Clownfish fry taking a very long time to go through metamorphosis.....?

[Lukey2018]

Hi all,

I am attempting to raise some black and white Ocellaris clownfish. The fry have been going well, been feeding them rotifers and slowly introducing appropriately sized pellets. They appear to have quite full bellies, they are swimming very well. The thing I am worried about is that they are (as of 15/3/2023) 20 days old and they still don't appear to have gone through metamorphosis. They have definetly been growing bigger, but no colour changes, no stripes, no significant changes yet. Is this normal? I see so many people posting clownfish fry posts and they fry go through metamorphosis after about 9 or 10 days most times. Is it possible my ones may never go through it and just die????

Any helpful information would be very much appreciated!


Thanks all,
LMR

 

[fishguy242]

Hi, what I can tell you from my exp with a breeder ,the black and white 0's take a little longer 10 - 15 days to start seeing markings and color.
oranges and whites approx 10-12 days

 

[jjencek]

Seems little long. How are they swimming? Color is one sign, but swimming is another. Do they swim using their tales like adults?

 

[Lukey2018]

Hi, what I can tell you from my exp with a breeder ,the black and white 0's take a little longer 10 - 15 days to start seeing markings and color.
oranges and whites approx 10-12 days

Thanks for the information, I guess I'll just need to be patient.

 

[Lukey2018]

Seems little long. How are they swimming? Color is one sign, but swimming is another. Do they swim using their tales like adults?

Thanks for the reply, they swim well, and it's very evident they are swimming with their tails too, you can see them moving while swimming. They're also definitely growing. It's just even today 17/3/23, they still look like larvae, still no colour or markings....

Actually another question I'd like to ask, at what point should I stop having the light on 24hrs constant?

 

[AZClown]

My Clarkii’s take 15-21 days to go thru Meta. I have 2 batches now, one is 27 days now and doing great. With that batch they still get a small portion of my LED 24/7, but it’s lighting the younger 17 day old tank tank next to the 27 day old tank. So with my 27 day old tank at night there’s still some light but 2/3’rd of the tank is in a large shadow with very little lighting. They’re doing great in this situation and I see no issues with the lighting I’m using. I’m not sure about say Clarkii’s and whether/not they just take a bit longer to go thru Meta than say other varieties but I suspect so. They get fed well and ate live Rot’s well thru 15 days and then I transitioned them to TDO A at day 3 and TDO B1 at day 8 or so. My first batch was not successful after feeding BBS at day 14, they died the next 1-2 days. I think the BBS ripped them up maybe internally. So I just do Rot’s and TDO powder and they do good on this.