Onyx Clownfish Breeding Project

Wanting to move my breeding pair to a new tank, I am worried they might stop breeding. Any suggestions to making the move?

Wait till they have eggs & move them with the eggs. Their is a good chance they will start up in a month. It has worked for me.
 
Wanting to move my breeding pair to a new tank, I am worried they might stop breeding. Any suggestions to making the move?

Actually, there is a great way to move them.

Wait until the day she is scheduled to lay. It has to be that day.

She should be overloaded with eggs and about to explode.

When you move her, she'll have to lay no matter what. And having the male tend the nest afterwards is just further reinforcement.

There is a very, very good chance they will resume a normal schedule if you time it correctly.

I got this advice from another breeder who juggles around lots of pairs. Works great for cross-breeding as well...
 
Just finished reading this thread from the start, some great information, pictures and videos. I've been seriously considering setting up a breeding attempt. Please keep up on the progress and pass along any advice you may have. Also if you have any pictures or diagrams of your grow out setup I'm sure many others here would love to see what works!

Thanks again.
 
Any updates?

I apologize for the lack of updates. Had multiple family issues come up requiring me to be out of town twice in as many weeks. : (

Fortunately, a good friend who is a local breeder was able to help out and keep the feeding schedule while I was away.

Juveniles are looking good and should be weaning of rotifers all together in the next week. I promise to get some pics and video up when I find some time and they get to the cute stage.
 
Just finished reading this thread from the start, some great information, pictures and videos. I've been seriously considering setting up a breeding attempt. Please keep up on the progress and pass along any advice you may have. Also if you have any pictures or diagrams of your grow out setup I'm sure many others here would love to see what works!

Thanks again.

My growout system is quickly becoming a hassle. I have 14 individual tanks.. not connected in any way. Each tank is 10 gallons and has it's own heater, hob filter, sponge filter and airstone. The tanks are bare bottom and 25% water changes happen every other week. It's a lot of maintenance and I'm eventually going to need to upgrade to a combined growout system.

The good news is that it's relatively simple to add or subtract tanks to the setup and I can easily convert fry tanks into growout tanks and vice versa. Also, I'm never going to be in danger of some freak pathogen wiping out my entire inventory.
 
I am just catching up on this thread and reading up as much as possible but the separate tanks seem like a much safer way to do it. Props to you for being able to maintain all of the separate tanks.
 
I attempted to raise my Onyx clutch also. I lost a lot of fry the first night but tonight is going to be night number 5. Since the first night I only lost one fry the second night.

I think the idea of 24 hr light the first day and start feeding right away is a great idea. I will do this the next patch. I got well over 300 fry hatched but only end up with 56 fry PHD#5

What is your feeding regiment?
Rotifers first then what do you add and at what day as the second food? The third food?

Thanks
 
I attempted to raise my Onyx clutch also. I lost a lot of fry the first night but tonight is going to be night number 5. Since the first night I only lost one fry the second night.

I think the idea of 24 hr light the first day and start feeding right away is a great idea. I will do this the next patch. I got well over 300 fry hatched but only end up with 56 fry PHD#5

What is your feeding regiment?
Rotifers first then what do you add and at what day as the second food? The third food?

Thanks

Rotifers for the first 21-25 days. Three times a day at first, once a day towards the end. I overlap Otohime A starting around day 3 with each feeding. They eventually get crushed golden pearls and freeze dried cyclopseeze depending on their growth. Usually around the 2nd week. Final food stage is normal foods, frozen, flake and pellet.

The important thing is that you overlap food sizes and feed at the same time. They need to be taught that the new item is food even though it's not moving.
 
Hello. Do you ever get any babies that have the Picasso look but are dark like you onyx?

I don't really see any extreme misbars from my Onyx gene pool. Bill Addison knew what he was doing. On very rare occassions I will get a special barring, like an onyx with a white spot on her face, and I've held onto those 1 in 1,000 fish for my personal collection.

In the future I do plan to cross an Onyx with a Picasso. There are several breeders who are actively doing that now if you were interested in finding one. Search for Onyx-Picasso or Picasso-Onyx.

I've also got an Onyx with a Platinum who might start to produce something in the next year or so... That will be interesting.
 
The latest Onyx clutches have finally grown large enough to attempt some footage.

Juvenile Onyx Clownfish (18 DPH)

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Rotifers for the first 21-25 days. Three times a day at first, once a day towards the end. I overlap Otohime A starting around day 3 with each feeding. They eventually get crushed golden pearls and freeze dried cyclopseeze depending on their growth. Usually around the 2nd week. Final food stage is normal foods, frozen, flake and pellet.

The important thing is that you overlap food sizes and feed at the same time. They need to be taught that the new item is food even though it's not moving.

Jason,
Just to see how someone else does it, about how many cups of rotifers are you straining to add to your fry tank?
Thanks
Jo
 
Jason,
Just to see how someone else does it, about how many cups of rotifers are you straining to add to your fry tank?
Thanks
Jo

I use a clear glass measuring cup that you'd find in your kitchen. I feed 400 ml's of rotifer solution at first but gradually reduce the number and frequency of the feedings over time.
 
Fantastic thread. dont you mind sharing, how you collect fry when they hatch.
thank you.

I've always manually collected fry on hatch night. I simply shut off all filtration and powerheads while completely blacking out the room. I then place a single white LED on top of the tank and they fry are drawn to it like moths to a flame. I use a tea cup to scoop them up right at the surface.

Up until now that's the way I've always done it. It's pretty easy but can be time consuming. I can easily spend 2 hours waiting for them to hatch and then another hour doing the collecting.

Last week my Vossen Fry Trap arrived. It's basically a kressel style trap that is powered by air bubbles. I put it in the tank and a few hours later it managed to collect at least 90% of the free swimming fry. I'm ok with those numbers. But the problem was that at least 1/3rd of the fry showed some minor damage from the collection process. There is a balancing point with the air bubbles where too little means the fry escape and too much mean the fry get clobbered. I'm going to play around with a bubble diffuser on the bottom to see if finer bubbles can create more current while being more gentle at the same time. Aside from the losses of the weaker fry, the remaining fry appear unharmed and are looking good 5 days later. I think the device could also be improved with opaque plastic on the far side to stop the light from escaping. It was also a complete pain to transfer the fry from the trap to the larva tank. First I was dealing with suction cups, then water pouring out, fry getting sloshed around, etc... I might stick with my manual collection process and just use the fry trap to catch any stragglers overnight.
 
Onyx Spawn 01.28.13

Should hatch next Tuesday.

onyxeggs_zps0b339c04.jpg
 
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