Our first attempt at raising Perculas

[edandsandy]

I was concerned about moving them before 30 days.. I can take half their tank water and set up a different 10g tank and move half of them over. Do you think 75 is still to many in a 10g? Or I need to go buy a couple of 20g tanks. Wish I picked them up when Petco had them on sale for a $1 a gallon..... lol...
I only have 1 sponge filter seeded.... Do you think a HOB filter is too much for them?
Oh boy... I see a big $$$$$ trip to the LFS....

 

[ernieq]

I have 69 on a 10 and they don't seem too cramped. 150 is definitely a lot. I've been using power filters on them for a while now. I use the Marina S20, you can regulate the flow if it seems too rough. I'm also alternating the sponge filter between the two tanks every other day since my power filters are not completely seeded yet. I've also now increased air flow a lot since I've been noticing some fish with flared gills and I read in some thread that they suspect low oxygen levels. There is a higher percentage in my bigger batch than my smaller batch, so it kind of made sense. I think your guys are still little, you could probably hold out to day 30 and then just put them all in a 20 or a 30. They say with good water you can grow out about 10 fish per gallon, so a 20 would fit your bill, but obviously bigger is better in this case. My 55 is going to get a 20 gallon sump with seeded bioballs from the broodstock tank.

 

[edandsandy]

ernieq,
Thanks again, You have been so helpful not only to me but to several of us first timers here...:wavehand:

I have several 10g tanks now. So I think I will set up one and move over a few at a time... I don't want to move to many and loose them all at once..

I have a friend coming over Monday to help me redesign my fish room.
I'm running out of counter space quickly and not we're to happy about that.
Plus I want it to be more counter productive in the room.

So here is what my room looked like before the breeding began

The room is 8'x18', but our reef tank is 8'x3'x2' and it is an in wall build so there is appx. 2 1/2 feet of the tank in the room. The counter is appx. 18" so the walk area in between appx. 34" just enough room for 2 people to work effectively in there.

This counter is currently holding (3) 10g tanks... We were using this counter for fragging, and working on equipment in the room

This is where we test all our water, wash equipment, etc...

So... I would like to have my counter back...
At the end of the room (west wall) is a 65g seahorse tank, on the north wall in the corner is a 40g that is quickly becoming a true breeder tank.

I'm thinking about moving the seahorse tank to my working counter and moving the cabinet's closer together... I know it will block the window some, but I need more room on that wall so I can build a grow out system on the north wall... When we built the room I had no idea we would end up with so many tanks in there....

We had two sinks in the room in the beginning, but we removed one so I have a drain on that end of the room and electrical...

I have a great book by Dr. Matthew Wittenrich, he goes into great detail on how they built a grow out system.

Any advise is greatly appreciated....

 

[ernieq]

Wow, what a setup!!! It looks really cool, congratulations. I would turn one of our bedrooms into a fishroom in a heartbeat, maybe when my child goes off to college in about 8 years I can take his "playroom." Do you use RO/DI water/salt mix or natural seawater? The one thing I would have on a fishroom is one of those tall vertical holding tanks for seawater to facilitate water changes and have a smaller one with RO/DI water for automatic evaporation top-off. Now that you have more pairs, the clownfish babies are going take up all available space and kick you out of the fish room soon! :lol2:

 

[edandsandy]

Yes we do have RO/DI system

And we have (2) 65g water tanks

I use reef crystals on the reef tank and instant ocean for the seahorses / 40g tank.

So water change outs are super simple... I make the water at 24 hrs in advance and its just a simple turn of a valve and I'm removing and replacing water in the big tank. When I have to change out water on the seahorse tank, it just a matter of placing a pump in their tank to remove the water and taking the longer hose to replace the water.

I guess I jinxed myself talking about all the pickering in the tank...We lost 3 of the really small juvi's this morning. Survivors count is 148.
So I took 1/2 the water from their tank to set up another 10g moved their sponge over and moved about half which I will call batch 1b of the over.. It was a way scary move. The half I moved have adjusted well, the half which I will call batch 1a in the "old" tank are stressing out just a bit.
I'm hoping all the pickering will slow down now......
I'm doing some much needed PM work on their LED light, so they are all balled up in a corner...
Its super cute.. Just scares me a bit on how they can ball up like that.. I worry about the one's on the bottom of the pile.

 

[ernieq]

They are bouyant, so no weight is placed on the bottom one. Most of mine clump up in a ball at night in a corner, then several small groups clump up on other corners at the surface, it's kind of weird, obviously this is not their way in the wild because by this age, they are already in some anemone hiding. Well designed fish room, congratulations!!! I'm drooling....

 

[edandsandy]

30 dph
The pickering has almost ended now that we have separated the juvi's We lost one juvi.
Survivor count is 147...
I'm going to change their food to TDO only, their color looks good, but I think it could be a little better.
I'm able to slowly add water back to their tanks now instead of dripping. My have things changed in just a few short days.

Tomorrow is a big day in the fish room. A friend is coming over and we're making plans for a grow out system.

I'm interested in hearing about your grow out systems and things you would do different if you could.

 

[edandsandy]

33 DPH
Sorry I haven't updated in a few day...
All the juvi's have adjusted to their new homes and the pickering is almost completely stopped... YEA!! I can not believe how aggressive they were, and how fast they are developing.
I'm feeding Ocotmine B2 now. I have ordered the TDO as mentioned earlier, just waiting on the delivery. We are moving forward on remodeling the fish room for the brood stock - grow out systems. We picked up all the material yesterday after careful planning on where the placement of the system will begin. I only want to move things around a little at a time, and hopefully only have to do the plumbing once. So we are asking as many questions from our LFS on how they plumbed their system, and have learned from their mistakes. We ordered the drill bits and the suction cup drill guide to drill the tanks. There are 5 tanks to move around before we can begin construction. Lots of planning on where to keep the seahorses and all the breeding pairs of fish. One of my Banggai male is holding eggs now, and one pair of clownfish just laid egss. As Murphy's law will have it, they are in seperate tanks....:headwalls:

Wish us luck!

If you have a grow out system, any advise on what you built and what you would do differently?

 

[edandsandy]

The remodel has begun in the fish room... We had to move the (3) 10g tanks completely out of the fish room and began making a larger counter for a working area and we are moving the seahorse to this counter. the new counter will be appx. 2' longer.

Ed is moving the "old" counter to the east wall for a extra counter. It seems like we never have enough counter space in there... They keep getting cluttered with aquariums........ :lol:

 

[SUPPOReefer]

Woohoo!! Can't wait to see the updated fish room. If you need any help this weekend, let me know.

 

[edandsandy]

Thanks, your help is very much appreciated.... I'm sure we could use your help drilling the tanks

 

[SUPPOReefer]

Thanks, your help is very much appreciated.... I'm sure we could use your help drilling the tanks

Just give me a call. My build is on hiatus while I figure out my protein skimmer/sump plumbing issues.

 

[lil_delta]

I thought my weekend was going to be busy with building a new stand... but yours sounds crazy. Keep up the great work!

 

[edandsandy]

38 DPH
All the juvi's adjusted to their to move fine, thank goodness and hopefull today they will be moved back into the fish room today, if not definitely tomorrow! I'm worried about all the moving back and forth.... Our batch 3 is due to hatch tomorrow night.. however, we had to move the parents tank today, so we dcided to move the rock with the eggs into the 10g tank so we wont have to collect the larvae tomorrow night, sounds simple enough, right???

 

[MarlinDreams]

Man o man why did I open this thread. Between you and ernieq, I really want to try to do this. I am putting water in all of my tanks by the end of the month and now I may have to tell the wife we need a couple more tanks. You guys really are an inspiration and a tribute to the hobby. I will be following your threads with great interest.

Regards,


JTC

 

[SUPPOReefer]

Any updates? How are the babies doing?

 

[edandsandy]

Sorry for the delay with updating my thread. The fish room remodel had taken a little longer than we expected, we had to special order valves... so you know how that goes. we are still waiting.....
We drilled 12 tanks with no problems, painted 3 sides with black paint, installed all the drain lines and drilled them for each tank, we have the return lines in place, then a piece on the the return pump broke, so we have to order that part.... Oh boy..... you kinda get the idea, we've been a little busy over here.

Well any way.
The babies are 54 days old now, they are eating almost every food I put in their tanks.
Our original pair Adam and Eve are laying eggs right now. So hopefully I will be able to raise these babies too. I have been letting all the other batches go since we were under construction, and I really didn't have anywhere to put the babies.
Our Sanjay Photons have not even thought about spawning, I sure hope they get busy soon. The Sanjay Midnights are still to young to spawn.

Here's a short video of all my babies.... well almost all the babies. I still have 17 Banggai babies in a nursery holding box because they are too small for a 10g tank.


Hope you enjoy the video!

 

[Tmoriarty]

It has been almost a month, any update (I know updates get farther apart when the babies are just growing )

 

[mwilliams62]

Our first attempt at raising Perculas

Great idea for removing the larva and detris on the bottom of the tank.

We set up the larva catcher again tonight, the parents are working the rock pretty good,
We can see the larva hatching and swimming towards the light.

Do you think it will be ok to put them in with yesterday's larva?????

Interested in seeing this Larva Catcher what does it look like?

 

[edandsandy]

It has been almost a month, any update (I know updates get farther apart when the babies are just growing )

Sorry for not posting any updates, life got a little crazy for us :crazy1:
All the babies are doing great! I can not believe how big they have gotten! We still have 145 clownfish! Our Banggai babies are HUGE now as well !!!!! PLUS our seahorses are having babies every 2 weeks!
I need to find homes for them soon.....

We stopped the construction in the fish room for now, Ed didn't like the way the tanks were cracking when he was putting the system together So I have been working with a local manufacture on building a new system for us.

I will take a few pictures of the babies this afternoon.