I plan to breed clownfish like black storm, orange storm, premium picasso, snowflake, black Ice and things like that
Generally breeding breeds based on percula and ocellaris
(Of course, in the future, in case of success and quality production of these items, I might go for the clarkii breed)
Alright, I haven't looked into percula clowns much yet, but I do have some info for ocellaris clowns, and a lot of it would work for percula too - I don't know how different the larval rearing stage is with percula clowns, but the info I have should work for the adult specimens of either ocellaris or percula species.
First of all, what do you think of this high quality diet for parents?
What foods and supplements do you recommend?
Can you introduce the best types and brands?
What about the baby fish from the beginning until they are fully grown?
And the next question is how to provide high-quality enrichment for them?
What foods do you recommend for parents and what foods for baby fish?
Yeah, for the best health and coloration, a high quality diet is a must for the broodstock (the parents).
There may be some better commercially available food out there for your broodstock that I'm not aware of, as many commercial feeds don't share what all is in their feed and I'm not sure which feeds are available to you in Iran. However, of the foods available to hobbyists/small-scale businesses here in the U.S.
That said, from what I can tell/have seen, the best feeds on the market for broodstock are currently as follows:
Personally, my suggested feeds would be as follows (I apologize, I haven't looked into frozen algae-heavy feeds enough to have one that I would suggest at this point; I'll have to remedy that):
Frozen (Meaty) - LRS Reef Frenzy, Hikari Mega Marine, then Rod's Original.
Pellets (Meaty) - Otohime, then TDO Chromaboost.
Pellets (Algal) - NLS Marine Fish Pellets (has 8 types of algae and one terrestrial plant).
I know LRS Reef Frenzy, Otohime, and TDO Chromaboost have all been used to aquaculture Amphiprion species successfully; LRS Reef frenzy is probably the best, but - since it's a frozen feed - it doesn't store as well the pellets, and it is comparatively more expensive.
If you don't have access to these feeds, then let me know what feeds you're considering and I can give some feedback on those. Otherwise, if would prefer to make your own feed, then I can give you some suggestions for that too (both home/hobbyist tested, laboratory tested, and experimental).
What supplements I would suggest would vary depending on the feed you use with the fish, but generally the only supplements I might typically recommend with a healthy feed are astaxanthin (for red coloration) and spirulina (for blue/green coloration).
Yes, it has been demonstrated on a number of different fish both internally (like salmon) and externally (such as red tilapia* and other species listed in the block quote below), a few different inverts, and even flamingos.** It seems to primarily be a reddening agent (though it has been shown to have some other positive effects too), yes.
"Astaxanthin has been shown to promote growth and skin
pigmentation in flame-red dwarf gourami
Trichogaster lalius (
Baron et al., 2008), blood
parrotfish Cichlasoma synspilum ×
C. citrinellum (
Li et al., 2018), green swordtail
Xiphophorus helleri (
Putra et al., 2020), discus fish
Symphysodon (
Song et al., 2017), rainbow kurumoifish
Melanotaenia parva (
Meilisza et al., 2018), and
red swamp crayfish Procambarus clarkii (
Cheng and Wu, 2019)."***
A similar effect has been noted for other colors with things like Spirulina (different carotenoids involved though).****
*Source:
The aim of this research was to examine the effects of dietary inclusion of astaxanthin from Haematococcus pluvialis in commercial fish feed on the co…
www.sciencedirect.com
**Source:
***Source:
To investigate the effects of dietary astaxanthin on fish growth and body color, blood parrotfish juveniles were assigned to three groups: control (CL…
www.sciencedirect.com
****Sources:
For the larvae (the baby fish), the go-to feed from the day they hatch through ~day 7 post hatch is the rotifer
Brachionus plicatilis, typically enriched with a
Nannochloropsis sp. such as
N. oculata. However, I have seen an experiment done where researchers compared the growth and survival of ocellaris larvae using
N. oculata and
Isochrysis galbana with nauplii/early copepodites of the copepod
Acartia southwelli as one feed treatment and
N. oculata and
I. galbana with
B. plicatilis as another - the larvae fed
A. southwelli grew faster and had a higher survival rate than those fed
B. plicatilis. In both treatments, the water in the larval rearing tanks was tinted with a 1:1 mix of
N. oculata and
Isochrysis galbana at 1×10^4 cells/ml-1.
At least here in the U.S.
Acartia tonsa is much more readily available than
A. southwelli; I would guess (but I don't know for certain) that
A. tonsa nauplii/early copepodites could be used as a substitute for
A. southwelli.
I suspect that having the 1:1 blend of phytoplankton species would be beneficial for the copepods and clown larvae, but I may be wrong.
