Clown laying eggs! Yeah!

[headdr]

Working from home on Friday and noticed my clowns going crazy. Realize they were really laying some eggs down. Thought I'd share the video. They have had a few patches of eggs but nothing like this before.

 

[headdr]

Well the larger video wouldn't load.

 

[headdr]

Does anyone local have a culture of rotifers they would be willing to sell me?

 

[Tomoko Schum]

Congratulations!

I have some rotifers and green water as well.

 

[headdr]

I have a few jugs of green for sustaining my baby brine shrimp. Currently feeding a pair of really small hippo tangs in a 10 gallon QT tank. Digging out a gallon tank and bucket in the chance that I can harvest some frye. When would be a good time to stop by to get some rotifers? I also need to return your clown book. I have copied a few critical pages.

 

[Tomoko Schum]

I am usually at home since I am working from home. When do you think you can stop by? I can bottle up a small batch for you so I can just hand it to you quickly or just leave it at the front door.

 

[headdr]

Saturday is day 8. Should I remove the rock that the eggs are on after lights out or try to scoop them up as they hatch? I could put the whole rock in a 5 gallon bucket to make them easier to catch. Do I need to have rotifers at same salinity and temp in order to feed?

 

[Tomoko Schum]

Can you see the eggs up close? Have they lost all orange color?
Once they lose all the orange color, they will hatch that night or the next night as soon as the light goes out. You need to have a pen light handy. They will come to the light. You can scoop them up easily then. Some people remove the entire rock with eggs into another tank, but they often fails to hatch unless you can direct air bubbles up to the eggs to keep them clean and water circulating around them. Parents do a lot better job keeping them oxygenated and clean. Rotifers water should be close to the tank water in temp and salinity. You can start growing phytoplankton and a little bit of rotifers in the grout tank before transferring babies. Both phytoplankton and rotifers consume oxygen at night. You need to keep them from getting too dense to keep the water from getting too low in oxygen at night. Even though phytoplankton photosynthesizes and oxygenates water, a high number of rotifers can suck up oxygen and kill the babies. It happened once to my brood.

 

[Tomoko Schum]

Page 4 of this thread has pictures of day 8 and day9 eggs: http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1459442&highlight=suddenly+eggs+tomoko&page=4

 

[Tomoko Schum]

I hope you can see the old thread of mine in the above post. I chronicled my journey of breeding clownfish in it. You can find some good info there.

 

[headdr]

They are pretty clear, got few sneaks looking for a snack. Hopefully I can grab a few before they get gobbled up.

 

[Tomoko Schum]

I need to correct my earlier statement on rotifers. Here is what I wrote back when I was breeding clownfish: "I would add enough live phytoplankton so that your tank water looks greenish. The amount of rotifers is somewhat more dependant on how many larvae you capture. If you add too many, your lavae will suffer from hypoxia like one of my early batches did. I did not have any other incident after that one since I added much less rotifers at a time twice or three times a day instead of giving a head start to rotifers by adding them to the larvae tank ahead of time (practically culturing and multiplying them in the tank.)"

 

[Tomoko Schum]

Is the black and white clownfish the parent? If so, he is simply cleaning the eggs. He may eat infertile ones or dead ones to clean up the clutch. Of course there are rogue ones occasionally...

 

[Tomoko Schum]

It's hard to see how clear they are. I could only see the totally clear eggs in my expanded photo taken with my macro lens. In naked eyes, slightly orange eggs looked totally clear.

In any event, they may hatch tonight or tomorrow night. So get ready with a pen light and a cup.

 

[headdr]

Working on a larval trap snagger now that you said pvc pipe in your old thread. I've got almost everything I need already.

 

[headdr]

First functional prototype calling it Mark 3 was difficult to get set up. Mark 4 was abandoned in design stages. Mark 5 is in production and feels promising. I have abandoned the 2 liter soda bottle for a 2" pvc holding section.

 

[headdr]

The Mercer of Montana siev fits nicely into a 2" coupler. Got an air line coming in from the top. The other diy's seem to have flow to push/trap the frye in the holding resevoir. So I have added a port for a pump. All I have is a maxijet 1200 at the moment. I assume this is over kill and will be ordering a much smaller pump, should I try to restrict flow? Don't want to blast the little guys. Also new for mark 5 variant I've added a flash light holder. 1" internal threads seem to hold it snug and keep it out of the water. Added a union at the input of the holding resevoir so I can remove or check for frye without having to remove the whole system. Tonight is the night so going with what we got and hoping for the best. Any thoughts for mark 6?

 

[headdr]

Fit check

 

[headdr]

The maxi blew the siev right off. So no flow tonight. Hopefully the air bubbles will be enough.

 

[Tomoko Schum]

Air bubbles traveling up the pipe is all you need. The babies come so fast on the water carried up by the bubbles. I used to worry if the force may be too much. The flow from the powerhead is so strong that it may injure the babies.