It's been a while since I updated this thread. I will try and post a new video this weekend showing footage from a few weeks ago and now lots of growth, lots of great patterns, few deaths but also few new babies lately.
The parents seem to be laying a little less - apparently this is normal for winter. The last batch had a delayed hatch so I caught very little larvae and the rest hatched some time in the middle of the night. All were gone by the time I woke up. Still I do have a few that should be going through meta any time now. They were supposed to lay again Wednesday but still have not. Gives me a chance to catch up on everything.
I still have my 2 from August 28th. They are slowly getting big. I really need to separate them as their fins are tattered from constant fighting. If they get a little bigger maybe I'll put one in my frag tank. Not that these 2 have much value since they don't have the lighting pattern but they should be about 3 months away from sellable size.
I picked up a used 56 gallon tank for grow out. I have yet top finish plumbing it but it's about 2/3rd of the way full with 19 babies in it. Despite the added space they are still fighting. Since I live in a rural area decent used tanks are really hard to find. I was lucky to find this.
I have approximately 30 younger ones in a 10 gallon tank. The fighting mostly stopped when I filled it to the top, but now that they are getting big it will probably resume soon. Adding plastic plants / pvc seems to have little effect. They mostly group together and the 1 or 2 that separate from the harem still fight each other.
I put 8 from another hatch into a 2 gallon cube along with some rbta's. This has been neat to watch. One did die but the other 7 have been doing fine for 3 weeks. They are surprisingly rough on the anemones despite being so small though and one unfortunately got caught in the powerhead, but it survived. I typically do a 50-75% water change every couple of days on this tank. I stopped "babying" this batch as it's just too time consuming dripping the water change water in, doesn't seem to bother the fish so for my other older batches I have gone to quicker pours vs slower drips. I believe the slow drip water change is only important before meta if even.
Important things I have learned include :
As soon as they go through meta fighting begins. I have not found a solution, more space helps to a point but only to a point. Separation seems to be the only true approach. Maroons grow way slower then other clowns. While the older ones will eat C1 now I am still mostly feeding a combination of B1 and B2 as well as both rotifers and baby brine. Yes even after 30 days they are still consuming rotifers. The ones that are 2 months old don't really get rotifers anymore but if I occasionally add a bit they will still eat it.
Speaking of rotifers I am feeding them more live phytoplankton, less RG complete. Seems to work fine. Density seems good, I check them every few days and make sure no contaminate and how they are doing. Lots with eggs. By feeding more live phyto the rotifer cultures end up with slight water changes but basically when the buckets get really gross I wipe them down and siphon out as much of the crud / bacteria as I can. Then when they get grosser I will switch to a different bucket.
Still having lots of run raising these guys and they are keeping me busy when I'd otherwise be bored out of my mind. That being said I am looking forward to the day when some reach a decent size and I can sell some. While not in a huge rush to set this up, I have four 2 gallon 8x8x8 cubes that I plan on setting up as a little grow out display system for 4 real nice ones so they don't end up killing each other. Again I just lucked into some cheap used tanks (they were actually new), but even getting bulkheads for the tanks costs more then the tanks themselves so I am a ways away from setting everything up.
