Help with feeding new hatched clownfish fries..

[zeo]

hi ... my clowns lied eggs last night and the culture are really large I wish to rise them but i cant get any Rotifers to feed'em when they hatch .so any suggestion thanx in advance

 

[dbl]

I moved this over to the clownfish area for better response. I'm no expert, but it's my understanding the eggs would need to be moved to their own seperate tank and only eat rotifers. When I did the research on raising them a few years ago, I decided it was a little too much work for me.

 

[davocean]

It's a bit more work than most would guess, and usually the first few spawns are supposed to not be as healthy or desireable so most that breed will let the first few spawns go anyway
It should happen every couple weeks, so I'd read up on what it takes to do it properly, and for now you have free healthy fish food.

Joyce Wilkerson's book on clownfishes is a good read for this.

 

[dbl]

It's a bit more work than most would guess....

That was certainly my case. Wife said she wanted me to raise them when our Snowflakes started laying. I did the research and told her it was too much work. She told me again she wanted them raised. I made her read the research. She then told me...well at least we have some free fish food every couple of weeks.

If you have the time and wherewithal to do, go for it. I do think it would be awesome to get it to work out.

 

[Breadman03]

The quick basics are this:
Food chain:

• fertilizer to feed algae cultures
• Algae to feed rotifers
• rotifers to feed newly hatched eggs

That covers their needs for the first few days, but you'll need a few weeks to get the algae and rotifer cultures going. Next up is larger food. Newly hatched brine shrimp are a popular live feed, though there are commercial feeds available since Wilklerson's book was published.

Lots of cleaning and work involved in the process. I'll be trying my hand with Latz clowns once my young pair matures. My recommendation is to enjoy the free addition to your food web for now while you get started culturing algae. There are commercial starter cultures available, and preventing cross-contamination will be a big part of success. Once you have a few cultures rolling, order in some rotifers and get that culture going. You can use the algae and rotifers in your tank while you wait for another batch of eggs.

 

[MarinaP]

It is much easier to use frozen algae, like nanno from reedmariculture. Time is better spent on enriching rotifers with various algae (iso, pavlova), than taking care of live algae culture.