president89
New member
I set up some 10g tanks in December and bought two larger pairs of Ocellaris from a local board. If i were to do it again I probably would have gone with Juveniles, but needless to say, I love both pairs.
My setup is as follows.
3 10G tanks
each has:
75w Jager submersible heater
Whisper ex45 HOB filter
Egg Crate covering the top of the tank
1 15G tank with the same setup as above
48" two bulb shoplight
Currently two are "out of commission but still running. One the pair of fish died suddenly and I think it was because I'm doing FO bare bottom tank, with just a clay pot and two tiles(1 is there just to hold the other from sliding), and I think a cleaned the pot and tiles, and removed the filter media in the same cleaning. That doesn't leave too many other places for the bacteria to grow. The other, I basically started up, thought i'd use it as a fry tank, and well, I didn't get any eggs, so it's just sitting there wasting electricity.
For the first few months, I just had three different types of food. Two different kinds of flakes, and a pellet. About a month ago, I made my own food (shrimp, calamari, scallops, tilapia, spirulina powder, cod liver oil, vitachem, and Selcon.) I typically do 2 feedings a day. One right when the lights come on 6:30am, and then one about 10 hours later 4:30pm to feed the home made food as much as possible, but alot of times, it's one flake/pellet feeding and one home made feeding per day.
My light schedule is 16 hours a day. 6:30am-10:30pm.
So on Sunday, I was feeding my fish and to my surprise I saw some eggs on my clay pot. I must have missed them for a couple days, because they hatched last night, so they had to be there before, I just didn't see them. At first, I thought the male clown was eating the eggs, but it looked like he was trying to help them hatch. I've never read about that, but he was nudging them with his nose, and that's when I noticed some fry sort of floating through the tank, at first I was wondering what these small white looking things are, so that's when I figured out the male wasn't eating the eggs. They died over night, They kept getting picked up by my filter which turns the water over quite a bit. It's rated for 40G, but another member recommeded it because it really doesn't leave too much waste settling at the bottom. Needless to say they kept getting sucked up, and spitted back out.
So, when I first started this whole setup, I bought and read some books. Clownfishes, by Joyce D. Wilkerson, Anenome Fishes and their Host Sea Anemones , by Fautin and Allen, Conditioning, spawing and rearing of Fish with emphasis on Marine Clownfish, by Frank H. Hoff, and The Complete Illustrated Breeders Guide to Marine Aquarium Fishes, by Wittenrich.
I know I've read Wilkerson's book cover to cover probably twice. The others I've just scanned through, reading about things I had questions on. The hardest part for me is, that these books are 10+ years old , except for the breeders guide, and the product recommendations are obsolete, or they've changed names.
Here is my first question. I realize now that I'm going to need to culture some rotifers. And to do that, I'm going to need to feed them phytoplankton. I see now that you can buy the food for rotifers in concentration instead of culturing green water to feed to rotifers. Since I'm not a full production scale breeder. I was hoping to get 3 sets of breeding pairs. Right now, I have one. Does anyone recommend just buying the rotifer food, and just culturing the rotifers? I was looking at the sticky in this thread, and I saw a neat DIY culturing setup, that would allow me to do green water, rotifers, and baby brine shrimp all in one setup using PVC, airline, gang valves, etc found here. That just seems like it's going to take up more space. I'm already realizing that If i'm going to be raising fry, there's going to probably be some additional rubber tubs on my floor for grow out tanks. I'm really just looking for some advice. Obviously, the culturing of Phytoplankton is going to be cheaper than buying it, but it's got to be so much more time consuming.
Unfortunately, my camera isn't very good at taking photos of fish, so I wasn't able to capture the fry.
One additional question. I'm constantly scraping green algae off of my walls, pots, and tiles. it is a two bulb fixture. Should I go with shorter light periods, or just pull the lights away further? It's kind of a hassle to scrub every inch of the tank every week. Would a protein skimmer help out? I know that algae tends to bloom when you have a lot of nitrates in the tank. Without live rock, I really don't have anything removing the nitrates, aside from water changes.
