Tomato clowns on the way

[nathan_krauss]

I have been messing around with yellow tail blue damsel babies but have not gotten there yet. So much to my surprise my tomatoes were laying, so i think ill give them a try. I have everything except the most important thing, the rotifers. I was hoping to find someone locally here in boise before I overnight some, which is a lot of money.

I have herd that tomatoes might be a little more challenging than the percs or ocellaris clowns, but we will see.

 

[mwilliams62]

Wishing you good luck...

 

[nathan_krauss]

I didnt get this brood. They ate the first brood, but let the second one go. I didnt want to spend 40 bucks to get the rotifers over night, so ill just weight till next time. It was kind of funny because i was expecting the clowns to be hatching, but i had a million yellow tail damsel babies swimming all over at the same time. That would have been fun trying to separate them.

 

[mwilliams62]

Mine are True Percs I think my female will be laying her second batch this weekend but I am hoping not till next week that way it will give my rotifers more time to culture.

 

[nathan_krauss]

Im kinda concerned about the rotifer thing because I hear they can crash fairly easy. It seems that now that they have laid some eggs thats all they want to do, same with the damsels. what a life.

 

[mwilliams62]

I thought my rotifer culture had crashed but it didn't they are just so tiny I have to see them with a magnifying glass right now... I hope they get more dense before my 2nd batches hatches.

 

[billsreef]

I like running two rotifer cultures. If one crashes, than not all is lost

 

[mwilliams62]

It has been confirmed my batches are nice and dense so I am ready for batch #2 to hatch.

 

[nathan_krauss]

Two batches it is.

I also just noticed a new laying on the 12th, got my rotifers coming hopefully on the 14th, i just hope thats enough time to get a good culture going. I ordered a million of them, we will see. Im glad i wasn't the one counting them, I don't think you could pay me enough.

 

[billsreef]

Counting rots isn't that bad. Just take a small volume to count, and multiply by the total culture volume.

It's also even easier if you have a student intern to make count

 

[mwilliams62]

I actually got 4 small batches started for the rotifers probably about 1 1/2 gallon saltwater in each bucket and I split my bag of rotifers in half for the first two buckets checked them about 4 days later and saw they had increased and then I split those up and even put about 2 cups of the rotifer culture into the fry tank to grow some in there it is a 2.5 gallon tank very tiny and added about 1/2 gallon of saltwater. Then I checked again in about 4 days and the culture is very dense so I added 1/2 gallon of saltwater to each container. Don't forget to add the rotigrow plus and chloram-x or the RGcomplete to the water but I found out I was putting too much in. So I decreased it to 2ml until I get my buckets to the full 5 gallons. I put it in in the morning before I go to work and in the evening before bedtime.

 

[nathan_krauss]

I have been growing my own phytoplankton and was planning on using that, but I have seen those other items at reed, so i may check it out. I just don't know if i have the space for 4 buckets, plus I don't know if the wife would sign off on that. I wish i lived in Miami, then i could grow them in the garage.

I read story in a clownfish breeding book, where the person had a child's pool and put rots in that outside and let nature take its course. They did just fine, even going through winter.

 

[nathan_krauss]

well, friday night was the hatch night, so i turned out the lights at 8 o'clock to get the party started. I checked at 9, no hatch, 10, no hatch, I then went and watched total recall. I checked back at 12 and they were all gone. no eyes shimmering in the water no egg casings or anything, they were just all gone. could they have been eaten by something? there were two eggs still on the rock but they are gone this saturday morning.

I put a flashlight out to get them to come to the light, but there was nothing, sounds kind of strange to me.