red tomato clown eggs

[rt67ghy]

My red tomato clownfish pair have laid eggs under a large flat rock and are taking care of them. This is the first time.:dance:

I'd like them to hatch. Should I leave the rock there or remove it and put it somewhere else? The other occupants in my tank are: small skunk clown, a mandarin, an algae blenny, a yellow tang, a haddoni carpet, and mainly LPS corals. The tank is 180g and has about 300lbs live rock. It was set up 1 year ago and has copepods.

Thanks for any advice.

 

[addictedreefer]

My red tomato clownfish pair have laid eggs under a large flat rock and are taking care of them. This is the first time.:dance:

I'd like them to hatch. Should I leave the rock there or remove it and put it somewhere else? The other occupants in my tank are: small skunk clown, a mandarin, an algae blenny, a yellow tang, a haddoni carpet, and mainly LPS corals. The tank is 180g and has about 300lbs live rock. It was set up 1 year ago and has copepods.

Thanks for any advice.

Lot's of information on this in these forums and the web. Raising fry is very involved and it takes time to get set up, so this batch is fish food. Good news is that they should continue to lay eggs every two weeks or so. Read up, and if you are still interested, get everything set up in advance and start when you are ready.

 

[ThRoewer]

It depends how many you want to raise. For only a hand full all you need is a small acrylic tank you can hang into the main tank and a bottle of copepods (tispe, tigger pods,... ).
You can also order rotifers from ebay. Phytofarmer sends out pretty dense starter cultures, for sure enough for up to 50 baby clowns.

I raised my first two (those were A. melanopus) that way in 1982. But back then bBachionus was the only small enough live food you could get and the starter cultures were just pitiful.

 

[rt67ghy]

I have a separate 20 g copepod tank with lots of pods so I wouldn't have a problem to get the fry to start eating and survive the first 10 days or so. My question is whether I should leave the eggs in the DT or remove the rock with them and put it in the pod tank where the parameters are obviously different. I'd have to acclimatize them for several hours. Would the eggs hatch if I remove them from the clown parents too early?

 

[ThRoewer]

If you want to transfer the rock you need to place it into a clean tank filled with water from the parent's tank. Placing the eggs into the pod culture may not be the best idea as the eggs and larva are very sensitive to changes in water chemistry and quality.

Also, unless your pod culture is really dense, you likely won't have enough food for all.

At this stage I would rather leave the rock where it is and just collect some larva when they hatch. Place those into a small tank with water from the parent's tank and collect some pods from your culture. Ideally you should strain and select them for size as the large ones may be too large for the larva.

 

[Dkuhlmann]

Do not collect the fry with a net, use a turkey baster to get them out after they hatch, if you're going to try this. I can tell you that they are very difficult to get out of fry stage. I also believe that rotifers are smaller than pods and you will need them for the first few weeks. Like was stated there are many articles and threads on this here and also more video on YouTube than you care to watch on this subject. Good luck if you give it a try.

 

[rt67ghy]

ThRoewer and Dkuhlmann thanks for the advice. I'd like to try to save the majority of the larvae that hatch. It would be a pity if I let them all get eaten by the fish in the DT.

 

[Dkuhlmann]

You need to have rotifers for the fry to eat when they hatch and very small ones then larger once the fry are a week or so old. Don't be upset if it doesn't work out as it's a difficult thing to do until you get the process down. I've got a buddy that's been trying to raise baby clowns for about a year. He's close but still loses them at about 10 days old or so. Good luck if you try. Like I said Youtube is your friend with this process.

Good Luck!