My first attempt raising clownfish

[ReeferMadness09]

I don't think people talk about the deformities too much. It's a bunch of work to get the fish through meta and then established and growing out. There are plenty of folks who never successfully get to that point. For the ones who have done it successfully several times, I would love to know their experiences with the percentage of deformities they encountered for a baseline.

 

[laughing tang]

Thank you!! OK yes that is about what I had planned, add 1/2 gallon saltwater, slowly dripping it in the first 2 days, siphoning out the dead ones and any bad detritus very delicately, being careful not to stir. Then on day 3 if the bottom is bad, carefully siphon the bottom thoroughly (I practiced today with the fry siphon I got and it worked very nicely), replacing the water that was siphoned out and adding more to top up the volume again 1/2 gallon. Then after day 3 adding 1G a day and continuing cleaning and siphoning; this amount will vary depending on how much I need to siphon and how long it takes me. I will be adding TDO-A starting day 3 (pinches of salt quantity) and slowly increasing daily (adding TDO B1 as well day 7) - decreasing rotifers starting day 5 since there should be enough in there to sustain a culture.

I hear you on the deformities, I did research on that, and also read water quality is paramount. My beau is the testing and monitoring king so hopefully we will succeed but you know how tricky it is. He tried the Hanna ammonia checker today btw after coffee filtering the culture and the ammonia was low but heaven knows if there is any accuracy since there is no calibration point. Still, worth a shot. He was a little concerned about the PH being in the lower range, 7.4 but the probe calibration seems to be off so TBC on that.

So far so good, we disinfected and blacked out the fry tank, set up the light. The sponge filter is getting seasoned in the DT. Plan to add that day 1 without turning it on until day 9. Still more to do but getting there and the plan is forming. I appreciate your input and help as many people do things differently and it leads to confusion for beginners. If I've stated anything here that you know is a mistake, please call it out.

Do you find you have to use Prime when you use RG grow? Maybe when you start tapering rotifers and RG Grow?

I forgot to mention, we use the titanium heaters too, they are awesome. We got a hygger titanium 50w. Are you comfortable using a titanium in the fry tank? I had picked the plastic ones, it just seems they might not get as hot, but it's probably nonsense.

 

[ReeferMadness09]

It seems the saltwater gods are against me this hatch. Between a heater dying and a power outage last night, that was more than my current clutch could handle. Woke up to an almost complete loss. Oh well, it happens. I have another hatch this weekend and will use it as an opportunity to improve my hatch rate- hopefully.

I use rotigrow omega to tint my fry water and use an ammonia detoxifier as well. I'm pretty sure rgcomplete has a detoxifier in it already but I honestly don't know how effective it would be using it solely to combat ammonia for a fry tank on top of rotifers. Might be better to add something like prime to be safe. I would use it daily until you add biological filtration. I use the titanium heaters that come with plastic covers and it's worked out well.

 

[laughing tang]

Oh man, power outages suck. I am so sorry you lost the clutch. That really sucks. I hope the next hatch goes better. I want to see some Bali babies!!

Thanks again for all your input. RG Complete does have a PH buffer and ammonia binders, otherwise I'd just use RG omega. Good to know you do add prime. I wasn't sure if one could "overdose" on binders. I am guessing you can't but what do I know.

I found this article, thought you might find it interesting. Research shows perculas form bars at different speeds depending on the anemones hosted; the anemone increases thyroid hormones. Make me wonder if we should try a fake anemone during meta.
https://scitechdaily.com/metamorphosis-the-fascinating-secrets-of-how-clownfish-earn-their-stripes/

Keep me posted on your progress!

Our clutch is happily being cared for, so far so good. Updated pic from today, day 2 post spawn day; the anemone is creating shade so it's a little hard to photograph. When breeders say hatch day is usually day 8, do they count spawn day as 0 or 1? I'm pretty sure can tell from the eggs - we called it last time, but it would be good to know how to count.

 

[laughing tang]

Hi there, I hope your hatch went well this weekend! We are on Day 10 and I'm mildly freaking out at this point that they are not hatching. I don't see a whole lot of progression on the shimmer; I also worry that by checking the tank about 30-45 min after lights out for larvae we may be disturbing the hatch. My plan for tonight is to leave the tank undisturbed and dark for 2 hours, is that the way to go? I have a photo album of the egg progression here Egg progression. Would so much appreciate your input. I hope we didn't mess it up.

