Clownfish Breeding questions?

[Frostbite]

Hello R2R members,
I just stumbled across this page in my google travels so I am a new member. I have been breeding my Gladiator and Black Ice Clownfish for the last 6 months and have had some great success as well as a lot of failures. I am still working on trying to have better success with the first couple of days from hatch night to meta stage. My biggest issue seems to be how much tint the Fry actually need in the water verses the amount of light on hatch night. I had one extremely successful clutch with about 125 survivors and then it is twenty here 12 there. I cannot seem to replicate my success. I can say that I spoke to a local Marine Biologist that breeds clownfish with his students and he said that I need to count 10 rotifers per ML and that they need to have about 3,800 rotifers per gallon. Which sounds great but I have tried viewing through the microscope and finding my count is higher and have been trying to find that equilibrium of how do I restart a batch of rotifers and time the growth rate so that I do not have a ton but have a safe batch to calculate how many liters to drive without having to be so technical. Does anyone have a successful rhythm that they use? Here is where I stand as of today, my Gladiator laid eggs last night and they will hatch next Friday so I should drop my rotifers down to a certain percentage so that they are ready to harvest and feed the Fry on hatch night. Here is a picture of one of my Frostbites, the parents and the grow out system I built. Any advice is greatly appreciated. Also if anyone has any good suggestions on what to pair with my Frostbites please let me know your thoughts? Sincerely, Neil

 

[ichthyogeek]

Hi Neil! IDK about the whole "must have X rotifers/mL in the culture" thing. It might be useful if you're a professor who needs to control things for their students, but what really matters is the number of rotifers you're adding. Just keep it stable.

It seems like something was lost in head translation. You don't need to keep your cultures at 10 rotifers/mL (which is absurdly low for a rotifer culture). You do, however, want to keep the rotifer population in the fish rearing tub at 10 rotifers/mL. The 3800 rotifers/gallon estimate probably correlates to this. 3.8L = 1 gallon = 3800 mL; I think some math got lost in translation, so sticking with the 10 rotifers/mL, that's 38,000 rotifers/gallon.

Keep in mind, that your rotifer culture is going to have much higher densities, with 500 rotifers/mL being on the low end of culture densities. That being said, if you want to get to the 38000 rotifers/gallon thing, that means you'll be adding:
38000 rotifers x 1mL/500 rotifers = 190 mL of the rotifer culture per gallon. 10 gallons is 1900 mL (or about 2L).

 

[ichthyogeek]

Tint in the water vs lights at hatch night:

So the lighting on hatch night probably refers to the fry hatching at night, but still being attracted to light sources. Just keep doing what you've been doing, since you're already having success with the fry hatching out.

Tinting the water: This refers to adding in phytoplankton (Nannochloropsis, Isochrysis, Tetraselmis, etc) to the water to keep the fry in the larval rearing tank from going crazy due to too bright lights, as well as to increase nutritional value of added foods like rotifers, and process ammonia within the larval rearing tank if you add live phytoplankton. Also known as the greenwater method. You basically just add phytoplankton (either dead or live) into the water column to tint the water for the larval rearing tank. You don't tint the water in the broodstock tank.

 

[ichthyogeek]

It may also be useful to start keeping a breeding journal, so you can pinpoint how you get successes. As an example, let's say you have two batches A and B. Batch A was a really good batch, and B a not so good batch. After looking at your journal, you might see that "oh! I actually added double the amount of rotifers as batch B" which might explain why you had a really good batch in A and not so good of a batch in B. Stuff like that.

 

[ThRoewer]

I usually eyeball it and increase/reduce if needed. Same with tint.
In the past I got up to 600 juveniles out of one ocellaris or percula hatch with brine shrimp and frozen foods alone and no need for tint. These days I don't even get viable eggs from my percula... I would say it's either food or water if it wasn't for my bicinctus who produce one monster nest after the other, one every 12 days...

 

[Frostbite]

It may also be useful to start keeping a breeding journal, so you can pinpoint how you get successes. As an example, let's say you have two batches A and B. Batch A was a really good batch, and B a not so good batch. After looking at your journal, you might see that "oh! I actually added double the amount of rotifers as batch B" which might explain why you had a really good batch in A and not so good of a batch in B. Stuff like that.

