arrived.
 
do you tint the water during the day and at night before lights out? might help tinting the water at night to keep them off the bottom.
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I haven't been able to add phyto to the water since I picked up my new supply. Since it is not concentrated, I'm going through about 1 16oz bottle of phyto a day, which is $5. So I'm trying to conserve and just feed the rotifers so that the main source of food will thrive. I do have two rotifer buckets with about 2 gallons each that are doing well this morning so I shouldn't have an issue feeding the rotifers now. I'm trying to hold off on buying the expensive algae pastes from Reeds until I know my fish will spawn again, since it's close to $100 for a liter bag with shipping.

The fish are still unable to swim after about 9pm, but are always swimming around fine in the morning. I counted at least 30 this morning that were alive and swimming around.

I still haven't done a water change on the fry tank. Although I have only been feeding live food so there is not much detritus other than rotifer poop and some dead larvae on the tank bottom. I do have an ammonia badge and it's still reading "safe". As soon as we have an empty 2L bottle I'm going to cut the top off and attach a coffee filter to it and airline hose so that I can siphon out some of the water and replace it with DT water.

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Nanoposeiden
 
Are you turning the lights out at night on the larvae tank? When you turn the lights out, the larvae rest.....that's why they are on the bottom of the tank. I leave my fry tank lights on 24/7 until they are done with meta. Keeping the lights on keeps them feeding so they get through meta a couple days quicker. The only reason I would turn lights off is if I run low on rotifers and need an extra day to get the culture going again. After meta, if you have them on dry food you can resume normal lighting schedule. If they are on brine shrimp you should leave the lights on until you get them off of brine. Good luck and you seem to be doing a great job for you first clutch.
 
i would tint the water at night. only will help the fry. if your not tinting your starving the rots, hence starving the fry.
pm me your address and i'll send you some nanno to use if you want.

once your clowns start spawing they are like clockwork and will keep at it. unless you move them or change the tank it will stop them for a time, but they will resume. i got an onyx pair shipped to me from chicago and they laid 4 days after getting them. i had others were spawning for a local friend and havent started back yet. go figure.
 
cdipasquale said:
Are you turning the lights out at night on the larvae tank? When you turn the lights out, the larvae rest.....
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Thanks for asking. The tank is currently lit 24/7 with two dim 10w incandescent bulbs which fit into the plastic hood. The heater in the tank is set for 78 degrees, although I believe it gets slightly warmer than that during the day since it's in between two windows and covered with black construction paper. I haven't seen it get above 82 degrees. Perhaps I should bring the heater temp up to 82 so that the temp doesn't change at all from day to night.

Whip316 said:
i would tint the water at night. only will help the fry. if your not tinting your starving the rots, hence starving the fry.
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The water is still pretty green as you can see from the videos, but if you think it needs more I will try it! And thank you for your generous offer to send some Nanno, that's really awesome. (pm incoming)
 
You can turn the light off and keep at the same times as your other tank. I only keep the lights on for the first few days and then I switch it to the 12hr cycle. Try to keep the fry over 80. I keep mine at 83. This will help them grow and get thru meta faster. Will cut the time down significantly.

Parents lay another clutch yet? They should be due already.

I got yur pm and a bottle is being shipped tomorrow.
 
Whip316 said:
You can turn the light off and keep at the same times as your other tank. I only keep the lights on for the first few days and then I switch it to the 12hr cycle. Try to keep the fry over 80. I keep mine at 83. This will help them grow and get thru meta faster. Will cut the time down significantly.

Parents lay another clutch yet? They should be due already.

I got yur pm and a bottle is being shipped tomorrow.
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I did raise the temp to 81 last night, but the larvae still exhibited the same behavior. (inability to swim after 8pm) I just did a head count and I've still got 30+ larvae this morning.

No sign of eggs yet from the parents. I have been maintaining the main tank exactly as I had been, feeding twice a day with spectrum thera-A and mysis twice a week. Keep your fingers crossed!

Thanks so much for helping me out with the food. It couldn't come at a better time actually, my local supplier of phytoplankton has sold out for the week. I have enough to maintain my rotifera for another day or two. I can help cover the cost of shipping also, just let me know. Once again, you're awesome.:bounce3:

No video today, they look exactly the same as the last video anyway, nothing new to report.
 
feed the parents more if you can. this will make healthier fry. some frozen if possible.

save the money and use it to get some otohime. i sent out the nanno to u usps. should be there by 3pm tomorrow.
 
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