If first you don't suceed....try try try

[saltyjo]

I have more attempts at trying to raise baby clowns than I do babies. I have been trying again and again over the last year and a half with little sucess. I do have 1 survivor from my Jan 1 hatch and he is doing great. Our "little fish" as we call him looks so lonely in his tank so I thought we would give this another try. My goal is to eventually have a tank full of the little guys. So, I got the nursery tank ready again and my culture of rotifers is very dense. I have the Vossen larvae trap set and the last time I checked tonight there are baby clowns hatching! There is a full moon tonight so I have fingers crossed that this batch is going to be large like the full moon, and just as strong as its gravitational pull.

 

[Anget]

Good luck keep us posted

 

[mwilliams62]

I know how you feel. I have been having no sucess with mine. Batch #12 I had one little guy make it to 11 days but ended up dieing on me.
What are you using to feed your rotiferd with. Mine for whatever reason keep crashing and it is driving me crazy.

 

[saltyjo]

I know how you feel. I have been having no sucess with mine. Batch #12 I had one little guy make it to 11 days but ended up dieing on me.
What are you using to feed your rotiferd with. Mine for whatever reason keep crashing and it is driving me crazy.

The longest I have had any survive will be 5 months old this coming week. My sole survivior from my Jan 1 batch will be 5 months old on May 1st. But is only 1 little fish. I had one survive 4 months but died due to a heater malfunction. That was so devestating I cried and spent a day in bed. I thought during my Jan 1 batch that I would have 5 because they did really well and made it 3 weeks past meta but lost 4 of them for unknown reasons.
This batch is different, I am happy to report that there looks to be more than 100. And.... I only collected only 3 dead on Day 1. I am feeding my rotifers nanochloropsis. I recieved my rotifers from Reeds on Tuesday and added them to my nursery tank after I lowered the salinity of the nursery tank to 1.017. I added 3 cups of strained rotifers. That means I took 3 cups of rotifers in their water and ran them through a 50 micron sieve and then rinsed the sieved rotifers off in the nursery tank. One thing I was not doing before was lowering the salinity of the nursery tank to that of the rotifer culture so it might have shocked my rotifers when putting them in with the clown larvae. After collecting them last night I dripped plain RO water in to the nursery tank so that it was closer to the salinity of the rotiferculture. So now I am confident that in the baby tank there is enough alive food, the right temperature, and the right lighting. I haven't given up yet keep doing your research and write good notes to learn from every time.
Jo

 

[mwilliams62]

Maybe that is what I am doing wrong.. I have been slowly raising the rotifers salinity to match the tank water. I hadbeen feeding them Rotigrow plus. Might try that stuff and see if I have better sucess with the rotifers.

 

[reefstew]

Hang in their saltyjo. 8 years ago I was breeding wild caught seahorses & out of 22 spawns the best I got was 1 to live 4 months. I switched over to breeding clownfish & after a lot of failed attempts I figured it out. I am getting clowns in numbers of the 200+ & I went back to seahorses & I am also raising them. You will get it sooner or later. Good luck!

 

[saltyjo]

Hang in their saltyjo. 8 years ago I was breeding wild caught seahorses & out of 22 spawns the best I got was 1 to live 4 months. I switched over to breeding clownfish & after a lot of failed attempts I figured it out. I am getting clowns in numbers of the 200+ & I went back to seahorses & I am also raising them. You will get it sooner or later. Good luck!

Thanks so much for the words of encouragement, I have learned from each batch. Today has been good, I tried to count and I have at least a hundred in there. I really love watching them strike at the rotifers.
Question for you Reefstew, which is harder to breed and raise? Clowns or Seahorses?
Thanks again
Jo

 

[reefstew]

Anyone who breeds will agree that clownfish are much easier to breed & raise. I have 2 grow out systems, 1 for clownfish & 1 for seahorses. Their are less then 20 erectus seahorses in the grow out & with clownfish close to 3000 including a lot of designer clownfish.

 

[saltyjo]

Maybe that is what I am doing wrong.. I have been slowly raising the rotifers salinity to match the tank water. I hadbeen feeding them Rotigrow plus. Might try that stuff and see if I have better sucess with the rotifers.

I looked on the Reeds website for directions on how to cultivate their rotifers and followed their directions to the T this time. I have been feeding them Nanochloropsis paste that they sell. In the past I used RotiRich from Florida Aqua Farm. Check out the reeds site there is pretty good info.
Good luck.
Jo

http://reedmariculture.com/support_rotifers_culturing.php

 

[GreshamH]

Maybe that is what I am doing wrong.. I have been slowly raising the rotifers salinity to match the tank water. I hadbeen feeding them Rotigrow plus. Might try that stuff and see if I have better sucess with the rotifers.

Are you doing anything for ammonia control? pH control? Temp? Culling 25-30% daily?

 

[mwilliams62]

I mix the rotigrow plus and cholramX "probably spelled wrg" together and feed to the about 3-4ml on the syringe in the morning and at bedtime. Salinity I try to keep 1.022 so they don't go into shock when I put them in the fry tank. Temp nothing because the room they are in does not get cold. Nothing for PH. This was not mentioned in the instruction sheet that I got with them.
Now for the fry I just have not had good luck in collecting them. One night it was like two fry per hour. Last batch they ate over half of it so it did not attempt to collect and I was hoping my rotifers would have doubled by now but it looks like it has crashed.

 

[GreshamH]

I'd feed more often... look at it this way... the feed passes though a rotifer in about 4 hours IIRC. The ultimate method is continuous feeding, but if you can't do that, every 3-4 hours is best.

But what is the temp of them? Trying to help you here and the questions I asked are pertinent to figuring out why it crashed

pH is a factor, too low or too high is bad. That is why RGComplete has a buffer in it. Commercial users of RG+ add their own buffer.

What about culling? If you do not cull at least 25-30% daily, your culture will go geriatric and not produce anymore eggs.... then it "crashes".

 

[Jaypilot]

For what its worth I will let you guys know what I do. Keep in mind I am only a month into this but with that being said I have not had a rotifer culture go bad. My first batch of clowns only produced one lone clown but every one after that has been great.

I recently traded a pair of clowns and before I put the new clowns in my tank I tested the water. Come to find out his salinity was 1.016. So of course I questioned him on it and he said he keep all of his tanks that low because a lot of bad things can't live in that low of salinity and since he started that he hasn't had a single out break of anything. The second reason why he does it is because that is also where he keeps his rotifer culture.

So I also now have all my tanks at 1.016 and the fish seem happier then ever and I even have a few new mated pairs as a result (I think).

As far as food I just feed roti grow plus to my rotifer and nothing more. I also just tent the water until I can't see the bottom of a bucket filled about 3/4 of the way up. Anything more then that I believe it just spoils the water. I add more rotigrow plus when ever the water is almost clear and at that point I will also remove and replace about 3-4 cups of water.

About every 2-3 weeks I also change out about 75-90% of the water and clean thing out and start over with fresh ro water or water from my brood stock tank.

hope this helps. like I said Im still new but in the short time I have been breeding I have had some good luck.

 

[mwilliams62]

If first you don't suceed....try try try

I'd feed more often... look at it this way... the feed passes though a rotifer in about 4 hours IIRC. The ultimate method is continuous feeding, but if you can't do that, every 3-4 hours is best.

But what is the temp of them? Trying to help you here and the questions I asked are pertinent to figuring out why it crashed

pH is a factor, too low or too high is bad. That is why RGComplete has a buffer in it. Commercial users of RG+ add their own buffer.

What about culling? If you do not cull at least 25-30% daily, your culture will go geriatric and not produce anymore eggs.... then it "crashes".

Hi Gresham sorry I have not gotten back to this post.
My Ph is 7.8 to 8.0
I can only feed them two times a day once in the morning before I leave to go to work and once when I get home but the water is still slightly tented with the green.
No I have not been culling because I was trying to get it built back up. But I will start culling again and maybe that will help.

Thanks for all of your help and advise on getting back on track.
I just ordered another bag today.
Mary

 

[saltyjo]

My little fry are at day 10 this morning and I have noticed most of their coloration has turned orange. I have them 90% weaned on TDO A (Top Dressed Otohime A) and are doing well. I have had some losses and my numbers are no where near the 100 that I started with but I have counted well over 30! So I am pretty happy. This is the farthest I have gotten with so many at one time. I am expecting another hatch tonight but am undecided whether or not to catch them and try to raise 2 batches at once. I still have healthy cultures of rotifers so I probablly should since I have the supplies.

 

[saltyjo]

Day 12 and my little fish are doing well. Still 30+ in numbers. I noticed faint headstripes tonight on some of the bigger ones. I wish my pictures were better. But I am so happy with this batch's progress.

 

[saltyjo]

16 Days old today and I have only lost 1 since day 12. More happy news to report is that my parent clowns laid a huge batch of eggs yesterday afternoon and they should hatch next Friday. I don't have to work on Saturday so I am happy. If anyone else can relate it can be rough collecting the fry when you have to get up early the next morning for work! So needless to say this next batch I am going to also attempt to raise.

 

[mwilliams62]

I can relate to trying to collect on a work night.

 

[saltyjo]

18 DPH and babies are doing very well. Head stripes are evident on most of the fry. Still counting upwards of 30+ and they are eating like little pigs. With this batch I have been feeding small amounts of TDO A five times a day.
Can't wait for the next batch to hatch on Friday!

 

[saltyjo]

Well it is Friday night and I am all set up, fry are hatching now as I type. My other batch is now 22 DPH and are doing well. I have 34 babies from my last batch and still the one that will be 6 months old on June 1st. I cant wait to finish collecting tonight to see how many I get. Last time I estimated to be over 100 and I feel I lost way too many the first week.
I have changed what I feed my rotifers to RGcomplete. I am hoping the buffers in it will help increase my percentages.