Great idea on the Journal! I have been tinting a ten gallon tank that is blacked out under the broad tank with Reeds Mariculture Roti Green. Listening to what you are saying made me remember that in the past I would tint the water a couple hours before the hatch which I switched to adding the Roti Green after. Do you add this and the rotifers before they hatch or after? Thank you for your time and help

 

[ThRoewer]

Rectangular tanks may also no be ideal. When I tried to breed my bicinctus in standard 10 & 20 gallon tanks I got around 50 juveniles per hatch. After switching to round tubs the numbers are more in the hundreds. I documented a lot of that in this thread: https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/amphiprion-bicinctus-nest-23.716031/

 

[Frostbite]

Hi Neil! IDK about the whole "must have X rotifers/mL in the culture" thing. It might be useful if you're a professor who needs to control things for their students, but what really matters is the number of rotifers you're adding. Just keep it stable.

It seems like something was lost in head translation. You don't need to keep your cultures at 10 rotifers/mL (which is absurdly low for a rotifer culture). You do, however, want to keep the rotifer population in the fish rearing tub at 10 rotifers/mL. The 3800 rotifers/gallon estimate probably correlates to this. 3.8L = 1 gallon = 3800 mL; I think some math got lost in translation, so sticking with the 10 rotifers/mL, that's 38,000 rotifers/gallon.

Keep in mind, that your rotifer culture is going to have much higher densities, with 500 rotifers/mL being on the low end of culture densities. That being said, if you want to get to the 38000 rotifers/gallon thing, that means you'll be adding:
38000 rotifers x 1mL/500 rotifers = 190 mL of the rotifer culture per gallon. 10 gallons is 1900 mL (or about 2L).

Thank you! I really appreciate your time and feedback. So are saying that I should be good with adding 2liters in a sieve into the 10 gallon hatch tank the night they hatch assuming that if I do not control the culture to10roti per ml? Also should I tint the tank with Roti Green before I put the Fry in the hatch tank? I think I reversed the tinting to after there in the tank which may be my issue other than under feeding some prior hatches. I was ony putting in a cup of rotifers water and then a cup the next morning or afternoon. Typically what is your rotifer feeding schedule and dosage days 1-14? Sincerely, Neil

 

[Frostbite]

I usually eyeball it and increase/reduce if needed. Same with tint.
In the past I got up to 600 juveniles out of one ocellaris or percula hatch with brine shrimp and frozen foods alone and no need for tint. These days I don't even get viable eggs from my percula... I would say it's either food or water if it wasn't for my bicinctus who produce one monster nest after the other, one every 12 days...

Wow 600 that is unbelievable. Good to know on the tint. I think I am over doing it with the tint and that could be why I have lost a batch hatch night here and there. Thank you for your message. Best of luck with yours.

 

[Dark_Knightt]

Hello R2R members,
I just stumbled across this page in my google travels so I am a new member. I have been breeding my Gladiator and Black Ice Clownfish for the last 6 months and have had some great success as well as a lot of failures. I am still working on trying to have better success with the first couple of days from hatch night to meta stage. My biggest issue seems to be how much tint the Fry actually need in the water verses the amount of light on hatch night. I had one extremely successful clutch with about 125 survivors and then it is twenty here 12 there. I cannot seem to replicate my success. I can say that I spoke to a local Marine Biologist that breeds clownfish with his students and he said that I need to count 10 rotifers per ML and that they need to have about 3,800 rotifers per gallon. Which sounds great but I have tried viewing through the microscope and finding my count is higher and have been trying to find that equilibrium of how do I restart a batch of rotifers and time the growth rate so that I do not have a ton but have a safe batch to calculate how many liters to drive without having to be so technical. Does anyone have a successful rhythm that they use? Here is where I stand as of today, my Gladiator laid eggs last night and they will hatch next Friday so I should drop my rotifers down to a certain percentage so that they are ready to harvest and feed the Fry on hatch night. Here is a picture of one of my Frostbites, the parents and the grow out system I built. Any advice is greatly appreciated. Also if anyone has any good suggestions on what to pair with my Frostbites please let me know your thoughts? Sincerely, Neil

Hey Im interested in breeding my clowns. Just basic ocellaris. They arent fully mature yet but Id like to know how you breed them, as well as what you do with the fry, and then what you do when those fry mature. Do you sell them? Or do you have lots of clownfish harem tanks?? Everything looks awesome tho dude keep it up. (Also I'd love to see a build thread of your tanks)

 

[ThRoewer]

Wow 600 that is unbelievable. Good to know on the tint. I think I am over doing it with the tint and that could be why I have lost a batch hatch night here and there. Thank you for your message. Best of luck with yours.

