Do Clownfish Eggs Hatch in Waves?

[ca1ore]

Curious thing .....

After years of letting clown spawn get ‘eaten’ by the tank, my son and I have decided to try our hand at raising the fry. Put the vossen trap out last night (day 6) and caught a few fry (along with a few mysis and assorted wiggles). Then, Murphy like, the trap fell off the tank wall and they escaped. It’s always something LOL. BUT, most/all of the laid clown eggs are still there this morning. So what did we catch? Does anyone know if clown eggs all hatch on a single night or on multiple? Day 6 seems a bit early. There are other spawning candidates in the tank, though ive never actually seen any other eggs. Must confess, the fry didn’t look like the picture on the interweb.

 

[Jay Hemdal Verified Community Expert]

It's been my experience that a good hatch will be all at once - hatches that happen over two days just don't seem as strong to me. Two things that have messed up hatches for me are: too much light the night of the hatch, or, when artificially incubating a nest, getting the air flow/agitation set too low or too high.

I agree, 6 days seems too short - is you tank temperature really high?

Jay

 

[Vette67]

I have noticed the same thing. In one night it doesn’t seem like the full clutch of eggs have hatched. But also like you, I have just been letting the fry become fish food because I haven’t put in the effort to try raising them. I like watching the eggs, but I haven’t put any effort into raising them yet. Perhaps some time in the future I may give it a try too. So I don’t know if it is normal or not either. My tank stays between 77 and 78, and the clowns themselves are the ones fanning the eggs (seems like mostly the male does the egg grooming).

Let us know how the fry raising goes.

 

[ca1ore]

It's been my experience that a good hatch will be all at once - hatches that happen over two days just don't seem as strong to me. Two things that have messed up hatches for me are: too much light the night of the hatch, or, when artificially incubating a nest, getting the air flow/agitation set too low or too high.

I agree, 6 days seems too short - is you tank temperature really high?

Jay

No, 78.0 to 78.3 ..... eggs appear to be hatching over 3 nights. A few that hatched but then were lost on night 6, about 25 on night 7 and now hundreds tonight on night 8. I thought that perhaps the earlier fry may have been damsels, but they all look the same so pretty clearly the clowns. Fry a lot smaller than I thought they’d be. No wonder I never saw than hatch in the past.

I have been quite impressed with the vossen trap. Clown pair laid the eggs behind and below the large magnifica, so close to 2’ of gauntlet for the fry to swim to get to the trap. Now I know why the PJ cardinals don’t appear to sleep.

I decided to let the male incubate the eggs naturally figuring the fry lost to hazards in the display would be better than me trying to do it. Plus the clown pair have so far refused to lay eggs on the tiles.

 

[ca1ore]

Still have eggs with eyes left for night #4 ..... WT*. Maybe the clowns know I'm collecting the fry this time and are just screwing with me .....

 

[Modell]

How is to going? I am also in the same situation as you. I have 8 clownfish that are about 1 month old and just collected some more fry last night. seems like there weren’t very many this time. I like to hear how you are doing and what I can do better.