Ludnix's tropical 120!

I have been really wanting to try and raise clownfish fry since my clowns started laying. This last time they laid I got a siphon going of 1/4" line and put the fry in a rearing tank with rotifers.



I only caught about 50 fry so I started with a pretty small number. Combining that and the fact that I did not correctly setup their rearing tank I was unable to keep any past day 5. Luckily with clownfish if at first you don't succeed you can just wait a week or two and try the next batch.

I picked up a copy of The complete illustrated guide to breeding marine fishes and Joyce D. Wilkerson's famous Clownfishes. With these new books I'm hopefully better able to see what went wrong last time and try again this time.

Here's a picture of the new eggs which be removed sunday night for hatching.
 
I had transferred the pot to the larval tank yesterday afternoon, but only about 10 of the eggs hatched last night. I would estimate about 50 of them turned white and I was able to blow them off using a pipette. The other 2/3 have yet to hatch but still look healthy. Hopefully they will hatch tonight. If this batch doesn't work out well I will try catching the fry in the display tank next time.
 
Glad you are posting again, Eric, and that things are still standing. I was pretty concerned after both learning of the earthquake and seeing no new posts to your thread!

Best of luck with the new SPS and the clownfish project! :)
 
iwishtofish said:
Glad you are posting again, Eric, and that things are still standing. I was pretty concerned after both learning of the earthquake and seeing no new posts to your thread!

Best of luck with the new SPS and the clownfish project! :)
Click to expand...

I was pretty lucky in that my frag tank and 120 came out unscathed. My 30g goldfish tank was almost knocked over because it's an oceanic stand with nothing to keep it from sliding around. Luckily it slid back and was resting against the wall, otherwise it would have been all over the floor.

My LFS said they had hundreds of gallons on the floor and tons of fish as well. They told me they didn't have any losses though.

Thanks for being concerned!
 
Here's a new FTS:



I picked up this plate coral, I have always wanted one, but was unsure how they would do before. This guy was in the LFS for 3 months and never inflated it's tentacles there, but the day after bringing it home I saw it extend it's tentacles and inflate at night. It will be interesting to see if it's color changes as well.



I have 6 clownfish fry from my first successful rearing of larva. I didn't harvest the last batch of eggs as I've been too busy with school, but I'm hoping to catch the next batch after midterms.

Right now they are in a breeder net in the frag tank. Here's a picture of them checking out their new home:


Here's about a week later, you can see they are actually looking like clowns now.

 
The hammer coral is getting very large. For some reason the male clownfish has been sticking the frogspawn and the female in the hammer. They only spend time together when there's a clutch of eggs to take care of.



Here's a picture of the new frags I had put in a while ago. They are from a local reefer. As soon as I put them in the 120g they started coloring up and growing very quickly, they do much better in the display than the frag tank.





The new blue frag on the left is becoming a fast favorite of mine.
 
if you want the sun coral to open earlier you need to be really consistant with the time they get fed. I try and feed mine at the same time every other day and they tend to open 10 - 15 min. beforhand if I'm consistant. If my schedual gets off they don't open at the same time anymore. They also don't nessisarily have to be in the shade if their aclimated properly. I have mine midway up in a 75 under the full intensity of 6 t-5's with individual reflectors and they are really happy, sprouting new polyps every week.
 
Thanks for the information and link!

So far I've been feeding them 2-3 times a week and I keep seeing new polyps around the main cluster. I'm going to have to try your guy's information on getting them to open earlier. They look amazing when their fully extended so it would be really cool to have them show off during the lighting period.
 
For some reason my pocillapora and neon green birdnest are receding.



The birdsnest (thought it has identical polyps as the pocillapora so I wouldn't be surprised to find it's not actually a birdsnest, especially with the lack of pointy tips).



I fragged the receding pieces to keep it from spreading, but I'm afraid it might be too deep in the colony to save it.



