Waiting for Ocellaris Eggs to hatch

[dela]

Day 10

Day 10

At what point do I move the fish into their growout tank? I was thinking of putting them in my frag tank which consists of rubble rock, frilly mushrooms, and ricordea. I would think they will want to host with these. Or else into my 20 gallon quarantine tank.

All the fish made it through meta! :celeb2: They have a white bar on the top of their heads. I'm wondering if their weird behavior is not actually their hosting instinct kicking in. Basically they seem to prefer hanging out on the glass over swimming around (like plankton!) Although at the same time, this morning I noticed some were spazzing out. Not sure if baby fish play, but they seemed to be going a little nutty. Every once in a while, one just takes off like a bat out of hell and swims as fast as it can along the surface of the water.

Have not actually seen any dead ones, so either I've managed to keep all of them alive the entire time, or the dead disintegrate quickly. Over the weekend I was able to clean twice per day. Now that it's the work week, this will get hard again! Still have not been able to get an accurate count!

Also, good thing I'm not relying solely on BBS, as my track record at hatching these is pretty bad. Since I have not been wanting to overfeed BBS, I've been decapsulating and hatching in small quantities. I think the decapsulation process can be killer when your proportions and times are different each time. Like everything else so far, I think developing a simple routine that works is needed.

 

[dela]

Day 13?

Day 13?

If anyone was wondering, the answer is no. Fry are not easier to photograph than their parents! Actually they are worse since they are hard to get in focus!

Anyway, I finally thought the fry looked big enough to handle the flow of a small filter. You can see it in the background. Had to zip tie the white filter sponge material onto the front in order to keep the fry from getting sucked in. The clowns are all over it. Hope they don't find any crevices and get in!

Trying to feed different things. Finally fed some BBS. Nobody killed themselves overeating. Fed dry cyclopeeze today. The fry are way too small for it!

 

[RobsReefs407]

Nice man I can't wait until my pair lays eggs any suggestions

Sent from my LG-P999 using Tapatalk

 

[dela]

Actually, yeah. If you do a search, I had the same question a couple of months ago, and people had lots of good suggestions.

The main things seem to be:

1 - Temp, keep it high (80)
2 - Feed a lot (and feed good food). Otherwise your eggs may not develop properly. My first batch did not.
3 - Long photoperiods. If the fish think it's summer (warm temps, lots of food, long days) then they are more likely to spawn.

The next item I think is a trigger for a female who is really fat and looking like she is ready to lay eggs. (gravid?)

4 - Simulate plankton blooms. I think my clowns had laid eggs before, but I really did not pay much attention. Since I started paying attention, my clowns laid their first batch of eggs the night I dumped a very large load of copepods into the tank. Coincidence? Maybe. But you can do the same thing with baby brine shrimp.

Anecdotally, (I will probably get flamed for this, and I'm not suggesting you do this!) the last TWO times my clowns have laid eggs, including the batch you see in this post, I removed part of the crushed coral substrate on the day of the hatch. Coincidence? Once sure, but twice I think not! Needless to say, removing the crushed coral bed without removing the fish is probably one of the most stressful things you could do to your fish. However, both mornings, I woke up hoping not to find any dead fish, and to my complete surprise, found clown fish eggs instead of dead fish. So this has me thinking that stress could be a trigger as well.

HTH

 

[dela]

Oh, and it probably goes without saying, but if you wait till the eggs are laid to think about how you are going to feed them, you have waited too long!

That happened to me on my first batch and I would have failed miserably had I even tried. Although in the end, the clowns destroyed the clutch before it hatched.

 

[GROSSR]

I can't seem to see the eggs hatch. I have seen the "air bubbles" for 2 or 3 days and then gone. My clowns lay their eggs between 2pm and 3pm whenever they spawn. Did you find the eggs hatch at the same time?

rich

 

[dela]

Hi Rich, not sure what you mean by seeing air bubbles, or by at the same time. I pulled my rock when the eggs cleared up and put it in a 10 gallon tank. They did not hatch that night, they hatched the next night. And only half the eggs hatched.

