My Ocellaris breeding thread

[ernieq]

Here is a peek today. This is a good shot of the clowns at various ages. Notice the completeness of the color pattern. The last thing to form is the black around the pectoral fins. The progression of the black pattern is the pelvic fins, then the dorsal and anal fin, then caudal fin, and finally the pectoral fins.

 

[ernieq]

2 Days shy of 5 Months!!!
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[ernieq]

This picture was taken exactly 5 months ago when my oldest juveniles were just eggs!
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[captc07]

Congratulations. I have been following for a while. Look forward to reading more once you find a male. Hopefully we can compare notes when our pairs get around to spawning

 

[ernieq]

Tonight my clowns in growout didn't look as peppy as they usually do. Their appetite not as ravenous. So I start to test water parameters, the PH was in the mid 7's!!! Note to self and anybody out there setting up a "bare" growout tank. Make sure you put some live rock or base rock in the tank or in the sump. I had none, so there was no buffer. So now I'm slowly rising the PH up to the 8.3 range over a period of 7 days. 30 minutes after I added the first dose (I'm using Seachem Marine Buffer), the fish looked a lot better. I was wondering why the turbo snails I kept putting in didn't do so well. So note to self, keep an eye out on the PH. I will be putting some rock rubble in the sump as soon as I stabilize the ph to 8.3.

 

[ernieq]

Clowns are back to normal this morning. Though upon further reflection, the low PH might be a sign of increased CO2 and lower Oxygen levels as higher levels of CO2 make the water acidic. I'm going to put in a more powerful sump pump to increase the strength of the current flow within the tank and I'm going to increase the bubble flow on the sponge filters to facilitate the water/oxygen exchange. I'm thinking as they grow their oxygen needs are growing, so I need to make adjustments for that. Ideally I would split them up into two growout tanks, but that is probably not going to happen. I will probably take some of the bigger ones to my local LFS' that have been asking, just to reduce population a bit to maybe under 200.

 

[ernieq]

Here is a peek today. I've finished adding my 50 or so pounds of dry rock to provide some calcium carbonate for PH buffering purposes, plus eventually, there will be anaerobic activity inside the rocks to consume some NO3.

Here is a 30 second video.
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[ontheroad]

I just chanced through this thread and have like last 2 hours reading this. Amazing care you are taking for the lil ones. Well done

 

[rgreene]

nice

 

[ernieq]

Some candid shots from today.

 

[ernieq]

I was looking at some tank raised clowns at the local LFS' today and I noticed that they look very different from mine. They are long and narrow, no body depth at all. I'm kind of shocked that they would be selling them that small as well, a lot of them are about 1.25, some even smaller. A LOT of misbars, I'm wondering if it's because people like misbars, or they just can't get good stock? In my 260+ clowns, I have 3 misbars!

 

[ernieq]

I took some 3D pictures of my clowns tonight. They make really good 3D subjects. Too bad I have no way of displaying a 3D picture here.

 

[chealy]

If you want to get rid of any clowns, let me know. I love clowns and recently lost one since she decided to go carpet surfing.

Moving this week and I am setting up an additional tank that I want to just keep some clowns in.

keep up the awesome work.

 

[Riley007]

Looks great! I'm now into the planning stage for my setup.

 

[ernieq]

Although not related to my thread, sometimes I get lucky and take good pictures. These are inhabintants of my reef tank.

 

[ernieq]

Side by Side 3D shot of my growout tank. If you don't know how to look at these, google "3d Cross-eyed method" The effect is rather remarkable.

 

[ernieq]

Feeding time.

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[ClayaLaLeona]

Those are some excellent clowns you've reared there

 

[ernieq]

raising clowns is definitely a labor of love. But it is the coolest thing to see them all grow. It is going to be a difficult day when I have to start cutting the population down to find new homes for them.

 

[ernieq]

I have been noticing a lot more aggression lately. It is not to the point where one clown kills another one (probably because they are just so many), but there does seem to be several displays of aggression at any given moment.