New breeding setup - advice please!

[polypboy]

Hi all,
Am planning a wee breeding setup and would welcome any advice. I'm hoping to acquire a rack of three 29g tanks (4x1x1) from an LFS to house 3 pairs of broodstock. Likely percs, bangaii's and pink skunks (I know this will be difficult but have a really nice pair and would like to give it a go).

First question is... in Joyce Wilkerson's book, she mentions that she's never seen pink skunks spawn in a tank less than 40g. Why do you think this is? What's more important - tank volume or availabe space (footprint size)? You could increase tank size to 48x12x18 to get 40g but surely that wouldn't make any difference?

I have concerns that although 29g sounds like a fair volume for smaller clownfish species, the long thin tanks might not offer adequate 'space' for a spawning pair?

Question 2.... Filtration. I plan to run the tanks as a single system with sump, plumbed to allow me to isolate a single tank if I have to. I've seen pictures of sumps filled with bioballs and a good amount of through flow. How effective is this as bio. filtration? Would run the return through a small mesh filter sock and run a well sized skimmer an UV. As long as the sump was a decent size, do you think this would be enough?

Question 3... Grow out. Don't know why but I'm attracted by the idea of round tubs as grow out containers and I'd really like to set something up with a centre drain in an effort to reduce siphoning of waste. Is this possible? Looks like it might be an issue to plumb.

Would appreciate any comments/ideas.
Cheers

 

[jake levi]

First raise some pairs and get some fry ,

29s work well for most clowns I've tried, but never the skunks, has worked for me for ocelleris, clarki , maroons and tomatoes. Even the bigger pairs did fine in them. But, good filtration, aeration and watching water quality.

I've used just a HOB filter with a sponge on the siphon, and a power head or two, fair amount of live rock(my making) on 1-2" of substrate. Some of my LR are caves, small and bigger depending on size of clowns( I freeform these over mounds of damp sand, use a cement, sand and oyster shell mix and 4-6 wks water curing),

I personally like anemones so have 3-4 flours. per tank. If you have an anemone for the pair the only ones I use/reccommend is the BT. If you have the anemones some other soft corals are quite doable.

By round growout tubs do you mean the stock tanks or fiberglass lab tanks ? I'm not sure what you mean. A gentleman in Chicago area uses 10gallon tanks for the first tank then thins the brood out as they grow and then moves to 30 or 55s.

I wouldnot run the tanks as a composite unit, unless you just want to, if you do then FOR SURE you need very heavy UV. Fry the water. This unfortunately will also greatly limit any plankton.

I would run UVs on all fry tanks.

Theres as many ways to do this as there are people doing it, some work better then others.

 

[polypboy]

Thanks for the advice.

Having real troble choosing between separates and a single system. Can see the advantages of separates in terms of isolating disease and planktonic diversity but also like the automation (top off etc.) that a central system affords. Anyone else's experience?

Also interested to hear of use of anemone's in tank. How do most people set up their broodstock tanks? I was thinking pretty sparse - one bit of live rock and a flowerpot but interested to hear what other people do.....

 

[Luis A M]

Regarding tank size and shape,it is a subjective matter.The larger the better and fish feel more safe in a cube than in a narrow tank.
Yet a good pair will spawn happy in a 10g and other will not spawn in 1000g
Same for sump size.The main factor is filter size.
People use three systems,larval,broodstock and grow-out.But two would work fine if a hefty UV is in charge.Grow-out should be run separate unless you have an extremely efficient filtration.
IME anemones don´t survive in clown systems,even if well fed and given good light and water movement.The factor could be WQ,far from that of a typical reef tank.
BRTs (black round tanks "a la Edgar")are easy to plumb and work with.Problems are that you lose the side view and they take lots of space.