Regardless, at least for ocellaris clowns, I would suggest using
A. southwelli (or
A. tonsa) as the first feed for the larvae, preferably with both
N. oculata and
I. galbana being used to enrich the copepods and to tint the larval rearing water.
After the first feed, I have seen small pellet feeds introduced as early as day 3 post hatch (see the TDO Chromaboost table below), but more typically (at least in laboratory/research settings) I have seen enriched Artemia nauplii (Baby Brine Shrimp) introduced as a feed anywhere from 6 to 9 days post hatch for larvae. By day 10, the laboratory-setting larvae are feeding strictly on enriched Artemia nauplii. From there, some labs introduce new foods (like pellets or boiled mussel meat) anywhere from day 15 to day 30 - unfortunately, I don't know when the best time would be to introduce a new feed, but I would likely suggest introducing a small enough (in microns) version of the broodstock feed to help the larvae get the best coloration and nutrition possible, and to help them adjust to your feed/a non-live aquarium feed (this way they can transition smoothly either to being your next generation broodstock fish, or to being added to someone's aquarium).
How should this light be and what features should it have?
And this light is only needed for baby fish from the beginning to the time of full growth, or is high quality light important for their parents as well?
(Because I saw in a video from the proaquatix company that the baby fish were in large pools without a special lighting system, but they had very good colors)
As a general rule, the closer the light is in spectrum to natural sunlight, the better the color/health of the fish (the effect of light on fish seems to be a fairly new field of study, so many places that I've seen don't mention the specifics of their lighting fixtures used in aquaculture; many just mention the photoperiod used and sometimes a brand of light).
Because this seems to be a fairly new field of study, I don't have specifics on how important high quality light is for clownfish specifically at the moment, but lighting has been shown to have a large effect on the growth/reproduction of both adult and larval fish of a few other species, so I would assume (possibly incorrectly) that it's more important than people might realize for clownfish as well:
I don't know if the light type/spectrum/intensity would make a difference in this case or not, but I found these articles which made me interested:
The present study investigated the effects of exposure to different light spectra and intensities on ovarian maturation in yellowtail damselfish, Chry…
www.sciencedirect.com
(Impact of different LED conditions on broodstock ovarian maturation.)
indianjournalsonline.com
(Effects of different artificial light intensities on the growth and survival of [viviparous] mosquitofish from the embryonic stage on.)
I've seen both 12:12 (12 hours light:12 hours dark) and 14:10 photoperiods used with the broodstock, and I've seen both 14:10 and 24:0 photoperiods used with the larvae (the 24:0 was used for the first 20 days post hatch; the study that used this noted that they used it for better larval growth and survival - the larval rearing tank used in this study also had black sheets covering the sides of the larval rearing tanks to prevent reflecting light, and used the green-tinted water, which dulls the visible light further; so the light was constantly there, but it wouldn't have been overwhelmingly bright).
I'm not sure what lighting Proaquatix uses, but it looks like they have some strong lights with some good coverage:
That said, I would guess their lighting is good enough to keep the phytoplankton in the tanks at top quality.
If I want to summarize, my biggest problem in these cases is breeding clown fish with the highest and best quality and then creating the best possible genetics.
I know that there are big commercial producers in this field in the world, such as bali aquarich, sea and reef, ora farm, proaquatix, thebiotagroup and others whose very high quality products are the result of years of effort, research and a lot of work they did.
Yeah, there's definitely no guarantee I (or anyone else on the forum) can help you match or surpass the research and efforts of those major companies, but if you want to produce the best, you need to account for all the minor details (genetics, light, food, temperature, water quality, etc.) and make sure you have the best of all of them.
As a quick note with the temperature and ocellaris larvae - I've seen studies where they've been reared at 26C, 28C, and 31C; the larvae reared at 31C grew faster than the others, but they had some fairly noticeable differential gene expression - I don't know if the differences were good or bad, but temperature is something to keep in mind for both the broodstock and larvae (26-28C seems to be considered the ideal at this point for both).
It might be a lot of expectation for me, as it can be said that I am much more new and less experienced in front of them, that I want to produce as much as they do, but I want to achieve it with the help and guidance of people like you.
Because you know that in this part of the world, due to various issues, I do not have access to good and reliable references in this field, and this is my only way.
We can probably help you with small-scale business, but I'd imagine ramping up production to mass scale like the big name companies in the industry may be a lot tougher if for no other reason than the logistics involved.
Again, I must say that I am very grateful to you for taking the time to read and respond to my posts.
I'm happy to help when I can.
To list some sources I've pulled from:
