My first hatch - lightning maroons (one day too early)

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andrewkw

andrewkw

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Thank you for this thread. Keep up the good work. I have really enjoyed reading through and will be following. Any chance you might share pictures of your cultures and your grow outs?

Thanks. There really wasn't a plan. The clowns started laying eggs, I started collecting equipment and every 2 weeks or so it grows to include another tank. Pretty much all the random junk most reefers have were used to setup the first few grow out tanks, then I started buying whatever else I needed, more airpumps ect.

My rotifers are in 2 separate 5 gallon buckets. I generally harvest one first thing in the morning and the other before I go to bed. I only have 1 53 micron sleeve so I soak it in fresh water just to eliminate any cross contamination. I generally check the cultures about once a week with a microscope. I will check both the density and again after I harvest to make sure there are no contaminates and overall rotifer health. A lot should have eggs, I want to see phytoplankton inside them, ect.

I contaminated my rotifers near the start. When I originally got bad ones I should have just thrown everything out and started over, but I tried to salvage and this caused a lot of trouble. I also have managed to contaminate my phytoplankton with rotifers at least once. Now I am more careful and use different equipment for both, however it's not the end of the world if the phyto gets contaminated since I have plenty of RG Complete.

I currently culture 2 gallons of phyto per week which provides probably 60-80% of the food requirements for my rotifer cultures. The rest is done with RG Complete.

The rotifers occasionally get transferred to clean buckets. I'd say about once a month. I also occasionally wipe the sides with paper towel and siphon out the crud at the bottom. Eventually it's just time for a complete switch. It is relatively easy to wipe things down and let the crud settle to the bottom but to be safe I do the complete switches. Also the one advantage to feeding live phyto even though RG Complete is a superior food is that it basically forces you to do some water changes. If I'm adding say 300ml of phyto vs 20ml RG Complete, the water will have to be changed sooner or at the very least more water is being added.

Heating the rotifers does improve density. That being said room temp in the low 70s seems fine and I just stole the heater from my rotifer culture for the latest hatch. One real issue is these tiny heaters have almost no reliability. I've already had one quit and I've been forced to use an inkbird on my 2g cube since the heater cooks the tank despite only being 10w. Not pictured are my brine shrimp culture which I just use a 2L bottle and one of those stands. I hatch every other day since brine is not a main part of their diet but they love to eat it. I generally keep feeding them for a couple of days, especially the older ones actually get smaller which is easier for the smallest fry to eat. Maroon clownfish do not grow like other species, despite the fact they are going to end up bigger. Even 30 days + they still get rotifers in addition to B1/B2 and then finally C1 even though my oldest ones hatched August 28th I have not used C2. I am starting to get them to eat LRS crumbs though.

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10 gallon tank - houses about 30 babies. They fight a lot but no fatalities in some time. Marine pure gems are used for filtration as well as a hob filter.

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10 gallon tank only filled with maybe 4 gallons of water. This was a very small hatch only collected about 50 fry and there are probably only a dozen or so post meta babies in here. They're just kinda doing their own thing and I add food everyday a few times a day. If there were more I'd keep a closer eye on things but since there are so few I don't devote too much effort to this tank.

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56 gallon tank - i got this used for a decent price so that's why I'm using it. You can see my frag and nano tank in the reflection. Under the nano tank there is room for 2 more 10 gallon tanks. I don't like using the bottom one, and this was originally designed to hold 2 10 gallon tanks for TTM.

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New 5g tank with yesterdays hatch. You can see the water is heavily tinted with phyto. Most of the babies do seem to be staying in the middle which is a good sign. The stolen rotifer heater keeps the water at 78 and there is an airline in the corner. Since this is only 5 gallons instead of 10 I will fill it up a lot faster then other tanks.

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Rotifer buckets. Not much to see but you asked. I keep them off the ground normally just so they stay a little water. You can kinda see everything settled to the bottom. They are nearing time for a cleanup.

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Phyto station + frag tank that needs to be cleaned out to make room for more fry. Also the 2 gallon cube holding a few babies. It is a bit of a mess but you asked to see it. This is just a makeshift desk that holds all these. Original use was QT / spot to cut coral frags. The phytoplankton gets grow lights about 16hrs a day plus spillage from that black box as well as my frag tank behind it.