600 was just with the ocellaris I had back in Germany. Of the clarkii I had back then as well I got once 1200 in one batch. Back then I used octagonal tanks with strained overflows that were connected to the broadstock system. I didn't use any tint and primarily fed Artemia nauplii.
Of note should also be that I kept the salinity at around 1.018, significantly lower than normal. I could do that because there were no corals or anemones in the system. Lower salinity leads to eggs and larvae being slightly larger than at normal salinity.

 

[Frostbite]

Hey Im interested in breeding my clowns. Just basic ocellaris. They arent fully mature yet but Id like to know how you breed them, as well as what you do with the fry, and then what you do when those fry mature. Do you sell them? Or do you have lots of clownfish harem tanks?? Everything looks awesome tho dude keep it up. (Also I'd love to see a build thread of your tanks)

Hey Thank you. I appreciate the support. I just started learning about breeding in March this year when my pair started laying eggs. It took me a few times to successfully keep a clutch and then I decided to build a grow out system with 12 ten gallon tanks and a 40B gallon sump this way I can house them up to 6 months since they lay eggs twice a month and you can sell them around 5-6 months. I will have to figure out how to set up a build thread and put some information on there. As for getting your clowns to breed I am not an expert on that yet. They just chose to do it at a time that I was able to put the work in and figure out how to do it and come up with a plan. I can tell you that it is definitely an investment of time and money but is very fulfilling at times and very frustrating at times. You just have to remember not to beat yourself up when things do not work out. You may want to make sure you feed them on a schedule three times a day consistently and make sure your water is at good parameters. You may want to put an auto feeder on the tank for some flake food or pellets just to make it the same time every day. Then let nature take its course.

 

[Frostbite]

600 was just with the ocellaris I had back in Germany. Of the clarkii I had back then as well I got once 1200 in one batch. Back then I used octagonal tanks with strained overflows that were connected to the broadstock system. I didn't use any tint and primarily fed Artemia nauplii.
Of note should also be that I kept the salinity at around 1.018, significantly lower than normal. I could do that because there were no corals or anemones in the system. Lower salinity leads to eggs and larvae being slightly larger than at normal salinity.

Very cool!

 

[Dark_Knightt]

Hey Thank you. I appreciate the support. I just started learning about breeding in March this year when my pair started laying eggs. It took me a few times to successfully keep a clutch and then I decided to build a grow out system with 12 ten gallon tanks and a 40B gallon sump this way I can house them up to 6 months since they lay eggs twice a month and you can sell them around 5-6 months. I will have to figure out how to set up a build thread and put some information on there. As for getting your clowns to breed I am not an expert on that yet. They just chose to do it at a time that I was able to put the work in and figure out how to do it and come up with a plan. I can tell you that it is definitely an investment of time and money but is very fulfilling at times and very frustrating at times. You just have to remember not to beat yourself up when things do not work out. You may want to make sure you feed them on a schedule three times a day consistently and make sure your water is at good parameters. You may want to put an auto feeder on the tank for some flake food or pellets just to make it the same time every day. Then let nature take its course.

Sounds awesome! Also, would you happen to know any breeding guides or charts to breeding the different designer clowns? Because ive heard that you can create naked ocellaris or misbar by breeding together two regular ocellaris. True?

 

[Wolf89]

Of note should also be that I kept the salinity at around 1.018, significantly lower than normal. I could do that because there were no corals or anemones in the system. Lower salinity leads to eggs and larvae being slightly larger than at normal salinity.

Is this true for all species?

 

[ichthyogeek]

Thank you! I really appreciate your time and feedback. So are saying that I should be good with adding 2liters in a sieve into the 10 gallon hatch tank the night they hatch assuming that if I do not control the culture to10roti per ml? Also should I tint the tank with Roti Green before I put the Fry in the hatch tank? I think I reversed the tinting to after there in the tank which may be my issue other than under feeding some prior hatches. I was ony putting in a cup of rotifers water and then a cup the next morning or afternoon. Typically what is your rotifer feeding schedule and dosage days 1-14? Sincerely, Neil

Here is what I am saying: measure out your rotifers. I am not saying that you can’t get away with adding in 2L of rotifer culture. But at this point, feeding rotifers to clownfish larvae is mostly science and some art. Not some art and mostly science. You want reproducible results, which in this case is 125+ clowns post meta. To get that, you have to do the math and science behind it, since you don’t know how you did it in the first place. Get a methodology, then you can go wild with the “a pinch of this an approximation of that.”

