Clownfish Breading questions?

[Frostbite]

Hello R2R members,
I just stumbled across this page in my google travels so I am a new member. I have been breeding my Gladiator and Black Ice for the last 6 months and have had some great success as well as a lot of failures. I am still working on trying to have better success with the first couple of days from hatch night to meta stage. My biggest issue seems to be how much tint the Fry actually need in the water verses the amount of light on hatch night. I had one extremely successful clutch with about 125 survivors and then it is twenty here 12 there. I cannot seem to replicate my success. I can say that I spoke to a local Marine Biologist that breeds clownfish with his students and he said that I need to count 10 rotifers per ML and that they need to have about 3,800 rotifers per gallon. Which sounds great but I have tried viewing through the microscope and finding my count is higher and have been trying to find that equilibrium of how do I restart a batch of rotifers and time the growth rate so that I do not have a ton but have a safe batch to calculate how many liters to drive without having to be so technical. Does anyone have a successful rhythm that they use? Here is where I stand as of today, my Gladiator laid eggs last night and they will hatch next Friday so I should drop my rotifers down to a certain percentage so that they are ready to harvest and feed the Fry on hatch night. Here is a picture of one of my Frostbites, the parents and the grow out system I built. Any advice is greatly appreciated. Also if anyone has any good suggestions on what to pair with my Frostbites please let me know your thoughts? Sincerely, Neil

 

[Peace River]

Chad from @Reef Nutrition is definitely one of the top experts on rotifers so if you do a search for anything that he is written then it is likely to put you on the right track. Good work so far!

 

[Frostbite]

Chad from @Reef Nutrition is definitely one of the top experts on rotifers so if you do a search for anything that he is written then it is likely to put you on the right track. Good work so far!

Thank you. Much appreciated!

 

[californiarob]

Frostbite, its hard to tell by your post what the real problem is, but to start it sounds like you have enough rots by what you are saying, the best way to really count them is with a Sedgewick Rafter that has a grid, these can be found on Amazon, myself I don't count the rots that way when adding to the fry tank as it all depends on the fry count, l add rots the first night and then count every day afterwards to see if the amount need to be reduced or increased, the other issue is light, too much light will push the fry to the sides and too little they will not be able to locate food, black the sides of the tank and use duct tape on the led light strip to just have one or two of the led shine in the middle of the fry tank, this will keep them away from the sides, I usually keep my lights on 24 hours a day for the first 3 weeks, adding green water or paste to tint the water is also working 2 factors, feeding the rots and keeping the fry away from the sides, I observe the fry and dose as needed.. too much they cant find food and too little they might stay close to sides...... keep the fry in the middle of the tank, hope this helps to get them to morph (META to all you new kids out there over the last decade).. keep up the post and I will throw in my 2 cents

 

[old salt reefer]

When I first read the title I thought I'd put a lot of breading on them as they're pretty small and won't make much of a meal unless you had a lot of them.

 

[Frostbite]

Frostbite, its hard to tell by your post what the real problem is, but to start it sounds like you have enough rots by what you are saying, the best way to really count them is with a Sedgewick Rafter that has a grid, these can be found on Amazon, myself I don't count the rots that way when adding to the fry tank as it all depends on the fry count, l add rots the first night and then count every day afterwards to see if the amount need to be reduced or increased, the other issue is light, too much light will push the fry to the sides and too little they will not be able to locate food, black the sides of the tank and use duct tape on the led light strip to just have one or two of the led shine in the middle of the fry tank, this will keep them away from the sides, I usually keep my lights on 24 hours a day for the first 3 weeks, adding green water or paste to tint the water is also working 2 factors, feeding the rots and keeping the fry away from the sides, I observe the fry and dose as needed.. too much they cant find food and too little they might stay close to sides...... keep the fry in the middle of the tank, hope this helps to get them to morph (META to all you new kids out there over the last decade).. keep up the post and I will throw in my 2 cents

Thank you the advice. What color LED do you use? White or blue?

 

[californiarob]

i have a bunch of left over LED lighting and use those fixtures, I have also been using the cheap Fluval light strips for the fry tanks as they have the app feature when your ready to do the dusk to dawn. I just use the white mainly with a little blue depending on fixture i am using.