Jordxn
Community Member
Author: Jordan
We've all seen information about how to rasise clownfish larvae, but information on how to actually get them brightly coloured ovals in your aquaruim is somewhat scarse.
Read on to learn how experienced clownfish breeders get their pairs spawning in as little as 2 weeks.
So Clownfish's life mission is to be joined at the hip with their dedicated partner, eat, sleep and reproduce. They lay eggs sesonally in the wild but in our protected home aquaruims they lay every 10-14 days.
Every pair is different, some lay every 10 days, some lay every 14 days. It is dependant on them, however what is commonly believed that many pairs don't spawn is untrue, all pairs do unless there is some rare genetical condition that makes the eggs infertile. However, there has been cases where the male clownfish is too loyal to his other pair that he won't tend to the eggs and would much rather chase the female around.
So, how do you do it?
Well, like with most things in fishkeeping, stable and good water quality is the key. There are many different factors that can encourage clownfish to breed such as;
Tempreture
Many clownfish breeders swear that an brief tempreture increase to 28 encourages their pair to breed, similiary my tempretures of my broodstock tanks are always set at 27 degrees. There has been direct evidence between tempreture and the hatching rates of clownfish eggs and the meta stage of larvae.
Diet
This is a big one, a lot of breeders use ReefNutrition and get their clownfish breeding food from them at a steep price. However, there is just the same ease of feeding a mixed diet of Mysis Shrimp & Brine Shrimp aswell as the occasional multifood (pellet/flake).
Personally I use split Enriched Brine Shrimp with Mysis Shrimp + Garlic and pellet. In the morning, I give them a quater of Brine Shrimp, towards the afternoon a small lashing of brineshrimp mixed with pellets and in the evening Mysis Shrimp. The reason being is brine shrimp is very fatty, which is good but not good if only just fed this so to even it out I use Mysis Shrimp which isn't really fatty but full of protien.
Algae
Some people also swear that the use of Algae (brown algae) build up on the glass etc can encourage spawning I also believe this helps as a natrual food source for the clowns and larvae, aswell as tinting the water with Phyto.