The eggs hatched a couple hours after I turned the light off in the room. I didn't see them hatch as I didn't want to disturb them, so I don't know if they all hatched at the same time, but my guess would be that they would hatch within a 1 hr window at the most.

I probably should have left the rock in place to see if the other half of the eggs would hatch the next night, but I was thinking they did not hatch due to poor water circulation on the eggs, and that the eggs had gone bad.

Hope that helps.

 

[dela]

I had my first loss today. The fish with a bad swim bladder who seemed to have little to no motor control, died last night.

Then today I asked the wife to feed the tank while I was at work. She put about a .5 teaspoon of otohime into the tank. Way too much. I siphoned it out when I got home. Hopefully it won't lead to problems in the near future.

 

[dela]

Pic update

Pic update

These guys are still pretty small. Maybe 3/8" long? They are less and less see through every day. And they act more like clowns every day.

Too bad they bicker and squabble. Maybe I need to add a fake anemone!

 

[Clownfishfan]

Which Otto you feeding now?

 

[dela]

Hey there Clownfishfan,

The clowns will be 4 weeks old this weekend and I'm still feeding them Otto A (250 nm?). Actually I only bought A and B1 thinking that by the time they are out of B1, they will be big enough to eat the other foods I have. And the reason I still feed A is that there is not much difference between A and B1, and I have not opened the B1 package!

Also feeding artemia sized golden pearls, dried cyclopeeze (I think they can eat it now), and BBS (on occasion). This weekend I will begin harvesting my copepod cultures and seeing how that goes. My outdoor rotifer/copepod culture went crazy, so I need to take advantage of the population peak.

 

[dela]

Sad Day

Sad Day

So a couple of nights ago, on my way to bed I had to turn on a light near my DT, and when I looked into the tank, I saw hundreds of baby clownfish fry swimming around.

Unfortunately even though I'm not ready for another batch, my clowns keep spawning.

As a result, I've been considering an outdoor experiment with the next batch of fry since the baby clowns are not quite big enough to go into my main system, but I didn't realize they were going to hatch that night. And it was a very long day and I was not ready at all. So I turned off the lights and went to bed as it was already very late.

The next morning, there was not a fry to be found.

 

[dela]

Clownfishman got me thinking, so I tried to feed 500-800 nm sized golden pearls today but they were just a tad too big. A couple of pellets may have gotten eaten, but most ended up on the bottom.

Wouldn't it be nice if a simple rule of thumb could be developed based on how many weeks old the clowns are? Say 100nm per week? 400 nm max food size is probably about right for these 4 week old clowns.

Anyway, while the GP's were too big, the clowns gorged themselves on tigs today!

Tigs have a nice red color to them which I always assumed meant they were very nutritious. I wonder if that's true?

 

[dela]

Thought I would post an update since I think it's finally time for some of these guys to find a new home.

Here they are just a few days shy of 7 months old... All still together, but now in my display tank.

The parents were sold to a good home to make room for the babies!

 

[ernieq]

They look to be about an inch? How many fit in the anemone? That is so cool! Congratulations.

 

[lil urchin]

great picture. they don't squabble over the one anemone?

 

[dela]

Their size varies considerably since I did not cull the runts. There are a handful that could pass for full grown males.

I see lots of minor skirmishes. One fish lunges while the other one bolts. But I don't see more than that. And once the lights go out, they all make a bee line for their anemone.

Was able to sell a good dozen or more. Still it's interesting how they will spread out and take up the entire tank during the day.

 

[mwilliams62]

Waiting for Ocellaris Eggs to hstch

Waiting for Ocellaris Eggs to hstch

Following along here... Jason do you have any pics of your eggs right before they hatch that you can post?

They can be silver for a few days. What I actually look for is copper-colored eyes. After a few hatches, you'll see what I'm talking about. The eyes are the secret!

 

[Mordoff]

Such a cool thread. I really want to get a pair and start a breeding project ASAP.

 

[Lez uk]

Very nice just love them.