 

[ReeferMadness09]

Unfortunately my hatch didn't go great. I had success in getting just about all the eggs to hatch this time but lost most overnight. The beauty is I get to try again in 9 days with these hours old laid eggs

From what I can see your eggs look good. 10 days isn't too big of a deal. I'd say 8-9 days is probably average hatch time but my Balis used to hatch the 10th day. I've had eggs even go a bit longer to hatch. I'd recommend blacking out the tank as much as possible and let it sit for at least an hour undisturbed. Shining a light can delay the hatch but if you have to peek, use a VERY dim light. I find the light that comes with the vossen trap works well for that. Try not to aim it directly at the eggs. Lighting an indirect area nearby will usually attract some fry so you know it's happening. One hour is usually the norm for me.

 

[Roatan Reef]

Mannnnn..looky here...I have a maited pair of a Snowflake and a Gladiator, they make baby's every 2 weeks or so, we tried catching them, raising them etc..but it's hard ..longest we got fry to live for was 1.5 weeks .. we did the proper set up tank for them,,properly fed them etc, but alas, it was not to be.

Trust me, If we could properly breed them, I'd probably be rich now

 

[laughing tang]

@ReeferMadness09 Ugh what a bummer on the last hatch, but, I am comforted by Wilkerson's words that it is possible and persistence pays off. At least there's a beautiful new clutch and a chance to start again. I've got to get some Bali's from you some day ha. I was looking at a pair of Omans yesterday, and some Latz's. The idea of breeding lesser known varieties is appealing to me, although undoubtedly a much harder adventure. With interest I saw youtube about my countrymen in the Netherlands at De Jong Marinelife - fascinating if you have time to watch.

I appreciate all your input. Well in the afternoon, the eggs posivitely shimmered, and I was sure it would be the night. The beau and I spent a good long hour (try not to laugh) catching baby brine shrimp. I kept telling the beau I don't think that's them but he was convinced they were. I was too tired to think. It didn't dawn on me until I greened the water that they were way too small to see and that they were not clownfish indeed. Either way it was great practice but ultimately quite hilarious. We are exhausted. The lights are not quite on yet in the tank but I did see eggs - although with the anemone hanging over them I can't see the full spawn. Time will tell today where we are at. Spawn day was March 9 so if you count that as 0 we'd be at 10 now (I still have no answer from anyone as to how they count!!).

We did manage last night to cool our jets until 1.5 hr after lights off. We used pen lights and also small red lights which worked well. How long do you let the Vossen run? I got antsy after about 5 min, I don't like all that swirling knowing how fragile they are at that stage. Thanks for being on this journey with me! For fun a pic of the blacked out tank with my beau working away.

 

[jvbear]



Love is in the air. Just caught my clowns in the act. I added tiles in hopes they would lay eggs on them to make my life easier but i must have ticked them off. They decided to pack up and move to an entirely different spot in my tank and lay on the rockwork again. On the plus side its a spot thats very visible, so heres a pic.

what do you feed the fry?

 

[laughing tang]

Well - day 10 (spawn 3/9), still not hatched. Has this happened to anyone? Room and tank is blacked out, every bit of light covered. We waited 1.5 hr before turning the Vossen light on.

 

[ReeferMadness09]


what do you feed the fry?

Live rotifers initially

 

[ReeferMadness09]

Well - day 10 (spawn 3/9), still not hatched. Has this happened to anyone? Room and tank is blacked out, every bit of light covered. We waited 1.5 hr before turning the Vossen light on.

Did they end up hatching?

 

[laughing tang]

Did they end up hatching?

Thanks for checking in! I didn't want to bother you, therefore the silence. Yes they did, a partial hatch on day 11 and the rest on day 12! I was worried after day 10 but some pros told me 10-13 is not unusual. Surprisingly though, there are very very few fry, I'd say maybe 30 or so? I have no idea why the count is so low. So far we are doing very well and have only incurred a few losses. Video from yesterday.

We are on day 3 for the first hatch and day 2 for the second. We are getting the hang of counting rotifers and my beau literally came up with the math of if you have 15 rot/ml there are 5 rots within a 3 ml fry. I really will have to screenshot it, it just cracked me up. He's an engineer. Meanwhile I'm the documenter so I'm furiously writing everything we do down.