The frags will probably survive, but it's a bummer to lose the colony. I have a lot of frags from the colony, and a local reefer gave us some new pocillapora frags recently, so I have more than enough to rebuild and get a new colony going, but it will take a while before they grown into the colony's shoes.

 
In good news, all the other animals are doing well. The corals are growing great and the fish all look healthy. The clownfish fry are progressing nicely, they're not getting their second stripe!



I wish I could keep the fry, but I don't really have any interest in setting up a second tank for clownfish, so I'll have to sell them to the LFS when they get big enough.
 
Thanks SaltReefer! I'm surprised how well it's held together with the epoxy, I had remove my pocillapora colony because of the receeding, but rocks didn't even budge as I pried it off.
 
This tank still one of the most amazing tanks that I have ever seen. I love birdnest corals. Eric could you please show me the sump and what do you use for filtration?
 
Here's some updated pictures, I had to heavily fragment the pocillapora to stop the receding tissue. All of the frags are doing well, but now I have like ton of pocillapora frags and no colony :(.

After removing the chopped up colony I decided to move some other corals around. The large scroll coral was getting stung by the brain coral and the bubble, so my dad came up with the idea to lower and move it forward into the light and away from the bubble coral.



We ended up moving the brain to the otherside of the tank, the plate coral to this side, and the duncan colony over on the rock to left. We took out the torch coral altogether because of it's constant stinging of the hammer and other nearby corals. The clams were also moved out away from the glass and overflow corner.





Most of the acros are doing well. The new frags seems to be growing especially fast.



We got two additional cocoworms, they all seem to be doing well. The feather duster on the left has been in my possession for 3 years now.



This frag in the center is still my favorite. I can't wait to see it grow out. I don't think I will have to wait too long though as it's been budding new branches pretty fast!



The duncan's new spot replaces the torch coral. There's a lot less flow in this spot than the previous which I think the duncan will appreciate. It isn't fully inflated int he picture, but I think it will adjust pretty quickly.


My sun coral has lots of little baby polyps in between the larger original polyps. It seems to be doing well. It's been opening up around 7pm now, well before the lights are off, but usually a little after I feed the fish.



I have a few pictures of this coral in my previous posts, so here's an update on it: it's bigger.
 
The clownfish fry are doing great. I still have the original 6:



I don't post many pictures of my fish, so I made an effort to get some nice photos of them. It's not that I don't like fish, they are just very hard to get a photo of.



The foxface always likes to get in front he camera unless I'm trying to take a picture of him.


The yellow tang:


The only remaining chromis; I started with 5 but they reduced down to one after a month or two.


The flame hawkfish seems to like perch made by the overflow and scroll coral.
 
salali said:
This tank still one of the most amazing tanks that I have ever seen. I love birdnest corals. Eric could you please show me the sump and what do you use for filtration?
Click to expand...

Thanks for the compliment!

Here's my sump:


My drain from the tank is into the bubble towers on the right. The skimmer is the first to get the water. It then goes into my refugium of chaeto, mangroves and a DSP. The chaeto grows very fast with all my tanks nutrients. The mangroves grow at a decent rate, but they lose their leaves a lot. My return on the very left houses a Two Little Fishies 150 reactor full of carbon. I top off the tank with an ATO unit filled with kalkwasser.
 
Thanks footbagger311!

I've a new little project for the aquarium. I'm working on building my own controller for the tank using the arduino board. I only have a small amount of experience with electronics and none with controllers so it's a definitely a new experience. So far I have been able to control a power outlet using a solid state relay. Unfortunately I haven't hooked a clock or temperature probe up to the arduino yet, so I can't do anything useful with my controlled outlet.


My project goals:

  • LCD display for controller as well as keypad for input.
  • Control at least 8 outlets
  • monitor temperature
  • Use reed relay to turn on work light in stand when door is open
  • Use clock to time outlets

The cost is going to be a little over the price of a reef keeper lite, but I'm mostly interested in the learning experience. Also RK power outlets are like $80 for every 4 additional outlets, so it would probably quickly out-cost my project if I choose to expand the number of outlets.
 
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