My first attempt raising clownfish

ReeferMadness09 · Dec 11, 2014

stevers said:
Interesting, both my pair and my friends pair stopped laying as well (around 2 months ago). Perhaps a seasonal response?

That is interesting. Im thinking maybe its a seasonal response indirectly. I live in Pennsylvania and now that its colder outside my tank is slightly cooler, ie 78.5-79 degrees depending on the outside weather temp. It would be interesting to know yours and your friends location to see if we could rule this out or not.

djohnson510 · Dec 12, 2014

I love this thread, I just wish I had found it earlier. I had a pair of Ocellaris for 4 yrs that started laying eggs in January this year.

I have to ask if you ever took out the item the eggs were on and put into a fry tank before they hatch? I could never manage to catch the fry, so I did the next best thing and move the tile, plant or rock (whatever they laid on). I had a small tank that I had set up prior. I never did have the success that you did. But I do have 4 little ones from a hatch in March.

Unfortunately my 35GL tank sprung a leak in August the day before I went on vacation. I took all my fish the the aquarium store for the 10 days I was away and they were to watch over them, my breeding pair died while I was gone. So maybe one day a couple of my babies will begin to breed. I've since bought a new tank and am still trying to get it stabilized.

Congratulations on your success!

ReeferMadness09 · Dec 15, 2014

I never had any luck getting my clowns to lay on anything other than rocks that were too big to remove. I remember laying a tile on the spot in the rocks they were using to lay and they were actually working to knock the tile off. There is a catcher that is made to remove the larvae from the tank if you end up in my situation. It makes things quite easy and i would recommend it. I'm sorry to hear that you lost your clowns. Disaster always seems to happen at the worst possible times. Get your new tank up and running and make the baby clowns comfortable. Then you can carry on your original clowns legacy.

stevers · Dec 19, 2014

Yea me and my friend live in Southeast michigan, our clown pairs stopped laying right as fall turned to winter. They both stopped within 2 weeks of eachother they are in different tank systems. I know some of the big name breeders get their clowns to lay year round. But to the hobbyist that isn't always the case. I will bet if I was able to maintain light cycles (if my tank was in the basement, its currently in front of a window) and temperature consistent they would keep laying.

I also started a new job and have been unable to feed as often as I was in the summer thats another factor.

ReeferMadness09 · Dec 31, 2014

Well Ive been unable to get my clowns to start breeding again. I tried bumping up my temp but that seems to have had no effect on the situation. Sadly i just took 2 of my rearing tanks offline as theres no point currently. I have 1 10g tank running with the last of the baby clowns. Ill leave them in the 10g till they get a little bigger then ill be shutting the 10g down and adding them to my growout tank. At that point I'll start looking to sell all my clowns which has to number 200-300. The timing of this works out anyway as I'll be taking down my display and upgrading to a custom 225g in the near future. I'm sure if my clowns hadn't stopped laying now that they would have with the upgrade. I'll continue to update with my selling progress as things happen and also when my new tank is up.

Gotasplinter · Jan 1, 2015

Have been following along for a bit now. cant wait for the new tank build thread

ReeferMadness09 · Jan 3, 2015

Thanks for following Gotasplinter. I'm really looking forward to my new tank build too! Ive had my display up for a few years now and have always planned to go bigger to accommodate my fish as they grew. I actually purchased a used 215g reef ready and was going to set that up but ultimately decided to go custom and get exactly what i wanted. I'm in the process currently of having a metal stand fabricated to go with the new tank. Guess i'll be starting an upgrade thread to cover it.

SNAKEMANVET · Jan 29, 2015

Congrats on the breeding, and raiseing.I might have over looked it, but what size is your grow out tank.My regular occys,they are 10 years old and my snow onyx which are 2 are laying like clock work and I am going to try to raise some of the fry.Thanks

SueAndHerZoo · Jan 29, 2015

Thanks for this thread. My clowns laid their first clutch 2 weeks ago (I have two survivors that are 4 days old) and the brooding pair laid again last night so I hope to be more prepared and have much more success with this batch. Is there any reason why I can't keep the four day olds in the same tank with any new hatches? The 4 day olds will be about 12 days old at that point. I realize I will need to feed both rotifers and BBS if they share a tank but will the older ones pick on the younger ones or is the size difference too small to matter at this point?
Sue

ReeferMadness09 · Jan 29, 2015

SNAKEMANVET said:
Congrats on the breeding, and raiseing.I might have over looked it, but what size is your grow out tank.My regular occys,they are 10 years old and my snow onyx which are 2 are laying like clock work and I am going to try to raise some of the fry.Thanks

No problem, i use a standard 55g tank for grow out.

ReeferMadness09 · Jan 29, 2015

SueAndHerZoo said:
Thanks for this thread. My clowns laid their first clutch 2 weeks ago (I have two survivors that are 4 days old) and the brooding pair laid again last night so I hope to be more prepared and have much more success with this batch. Is there any reason why I can't keep the four day olds in the same tank with any new hatches? The 4 day olds will be about 12 days old at that point. I realize I will need to feed both rotifers and BBS if they share a tank but will the older ones pick on the younger ones or is the size difference too small to matter at this point?
Sue[/QUOTE

It is best to separate the different hatches but you would probably be ok to do it with the 4 this time. The problem isn't so much getting picked on but that the older clowns will out compete the younger clowns for food. As your survival rate increases and you have larger groups of clowns from each hatch it will be more obvious why youll want to seperate.