We are puzzled by the low count. We do feed Rod's which has shrimp as the first ingredient and I wonder if that effects the eggs. The other thing I wondered is that we have 200 gallon tank and maybe the vossen light is not strong enough to attract them if they go to the back or into the rockwork. We left the light for a good long while after the last batch to see if anymore would come but alas. In the end, because we'd had the tank off for 2.5 hours 7 days in a row, the tank really started to suffer. Next time, because we now know the schedule, it will be better. We did catch a huge amount of bizarre looking zooplankton (I think?), pic attached, any idea what they are? You can see them floating by in the video.

<update: I think they are mysis shrimp having looked at more pictures. that would explain the low egg count possibly, if we're not feeding mysis but it's just in the tank ... oy.>
<2nd update: it may be peppermint shrimp, we do have those ... >

That's our status atm. How are things progressing for you?

 

[ReeferMadness09]

That's interesting to hear. Its definitely harder collecting the fry in a big tank. Some fry just never seem to go directly towards the light and of course there's always predation. Great job for your first attempt!

Not much news on my end. I still have 20 or so fry that survived from my last hatch that I'm taking care of. I had an air pump die on one of my grow out tanks that could've ended badly. Fortunately I noticed it in time. I've never had so many equipment failures and other problems in such a short period. I'm viewing it as an opportunity to build in more redundancy while I wait for the next hatch later this week.

 

[laughing tang]

Oh man, you are having the worst luck! We have learned to have a redundant pump on hand because we've had them fail, and it's just a very hard situation. When we stocked up for this first hatch I ordered duplicates of everything; we hooked up 3 pumps for 3 airstones literally. My husband reminded me of the UPS battery backup he got at Best Buy for his very first tank. They are all lessons learned the hard way, and it always seems that there's another permutation of calamities that you have not thought of. I'm glad you caught it in time.

We are now DPH 4 and 5 with around 30 larvae, no losses since the first night/day that I've seen. We have lots of peppermint shrimp babies that we're also giving a shot, I mean, why not? I've not slept in 5 days and am completely delirious. I get up at 3am and start the routine, siphon, test ammonia, nitrite, nitrate, PH, SG, checking the drip bucket, feeding rotifers and tinting, documenting everything. We are already learning a ton just this go around and I think are developing good habits. Fingers crossed .. we have started tiny sprinkles of TDO and that's of course when I ran out of Hanna ammonia reagent A - bought reagent kit at an LFS, which is a 1.5 hr drive, no small feat with 2 hours sleep, only to get home and find the kit expires next month and the reagent turned the sample dark brown and is defunct. Glad I picked up a simple Salifert ammonia test while I was there .. again .. redundancy.

Yesterday we found that it appears TDO complete throws the Hanna ammonia test, it went over 2.50 (the max), even 10x diluted. Yet the Seachem badge was yellow and nitrite zero. RODI tested fine at 0 so the checker was working. We dosed a ton of Erase CL and waited. 3 hrs later it tested zero and it never showed in nitrate/nitrite readings today. Superweird. I talked to Hanna support and they said it's likely the chemical that gives the fish color in the TDO, but the "scientists" are supposedly getting back to me. It's all fascinating to me.

A knowledgeable breeder told me we likely will get platinums, misbars, standards and picassos. I love watching their behaviors. I worried yesterday that they were in a corner by the walls. I thought OK, too much light but dimming it made no difference. Then I noticed they were fat with silvery bellies and super active, picking at the walls and chasing each other off. I think it was a good hunting spot! They are all heart stopping moments and I hold my breath every time I look into the tank. Fingers crossed! Little video for you from today. Please post a picture of your balis and the fry!!

 

[laughing tang]

Hope you are OK. First headstripe! No losses since the first day .. but holding my breath for the rest of meta. How's your brood doing. Oh our next spawn has arrived, 2 days early. All that feeding!

 

[ReeferMadness09]

That's awesome, congrats! Finally seeing stripes is always a great moment of payoff for all the hard work. Seems like you've got a good handle on rearing.

Wish I had better news on my Balis but my hatch earlier this week didn't go great. Only had about 1/4 of the eggs hatch and then I must've done something that was too stressful for the fry and lost the remaining ones on day 2. I still have a few with stripes but even at 3 weeks old they're still smaller than they should be. They're proving kinda touchy be I'll get it figured out eventually.

