Scandinavian / Japanese Style Reef Tank

Aleks677 said:
That's cool. Reward for patience and back pain!
Congratulations, and health to you.
Click to expand...

biodegraded said:
I like these stories of perseverance, because I'm going through the same thing as I attempt to reenter the hobby after 20 years away. Thanks for documenting all the downs, and occasional ups, in your system, Dino. The tank is looking very good and the 'bonsai' design element shows. Best wishes in 2014.
Click to expand...

Patience and honesty is the key element. The first we learn to become and latter was a conscious decision from the beginning of our project. Same way we avoided mistakes by reading other threads, same way hopefully we will be saving someone from unnecessary frustration.

:wave:
 
New project: Breeding clown fish

New project: Breeding clown fish

Hello everyone,

As you saw on the last video, our clownfish couple decided to lay some eggs. The other night I was kind of restless and couldn't sleep and as usual I went to the tank with a torch and saw tenths and tenths of little clown fish larvae flying all over the place.

Here is a small video from the pitch dark tank with the little hatched babies



We decided to siphon them out and observe them for the next couple of days and here is what we were able to get out with our very sleepy eyes.



Unfortunately we only had baby brine shrimp which was too big for their little mouths and lacking nutrient value so in within 5 days we lost all of them.

That little experiment made us study more and more about breeding clownfish. Not because we want to make money out of it but merely to be able and be part of the natural processes taking place in our own tank. If clown fish wanted to make babies, as responsible parents that we are, then we have to give them chance in life, right?

Two days after our order, the package arrived from UK (couldn't find any supplier in Denmark). 500ml of live rotifers, 100ml of super high concentration of Nannochloropsis & Tetraselmis Phytoplankton and a rotifer sieve.




Equipment used by both rotifer tank and phytoplankton tank:

- Air pump with 2 channels (36 Euros)



- 80cm double fluorescent lamp (26 Euros)



Equipment for rotifer tank:

- IKEA bucket (3 Euros)
- 2m of soft airline (free)
- 1m of rigid airline (free)



Equipment for phytoplankton tank:

- 2 x 2L coca cola bottles (9 Euros "“ Yes, even coca cola is much more expensive in Denmark than any other part of the world)
- 2m of soft airline (free)
- 1m of rigid airline (free)

Setting up the rotifer tank:

- Freshly mixed 10L RODI water with salt at salinity similar to the salinity of the live rotifer pack (1.017)
- Place 2 airlines in (without airstone as I read many articles that airstone skims which is not good for rotifers)
- Place the bag of rotifers in for 10 minutes to reach same temperature as the rotifer tank
- Pour the content of the rotifer bag in the rotifer tank
- Feed a few drops from the super high concentration of Nannochloropsis & Tetraselmis Phytoplankton



Setting up the phytoplankton tank:

- Remove the labels of the bottles and wash repeatedly with warm water. Place a bit of vodka and shake. Alcohol in vodka will act as disinfectant. Rinse thoroughly several times with hot water and allow to dry
- Drill a hole at the centre of the bottle cup. Open a secondary smaller hole to relief and built up pressure from the air bubbles



- Freshly mixed water from the tap with salt at salinity of 1.017. Used tap water instead of RODI because phytoplankton needs food to grow and tap water supplies sufficient nitrates and phosphate.
- Added approximate 3ml of the super high concentration of Nannochloropsis & Tetraselmis Phytoplankton until a colour slightly darker than the flesh of a cucumber was achieved.
- Place the airline in (without airstone as I read many articles that airstone skims which is not good for rotifers)


And here is the end result:




Are we going to be successful? We really dont know but at least we try.

For the time being we are crossing fingers that our Clown fish couple will soon feel the need of laying more eggs.

Will keep you posted on our little project.


Thank you for reading the update and wishing you a wonderful weekend ahead from snowy Copenhagen.