Ideally I would plumb all the grow out tanks together but I have not done that. I am getting close to my limit of fish but haven't reached it yet. Probably eventually I will organize, well hopefully but I'll say probably. I believe there are still a few more months until I can start selling fish. I am hopeful that I can sell a few of the nice patterned ones at retail price, but who knows. While ideally I will make back the money I have invested and then some, I really don't know what the demand will be. Especially the regular maroons may be hard to just rehome. While I am looking to make some money that will just be to reinvest in more breeding operations. I look at this as a learning experience and happily spend lots of time taking care of them. Starting with maroons means other clownfish will be easier and eventually I hope to get some cardinals and even mandarins and attempt to raise them as well.

If I had more space and ideally a basement I'd buy a bunch of racks and start over, but since I'm working with just a small room I will have to continue to make adjustments on the fly. When I finally move to a new house having a basement with lots of room for fish breeding is high on the list.

A final point as far as the water is at the start I was very careful dripping both fresh saltwater and top off. I don't think the fry are quite as sensitive as some would have you believe and now that I have so many tanks I generally "slowly pour" instead of slowly drip. The room they are in is really humid, something I need to address this winter but for now the advantage is there isn't that much evaporation and I just eyeball them and occasionally check salinity.
 

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andrewkw

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Long overdue update. While not that much has really changed in the past month or so I have figured out a few things. First adding a new saltwater tank every 11 days is NOT sustainable! At least not when you don't have unlimited space or a reasonable budget. While these random tanks are not exactly costly, by the time you start adding heaters which are so unreliable they should be on inkbirds it adds up more than you think.

The local walmart was selling 5 gallon kits for $20 but after I got 3 the price increased to $50. I've also had a damsel in qt for my main display so that took up 2 and now 1 of my 10 gallon tanks (ttm).

Cheap heaters suck even more than regular heaters! I have had at least two 10w fail on, and 1 overheat a 2 gallon tank. This is why I feel like they all need inkbirds but doing so really brings up the cost. Ideally all tanks should be plumbed together and as soon as they complete meta move them to a main system. My wife has actually been trying to get me to get a big rack and do a freshwater style system which I agree is the way to go but it's so much work. Besides getting the big rack and moving everything out of my fish room and back in, I will have to reinforce the floor if I'm going to stack 10g tanks on a rack. Humidity is becoming more of an issue these days as well with so many things bubbling away.

My rotifer and phyto cultures have been going up and down, still no complete crashes so any time there is a setback it just means it will take a week or so to get back to full production. I think going forward the rotifers will receive more water changes vs waiting until I see a decline in production. If anyone has a set water change schedule for 5g bucket cultures please let me know. I suppose I further complicate the schedule by alternating between RG complete and live phyto.

My oldest babies are now 4 months old! - what that's it 4 months? It seems like I've been raising them forever! I barely remember a time I wasn't checking on them. I do seem to have quite a few that are looking good. I also do seem to have a bunch that do have gill flare particularly my second oldest batch - there are still some nice ones mixed in. I have not done any serious culling and I don't plan on as long as I have space for them. Don't worry I won't be selling them as some kind of variant but given their extremely slow growth rate they could have potential use as feeders in the not too distant future.

The last few clutches haven't gone as well, in part because I just have too many tanks going, in part perhaps due to the parents slowing down. They are no longer on a clockwork schedule and produce a new clutch about every 2 weeks. Someone did tell me it's common for them to slowdown in winter. I had a few hatches that took all night so I tried removing the eggs early. 1 day early in front of an airpump and they still got fungus on them. I think I will stick to the trap. I did at least get some neat macro footage of the eggs. Below is a video of the progress which is actually easier than photos since most of these tanks are pretty dimly lit.

I have all the plumbing to setup the four 2 gallon cubes I recently picked up. I still need to find a stand but I am hopeful of creating some sort of multi pico display where a few select really nice ones can grow out soon.

 

A worm with high fashion and practical utility: Have you ever kept feather dusters in your reef aquarium?

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