 

[laughing tang]

Oh that sucks. It seems what I get from Wilkerson is that every subspecies is a bit different; she does not seem to cover perculas. I've been in touch extensively with Andrew Keskes and he has very kindly guided me along as there are some things that I was doing that were not optimal; I flagged them early enough to correct course. I don't know if it's beginner's luck in my case, dedication to the extreme, or really healthy genetics. Mrs. Clownfish is likely wild caught and has never been bred, and given that she's 20 and survived so much, she has sturdy genes. Mr. Whitey being platinum is likely less genetically diverse but he's held his own. Although we are creating a hybrid, these are fresh genes in the pool.

I lived in the horse world and dog rescue world for a long time, and humans breeding animals does not always have a desirable outcome when we are breeding for color, patterns, and not health and genetic robustness, you know what I mean?

You will figure your Balis and their offspring rhythm out in time.

I do have to say that I test the heck out of the tank. 2 times a day: ammonia (Hanna), ammonia (Salifert), PH, nitrite (Salifert), PH, SP, dKH. Lunch time nitrate (Hanna), ammonia (Hanna or Salifert if lazy), PH, dKH. We use brightwell xport rocks extensively, and use Erase-CL to reduce ammonia, and had to use PH buffer to keep PH and bump dKH. I siphon twice a day. Water changes as indicated per Wilkerson. I do a night check at 3 am to feed and if I'm still tinting, tint. I also test rotifer density like mad the first few days and keep it 15/ml - 20/ml for the first 3 days. I find it really pays to do that because a number of times, for whatever reason, within hours the fry tank would suddenly be at 5/ml or lower, especially in the later days (after day 4) when they eat more. I adjusted the rotifer density constantly, probably every 2-3 hours.

What I learned from Andrew was to start TDO-A after 24 hrs (I started day 5). He also starts feeding BBS day 5, I had not planned on that. At day 6-7 I tried to get the water volume up to 9 gallons fearing ammonia through meta when I would feed more TDO; but with that volume I could not keep up my rotifer count and my culture nearly crashed from overharvesting. We course corrected and sieved that water out back to 7 gallons that day. So I'm doing that differently the next spawn (it's on day 5). I ordered decapsulated BBS from brineshrimpdirect. Also Andrew does not up the volume until after meta. So this time I will start at 5.5, add 1/2 gallon a day until I'm at 7 and then stay there until I'm no longer feeding rotifers (and likely through meta given the timing).

I also found it's tricky to know how much TDO-A/B1 to feed but tracking what's left on the bottom helps. I got a "smidgeon" spoon (I kid you not) that is 1/64 teaspoon. That helps.

This has been my full-time job for 2 weeks, I sleep very little (better now with only 1 check at night, a quick feed). I think experienced breeders like you can look at a tank and see it's off. Since I'm new, I don't have that skillset yet and I have to rely on testing so I can alter course as soon as possible. Either I'm terribly lucky or that has paid off.

Ours also are very small; I wonder if it had to do with them not hatching until day 11/12. We had the one headstripe yesterday and no more today, although I see some tail swaggers and elongated body. Because I had a two day hatch, the second batch seems very small and there are some stragglers that are just teeny tiny. I've not had any losses since the 3 on day one so far which can simply be called a miracle. The current spawn arrived at day 7 instead of day 10 (we have been feeding them more). So I also wonder if they might hatch sooner. The second tank has arrived and I'd better go set it up ... I am keeping my fingers crossed for yours that survived. Any offspring is a good result!

 

[laughing tang]

In case anyone is interested ... the update on day 12/13 is that they are going through meta and so far have not had any losses since the 3 lost over the first night after the 2nd hatch. Got about 10 headstripes with the rest going soon by the looks of it. The little devils are fighting with each other. Now I need to turn my attention to the next spawn and setting up a growout tank....

 

[Sophie"s mom]

Love is in the air. Just caught my clowns in the act. I added tiles in hopes they would lay eggs on them to make my life easier but i must have ticked them off. They decided to pack up and move to an entirely different spot in my tank and lay on the rockwork again. On the plus side its a spot thats very visible, so heres a pic.

Awesome!! Good luck to you! Jealous