Warm regards
Dino
 
You will have success with the rotifers. The fry only need them for a few days to a week anyways before they graduate to eating Artemia nauplii which can also be fed algae to grow bigger and maintain nutrient value. Mature Artemia can be fed rotifers, too. I raised some of my clown fry back in the paleolithic (1988) and by FAR the most difficult part was keeping algae cultures going. Now that we can just buy the stuff raising fry is easy, though somewhat tedious if nothing is automated.
 
biodegraded said:
You will have success with the rotifers. The fry only need them for a few days to a week anyways before they graduate to eating Artemia nauplii which can also be fed algae to grow bigger and maintain nutrient value. Mature Artemia can be fed rotifers, too. I raised some of my clown fry back in the paleolithic (1988) and by FAR the most difficult part was keeping algae cultures going. Now that we can just buy the stuff raising fry is easy, though somewhat tedious if nothing is automated.
Click to expand...

Paleolithic? Hahahahaha. The whole set up was a bit complicated at the beginning but we now get ourselves around it. A big issue for us living in this part of the world is that we do not have rotifers and phytoplankton readily available for purchase and we need to order it from another country. That increased the cost substantially. I am very curious to see how our phyto culture will grow. Is day 1 and i cannot see a great change in the colour. When you were growing phyto, how often were you fertilizing it?
 
It was 25 years ago, so I may not remember it entirely correctly, but I used 5 or 6 two liter soda bottles to culture algae. I would harvest the oldest bottle each day and use some of it to start a new bottle. I would add fertilizer only once, when I started the new bottle. The rest of the harvested culture went into the rotifer and/or artemia tank.

The problem with the algae cultures is they are incredibly prone to 'crashing', when some kind of bacteria, fungus or whatnot totally outcompetes them. I could only get 3 or 4 generations of cultures before a crash no matter how thoroughly I sanitized the equipment or filtered the air going into the air pump. Which meant I had to start from a new auger plate about once a month.

So I actually ran two cultures of a species so that I had some redundancy of food supply for the rotifers during the inevitable crash and culture renewal. One species of alga I tried I never grew out properly. I forget which one. We are lucky here in the States where there are commercial outfits that can do all this for us. I have no idea how they manage risk and deal with crashes, but I can tell you paying them to grow the algae for you takes away a tedious and risky task when tried at home.

By the way, if you have some extra algae sometime, put one drop from your rotifer tank into it and be amazed at how fast it is consumed and how many rotifers get made in the process. That's another way to wipe out a culture along with the bacteria, etc, one drop of spray from the rotifer tank...

Good luck.

[edit: there is some good information on this in the fish breeding forum]
 
Dino it was great reading this whole thread. It takes a lot of patience to get thru all the issues this new tank has had. Along with your health problems. I hope your back is doing as good as your tank is.
 
That was a cool video. I felt like I was in space or the very deep dark part of the ocean. Good luck with the breeding.
 
Just came back from Copenhagen, after visiting Dino and his wonderfull tank.

The tank is outstanding, and everything looks healthy again. Congratz
He even get me hooked on the idea with the live plankton. I will not use it for my Clowns, but as live food for my corals though.

Thx for a wonderfull day Dino and Kenneth :)

Hugs
 
Photobooth

Photobooth

While watching TV, we noticed that our Mandarin fish was standing still in front of the glass. She normally hides between the rocks so tried to take some macro shots as quickly as possible.

I am happy to share with you the two best shots. Its simply amazing the colours and the patterns of this fish.





All the best

Dino
 
jbraslins said:
Beautiful fish. How long have you had it?
Click to expand...

Its been over 4 months now. At the beginning i was too sceptical as I have been reading that it needs mature tanks and ours was roughly a year old but she is doing great. She has put on weight and always eating something from the rock.
 
It's kind of hard to tell on your picture, but your mandarin actually
looks like a he. I am just going by the elongated first dorsal spine,
which it looks like he has on the picture.
 
Mockuh said:
It's kind of hard to tell on your picture, but your mandarin actually
looks like a he. I am just going by the elongated first dorsal spine,
which it looks like he has on the picture.
Click to expand...

Oops. He, she.. you see i have oversimplified things in my life. :worried:
:beer:Dino = embracing diversities
 
Killing time

Killing time

I had 30 minutes available to kill today so i decided to take a few pictures of some of our "kids". Happy to finally be able to see growth and colour.










 
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