The 10 rotifers/mL constant you’re throwing around is how many rotifers/mL you want in your fry larval tank. Not the number of rotifers you want in your rotifer cultures. You need to do math, thankfully it’s algebra and not multivariable calculus. The amount of rotifer culture you add to the larval rearing tank is dependent on how dense you have your rotifer densities in your cultures. If you have rotifers at 500 rotifers/mL, then you want to add 1.9L approximately to the rearing tank at first. If you have them at 1000 rotifers/mL, you need to do the math and adjust accordingly.

You also need to top up the rotifer amount in the larval rearing tank. If you have 5 rotifers/mL in the rearing tank, and you want 10 rotifers/mL, you’ll need to do some math to get to where you want to go. Top up at least once a day, but ideally whenever you have the time.

Sounds awesome! Also, would you happen to know any breeding guides or charts to breeding the different designer clowns? Because ive heard that you can create naked ocellaris or misbar by breeding together two regular ocellaris. True?

It might be best for you to start your own thread instead of hijacking somebody else’s at this point . You can get a lot more personalized attention this way.

 

[Frostbite]

Sounds awesome! Also, would you happen to know any breeding guides or charts to breeding the different designer clowns? Because ive heard that you can create naked ocellaris or misbar by breeding together two regular ocellaris. True?

I do not know of a chart, if you find one please let me know. About 12.5% of my Fry are misbar's. I cross bred a Gladiator Clownfish with a Black Ice Snowflake Clownfish so you get a mix of 50% Frostbites 12.5% black ice ,12.5% Davinci ,12.5%your typical three stipe Nemo's and 12.5% mis bar (where the stripes are not consistent or in unison)
So I would definitely do your research on what two to pair together to get what you are looking for.
Here is a picture of my misbar's

 

[Frostbite]

Here is what I am saying: measure out your rotifers. I am not saying that you can’t get away with adding in 2L of rotifer culture. But at this point, feeding rotifers to clownfish larvae is mostly science and some art. Not some art and mostly science. You want reproducible results, which in this case is 125+ clowns post meta. To get that, you have to do the math and science behind it, since you don’t know how you did it in the first place. Get a methodology, then you can go wild with the “a pinch of this an approximation of that.”

The 10 rotifers/mL constant you’re throwing around is how many rotifers/mL you want in your fry larval tank. Not the number of rotifers you want in your rotifer cultures. You need to do math, thankfully it’s algebra and not multivariable calculus. The amount of rotifer culture you add to the larval rearing tank is dependent on how dense you have your rotifer densities in your cultures. If you have rotifers at 500 rotifers/mL, then you want to add 1.9L approximately to the rearing tank at first. If you have them at 1000 rotifers/mL, you need to do the math and adjust accordingly.

You also need to top up the rotifer amount in the larval rearing tank. If you have 5 rotifers/mL in the rearing tank, and you want 10 rotifers/mL, you’ll need to do some math to get to where you want to go. Top up at least once a day, but ideally whenever you have the time.



It might be best for you to start your own thread instead of hijacking somebody else’s at this point . You can get a lot more personalized attention this way.

Thank you this makes a lot of sense. Also thank you for the heads up on the hijacking. It is my first time on this forum and I thought this was a group for breeding. It's a learning curve but so far I am loving what I am seeing from this website.
Cheers

 

[ThRoewer]

Is this true for all species?

I would think at least for all benthic spawners.
Here a research paper on this topic:
Reef fish Breeding and Hatchery Production Using Brackishwater, A Sustainable Technology with Special Reference to Clark's Clownfish, Amphiprion Clarkii
Note: "PSU" equals "ppt", normal ocean salinity is 35.5 PSU. The study used 26 PSU which is about 1.020 at 25°C

 

[ichthyogeek]

Oh also, some good books for you to purchase:
Plankton Culture Manual (for rotifer, phyto, and copepod production)
Wittenrich's Breeder's Guide (gives a pretty comprehensive rundown of fish breeding and stuff)
Wilkerson's Clownfish (I think it was the clownfish book and still might be)