Ace25
Active Member
This year I decided to try my hand at raising clownfish. My pair of ocellaris have been breeding every 14 days for the past 5 years, but not until this year did I find the interest to try and raise some.
First attempt was what got me interested. Timing all came together. I just happened to look into the tank at the exact time a clutch started to hatch so I turned off all the pumps and collected a couple dozen. I was not setup at all to do this and I had no info on what to do. I had never read up on the topic before other than I knew they needed food that I did not have (live rotifers). I had an old 15G sump laying around so I filled one chamber and put the fry into that with an airstone and tried to put in every type of coral food I had on hand to see if they would eat. 75% water changes daily but still day by day they dropped off, last one at day 10. Not a big deal, it was a learning experience and I knew I wasn't ready. Here are a couple fry pictures from my first attempt.
Second batch... I got all setup properly. Ordered everything from reed mariculture and watched mommy and daddy go at it. Sorry about the quality of the videos, I have an 11 year old Nikon camera that takes 320x200 video and only 60 seconds at a time.
[video=youtube;Y7NwRcOKArQ]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7NwRcOKArQ[/video]
Unfortunately they did not hatch as expected. Only 1/2 the batch hatched one night and I waited up until 3am and nothing so I turned the flow back on and went to bed, by morning I noticed 1/2 hatched. Second night I waited up until 3am, but that time only 4 had hatched. I caught them, turned on the flow, by morning the rest were gone. So I only had 4 babies. 2 didn't make it past day 10, the other 2 are still alive and kicking. Here are my first 2 survivors, 76 days post hatch. They started out in a 29G tank but ended up in a 10G tank below because I needed room for the next batch. The first 2 I am keeping myself, the rest I am giving away.
[video=youtube;G4bJ3GrbYx0]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4bJ3GrbYx0[/video]
Second batch I ended up with about 50 total, 10 died in the first 10 days and 1 died at day 14 right after changing. I now have 39 babies that are 49 days post hatch.
[video=youtube;v52lpcE6XFs]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v52lpcE6XFs[/video]
[video=youtube;J0kuynraA6s]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0kuynraA6s[/video]
This has been enough work for me for a while. I realize I can make a much better breeder system now that I have learned a lot more about the process, so I am not collecting any more fry until I get rid of the ones I have now and can tear down/re-setup the system much better.
One question I have, how long does it usually take until the fish are ready to find new homes? I honestly never looked into that when I started all this, some reason I thought this would be a 3 month process. I was thinking "SW fish.. gotta grow up big fast to survive, right?".. Wrong. LOL. This appears to be a much longer project than I envisioned which I wasn't really planning for.
First attempt was what got me interested. Timing all came together. I just happened to look into the tank at the exact time a clutch started to hatch so I turned off all the pumps and collected a couple dozen. I was not setup at all to do this and I had no info on what to do. I had never read up on the topic before other than I knew they needed food that I did not have (live rotifers). I had an old 15G sump laying around so I filled one chamber and put the fry into that with an airstone and tried to put in every type of coral food I had on hand to see if they would eat. 75% water changes daily but still day by day they dropped off, last one at day 10. Not a big deal, it was a learning experience and I knew I wasn't ready. Here are a couple fry pictures from my first attempt.
Second batch... I got all setup properly. Ordered everything from reed mariculture and watched mommy and daddy go at it. Sorry about the quality of the videos, I have an 11 year old Nikon camera that takes 320x200 video and only 60 seconds at a time.
Unfortunately they did not hatch as expected. Only 1/2 the batch hatched one night and I waited up until 3am and nothing so I turned the flow back on and went to bed, by morning I noticed 1/2 hatched. Second night I waited up until 3am, but that time only 4 had hatched. I caught them, turned on the flow, by morning the rest were gone. So I only had 4 babies. 2 didn't make it past day 10, the other 2 are still alive and kicking. Here are my first 2 survivors, 76 days post hatch. They started out in a 29G tank but ended up in a 10G tank below because I needed room for the next batch. The first 2 I am keeping myself, the rest I am giving away.
[video=youtube;G4bJ3GrbYx0]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4bJ3GrbYx0[/video]
Second batch I ended up with about 50 total, 10 died in the first 10 days and 1 died at day 14 right after changing. I now have 39 babies that are 49 days post hatch.
[video=youtube;v52lpcE6XFs]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v52lpcE6XFs[/video]
[video=youtube;J0kuynraA6s]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0kuynraA6s[/video]
This has been enough work for me for a while. I realize I can make a much better breeder system now that I have learned a lot more about the process, so I am not collecting any more fry until I get rid of the ones I have now and can tear down/re-setup the system much better.
One question I have, how long does it usually take until the fish are ready to find new homes? I honestly never looked into that when I started all this, some reason I thought this would be a 3 month process. I was thinking "SW fish.. gotta grow up big fast to survive, right?".. Wrong. LOL. This appears to be a much longer project than I envisioned which I wasn't really planning for.