My setup is as follows.
3 10G tanks
each has:
75w Jager submersible heater
Whisper ex45 HOB filter
Egg Crate covering the top of the tank
1 15G tank with the same setup as above
48" two bulb shoplight
Currently two are "out of commission but still running. One the pair of fish died suddenly and I think it was because I'm doing FO bare bottom tank, with just a clay pot and two tiles(1 is there just to hold the other from sliding), and I think a cleaned the pot and tiles, and removed the filter media in the same cleaning. That doesn't leave too many other places for the bacteria to grow. The other, I basically started up, thought i'd use it as a fry tank, and well, I didn't get any eggs, so it's just sitting there wasting electricity.
For the first few months, I just had three different types of food. Two different kinds of flakes, and a pellet. About a month ago, I made my own food (shrimp, calamari, scallops, tilapia, spirulina powder, cod liver oil, vitachem, and Selcon.) I typically do 2 feedings a day. One right when the lights come on 6:30am, and then one about 10 hours later 4:30pm to feed the home made food as much as possible, but alot of times, it's one flake/pellet feeding and one home made feeding per day.
My light schedule is 16 hours a day. 6:30am-10:30pm.
So on Sunday, I was feeding my fish and to my surprise I saw some eggs on my clay pot. I must have missed them for a couple days, because they hatched last night, so they had to be there before, I just didn't see them. At first, I thought the male clown was eating the eggs, but it looked like he was trying to help them hatch. I've never read about that, but he was nudging them with his nose, and that's when I noticed some fry sort of floating through the tank, at first I was wondering what these small white looking things are, so that's when I figured out the male wasn't eating the eggs. They died over night, They kept getting picked up by my filter which turns the water over quite a bit. It's rated for 40G, but another member recommeded it because it really doesn't leave too much waste settling at the bottom. Needless to say they kept getting sucked up, and spitted back out.
So, when I first started this whole setup, I bought and read some books. Clownfishes, by Joyce D. Wilkerson, Anenome Fishes and their Host Sea Anemones , by Fautin and Allen, Conditioning, spawing and rearing of Fish with emphasis on Marine Clownfish, by Frank H. Hoff, and The Complete Illustrated Breeders Guide to Marine Aquarium Fishes, by Wittenrich.
I know I've read Wilkerson's book cover to cover probably twice. The others I've just scanned through, reading about things I had questions on. The hardest part for me is, that these books are 10+ years old , except for the breeders guide, and the product recommendations are obsolete, or they've changed names.
Here is my first question. I realize now that I'm going to need to culture some rotifers. And to do that, I'm going to need to feed them phytoplankton. I see now that you can buy the food for rotifers in concentration instead of culturing green water to feed to rotifers. Since I'm not a full production scale breeder. I was hoping to get 3 sets of breeding pairs. Right now, I have one. Does anyone recommend just buying the rotifer food, and just culturing the rotifers? I was looking at the sticky in this thread, and I saw a neat DIY culturing setup, that would allow me to do green water, rotifers, and baby brine shrimp all in one setup using PVC, airline, gang valves, etc found here. That just seems like it's going to take up more space. I'm already realizing that If i'm going to be raising fry, there's going to probably be some additional rubber tubs on my floor for grow out tanks. I'm really just looking for some advice. Obviously, the culturing of Phytoplankton is going to be cheaper than buying it, but it's got to be so much more time consuming.
Unfortunately, my camera isn't very good at taking photos of fish, so I wasn't able to capture the fry.
One additional question. I'm constantly scraping green algae off of my walls, pots, and tiles. it is a two bulb fixture. Should I go with shorter light periods, or just pull the lights away further? It's kind of a hassle to scrub every inch of the tank every week. Would a protein skimmer help out? I know that algae tends to bloom when you have a lot of nitrates in the tank. Without live rock, I really don't have anything removing the nitrates, aside from water changes.
a little better than cardboard or paper products. I also dislike the effect of spills on black trashbags which were my first option. The water between the bags and the glass creates a horrible reflection. After I found the secret stash of dark gray hand towels, I never looked back.
