My Breeding attempt - Perculas:

[dazed]

dazed: I'm just doing false percs..... My poor male was really small and couldn't survive the damsels that I can't catch for the life of me (or my fish)! But the bright side is that I have a chance to find a prettier male. My female isn't that big either though. Do you think that she will beat up a new male? should I introduce more than one to spread out the pain, so to speak?

One more question for you (if you dont mind).... My female has been hanging out above my LARGE bubble coral since I introduced her and all of a sudden I'm seeing white abbrasions on her sides. Is this her being stung by the coral? or is it her being harrased by the damsels? I haven't seen any more agression by them (and I watch intently) but it's possible. If you think it could be the coral, will she eventually get "acclimated" to the sting or should I remove the coral so she can't try and host it?

Thanks so much for the help... my newby questions all seem so silly to me.

I have never had a problem pairing up false perc's; as a matter of fact your lonely female will more than likely welcome the new friend in no time at all; Damsels ( i call them satan spawn :furious: ) as they do get very mean as they get bigger it get's worse. I built myself a fish trap to catch fish out of my reef i got tired of breaking coral chasing things with a net; it does not always work on the first day but with some patience i have been able to catch what i was after without destroying my reef.

I don't know the bio-load of your tank but to be safe just add the one clown for now and see how it goes.


The abrasions could very well be from the coral; or from the other fish; i have had clowns host in a wide variety of things; but since a bubble coral is not a normal host you may need to keep an eye on the coral and see how it does; it could become irritated from the clown and die.

Don't worry about the questions it's one of the reasons we all come here.

 

[dazed]

Dazed, I have had issue of bacterial blooms as well. For me once I started rotating tanks, it seems to have subsided. What I do is when I add a tank of larve to my growout, I clean that tank and move the last set into it. I clean the tank from the last set and set it up for the newly hatched egg's.... Seems to have worked well.

I only have 1 tank of fry to go about ready to go onto my growout system. Recently I have lost the last set to a heater explosion and will miss this next set due to Thanksgiving....

John; i kind of do the same thing; i have 3 5g tanks that i use for the larvae and when i rotate one batch to growout i clean/bleach the 5g tank and start over; my problem lately has been right around 10 to 11 days with the bloom's; I wait to add the sponge filter until after meta; which for me is right around the 10 day mark; i have 6 seasoned sponges at any time to choose from; but i have had bloom's even with the sponge's in place. I don't like to move the larvae until around the 4 week mark but i have moved them as early as 1 1/2 weeks with ok results.

 

[dazed]

Had a so so hatch last night; the reason i say that is that they all hatched but i still had a bunch that did not make it thru the night.

 

[dazed]

Well it's certainly been a while since i posted anything so here it goes; I have still been struggling with bacteria blooms that have been wiping out batch after batch of clowns and it's really getting frustrating as to what the cause is; the blooms seem to be occurring a day or two after adding the sponge filter to the larvae tank, i have been using sponges that are seasoned out of my growout system but the problem still is occurring.

I have tried wc's, i have tried the melafix, i have feed no bbs to some batches, i have fed bbs to other batches, etc, etc, all with the same results dead larvae & completely cloudy water overnight.

Anyone have any suggestions as to what i should be looking for or doing?

Just to be clear all of this is happening after meta, & the little ones are either eating bbs, or oto a with gusto as well.

 

[GreshamH]

Chris I think I know some one that can help you. I'll connect you two by email

 

[dazed]

Gresham; that would be great but i did not know that you had god's email address so handy:dance:

but just as a case in point my wife called me yesterday and said you had better get home early the xmas babies tank does not look good at all, so i left work and got home to find a cloudy tank again, & 5 losses, so i drained the tank down to only an 1" of water, removed & rinsed the sponge filter & filled it back up & off to dinner with the family, so far so good no more dead ones and the water is clear.

 

[GreshamH]

He used to work for ORA and a few other hatcheries. Now he sits next to me in my office

 

[GreshamH]

I'm sure you could bribe him with a tri-tip sandwich from FML :lol:

it works on me, but you now that :lol:

 

[dazed]

Sounds good to me; you know where to find me, swing on by for some beer & tri-tip and we can talk fish stuff::fish1:

or give him my e-mail or cell # :lol:

 

[dazed]

Boy oh Boy what a crazy week of weather we have had around here; the California coastline has just been pounded with heavy rain, hail & wind. On Tuesday i had to run the generator for 6 hours to keep all of my tanks warm & aerated, luckily did not loose anything during the outage. Have been getting pretty low on growout stock though but i guess it's a good problem to have.

The new issue for me has been my bubble tip in the reef decided to roam a bit; so mamma laid a nest on the back of a plate coral that i could not harvest; that was last week and she has not laid anything since then, so i am back to a holding pattern waiting for eggs.

 

[birddog486]

Wow, I just finished reading all 61 pages of this thread. It's amazing your still trying to raise the babies.

Great job, now I have enough info to try and raise a few babies myself. One question is why are the rotifers, bbs, fry, and your Dt all have a different SG.

I've also got a theory on why you end up with a bacterial bloom after introducing the sponge filter if it's being kept in your main Dt system when not in use in the rearing system.

 

[dazed]

Well if you went back & read this whole thread; split included then you definitely get a A+ in my book for effort:thumbsup:

The thread may be a bit misleading as we are not really allowed to talk about the sale of fish etc. I don't want to get banned.

The reason that my sg is all different is due to the fact that my breeding pair are in my main dt and not in a stand-alone system; my ato system keeps the dt sg @ 1.025-1.026.

Rotifers can live in a very wide range of salinity but they reproduce better/faster at lower sg values. The catch is they can only tolerate a sg swing of .007 at a time or they will go into shock and the culture can die off; So i keep my rot's @ around 1.020 to compensate for the reef's salinity; sure i may give up some production from the culture but they do still grow; when i don't have fry to raise i slowly lower the sg of the rot cultures to boost their numbers.

The sponge filters are in use in other grow out tanks so they are seasoned to start with; but lately i have been just starting with a perfectly clean sponge filter and allowing it to season itself in the new larvae tank & guess what since doing that i have not had the bacteria bloom's that were frustrating me to no end.

 

[Nebthet]

Good thread with lots of info. This I think will help me a lot if my clowns decide to officially pair up and breed. I am keeping my fingers crossed.

 

[kvmn]

hi all
my true clown pair finally spawn,,should i keep themin community tank or take them out? i want easy breeding process
also do i have to learn how to culture plyto and rotifer? baby brine shrimp?
baby clown fish will eat rotifer then brine shrimp right?
if there is anything that i can buy and skip culture? thanks
now fund is startting

 

[kvmn]

what equiment ?do i have to buy to prepare for breeding now?
i can build breeding tank but don't know sizes?thanks

 

[dazed]

Well it finally happened :dance:
My pair had a superbowl party of their own & finally (after a little more than a month) I have eggs again; although this clutch is really small, & given the timeframe i will not be doing anything with them; I don't want to disturb her again so i will have to wait and see, hopefully she will follow up with a better clutch after this one.

 

[GreshamH]

Chris I keep forgetting to connect you with Chad. He's the guy I told you about that might be able to help you with some of the issues you're having. Can you email me, my account shed all it's contacts in a swap recently

 

[dazed]

Hey Gresham sorry i have just been really busy lately, i will send you an email here in a minute or two or three....

 

[GreshamH]

NP Chris. When ever you're ready, I'm here

 

[dazed]

ok i just sent you an email..

On a side note does anyone know the current market value for a pair of ORA snowflake clowns, (non-breeding)??????