SueAndHerZoo · Jan 29, 2015

Ahhhhh, very good point and not one I would have thought of. In my attempt to try and keep the 2 original larvae in with the new batch of larvae I could potentially lose quite a few of the new ones. Thank you!
Sue

ReeferMadness09 · Jan 29, 2015

Having the 2 older fry in with the newer hatch should be fine. I dont think just 2 older ones will be able to eat so much it will effect the newer hatch. Now lets say you have 20 babies and add them to a tank with a new hatch, youll probably start losing some of that new hatch.

SueAndHerZoo · Jan 29, 2015

That's good to hear because I really didn't want to have to set up yet another tank just for two hatchlings and I wouldn't have the heart to just flush them or toss them into another tank as food. I know we lose tons of eggs/larvae in this process but to see two that are fighting to survive, I'm routing for them and want to give them every chance. I'm sure if I get to the point of having 200 of them around then I won't get so attached to each one. Lord help me if I do! LOL
Sue

ReeferMadness09 · Jan 30, 2015

You just might you never know! I know that even though i have 200+ as i sell them i find myself asking questions about the tanks theyre going in. After putting in almost a year raising them i do care where they end up.

SueAndHerZoo · Jan 30, 2015

ReeferMadness09 said:
You just might you never know! I know that even though i have 200+ as i sell them i find myself asking questions about the tanks theyre going in. After putting in almost a year raising them i do care where they end up.

Which makes you a 1st class breeder.

Just don't start naming them all or you'll never be able to let them go!
Sue

Reefinny · Jan 31, 2015

Very cool!

SueAndHerZoo · Jan 31, 2015

Another question, if I may.... I'm not sure if others would prefer I start another thread or keep adding onto and keeping this one going.

The second batch of eggs was laid I think Wednesday night, and today (Saturday) there are SO MANY LESS eggs than originally laid. I see Dad (and sometimes even Mom) picking at them but can't tell if they are cleaning or eliminating the duds. In any case, they have culled out a LOT of eggs. Is this an indication that they are still very new at parenting and may be actually eating some of the eggs, or should I assume they are good at parenting and are getting rid of the weak ones? It's not like I can do anything about it anyway, but the whole thing fascinates me so I am curious. And if they are culling out the weak ones, are there so many unviable eggs because I'm not taking good enough care of the parents or simply because they haven't been laying eggs very long.

Thanks for any input.
Sue

ReeferMadness09 · Jan 31, 2015

Feel free to add questions here. I started this thread to document my experiences and in the end have it hopefully be a resource to anyone needing help. Maybe others have this question too. In my opinion both scenarios could be at play. In all my reading newly spawning clowns sometimes need practice and get better at tending the eggs. If this is the issue, once they get a handle on it you may even notice bigger clutches being laid. Diet can also play a roll so feeding a nice varied selection of food and even vitamin soaking could help there. One other issue ive heard of are that some pairs can have fertility issues. This can be an even bigger especially if the clowns have suffered from continuous inbreeding.

SueAndHerZoo · Jan 31, 2015

Thanks for the feedback. I really have no idea how old the parents are or if they were a mated pair before I bought them. I got them from n LFS and the female was HUGE (biggest Oscie I've ever seen) so I grabbed them both. Apparently a customer had turned them in for whatever reason. I had them for about two years in my community tank and one night noticed them acting funny and soon saw them lay eggs. By morning those were gone, but I immediately moved the two clowns into a 14 gallon by themselves, hoping they'd do it again. Another year went by and they FINALLY gave me a cluth two weeks ago, and again a few days ago.

I had no idea that I was supposed to feed them a varied diet several times a day until AFTER I started reading after their first batch of eggs. Before that I had been feeding them very light (once every few days) to try and keep the small tank clean. Now that I am feeding them a varied diet a few times a day, the tank is harder to keep clean but it will be worth it if it helps in the fry-raising process. I do hope they start laying larger clutches (are they referred to clutches?).... I've read there should be several hundred but I doubt they've even given me 100 yet.

In the meantime, I'm getting good at raising rotifers, however, I'm finding it a real pain to have to get rid of a bunch of them every day. If I could just take a few scoopfuls of them and distribute to all my other tanks, and then take some scoopfuls of water from those tanks and put it in the rotifer container, life would be great. (I read somewhere that that IS the way to do it, but now I'm hearing that I shouldn't dump rotifer water into my other tanks). So instead I'm trying to filter the rotifers, release them into tanks, then haul up clean saltwater from the basement to replace the rotifer water. Gotta be a better way, and hopefully I'll find it when I've been doing it longer.

The two fry that hatched 5 days ago are still looking good.... wondering if I should start hatching BBS for them today. I'm going to do a water change in their tank later, CAREFULLY.

Sue