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

[andrewkw]

Slightly worse quality photo but his tail has really developed over the past 2 days.

Also these ones are 8 days old now

I also finally got

I sent that pic to a former LFS that shipped me the bottle, well not to me but rather to a friends house 1hour away because I can't get overnight shipping here. I never thought I'd be breeding marine fish on a large freshwater island but here we are.

I'm going to have to catch the one baby and relocate him somewhere, perhaps just to a critter keeper as I plan on putting the next larvae in that tank. I'll use the RG Complete for the rotifer cultures but live phyto to tint the larvae tanks / feed existing rotifers in larvae tanks to stretch the bottle a bit. Plus I've already cultured a ton of phyto over the last 2 weeks.

 

[andrewkw]

Tonight will be hatch #4, interestingly enough #3's have not gone through metamorphosis any faster despite having 24/7 light schedule. Although I gave them their first night yesterday.

10 days old. My plan is to scoop the one older baby and put him in a critter keeper inside this fry tank. Then later today I will clean out his tank and put tonight's larvae in there. Once the others go through meta I will either combine them or use a divider for the sole survivor of the earlier clutch. It's going to become a headache in the future but I am excited for the day when I have too many fish and not enough tanks!

 

[KingTideCorals]

Love seeing this! So excited to see the fry start to develop!!

 

[najer]

Love seeing this! So excited to see the fry start to develop!!

This!

 

[andrewkw]

I think yesterdays clutch was bigger then the previous 2 combined. I have speculated the reason why the last clutch was so small was that many of the eggs came off the rock when laid.

As you can see I've scraped much of the paint off the bottom so I can actually see the larvae now

My rotifer bucket seems to be getting dirty, the water has been clearing quickly and the culture has definitely gotten even denser since switching to RG Complete. I am feeding at least 3 times a day including some live phyto and mostly RG Complete. Just trying to ration it since it was quite expensive to get a bottle shipped to me.

Will probably have new pics of the oldest babies soon. The oldest one which was the only survivor from my first attempt is floating in a critter keeper inside the tank with the 2nd attempt. I'm hoping once they go through meta I can combine them all since it will only be about a dozen fish in a 10g.

If this batch goes well I'm going to have a LOT more soon, and in 11 more days I get to do it all again

 

[ichthyogeek]

If the eggs are coming off the rock when laid, that implies a lack of chitin in the diet of the parent fish. You can fix it by adding in more chitin (mysis shrimp, but grocery shrimp with the shells on are superior) to the diet!

 

[andrewkw]

If the eggs are coming off the rock when laid, that implies a lack of chitin in the diet of the parent fish. You can fix it by adding in more chitin (mysis shrimp, but grocery shrimp with the shells on are superior) to the diet!

I think it's just because they are new to laying eggs. IE they never fully attached when being laid. I watched them lay this clutch which was substantially larger but a few still floated away.

Their primary diet is LRS. PE Mysis (both actual mysis and the pelleted version).

 

[Drobbin0608]

Wow! Keep up with the pictures!

 

[andrewkw]

The last week has been really rough. I thought my cat was being stinky because we got a new kitten, however it turned out she had advanced lung cancer. She went from acting completely normal to losing the use of her back legs entirely in less then 2 weeks. Obviously we had to put her down when she could no longer move. Earlier in the year she had major surgery to remove a tumor so there was a chance something else could happen but I really thought she'd live 10 more years. My fish are what I have for fun, but my cats are my family. I lost my other original cat earlier in the year as well.

So with all that going on I made 2 mistakes. I wasn't changing the water frequently enough and I lost my oldest baby. Of course that sucks and it would have been a nice story to have one from my first try but it is what it is. I've since had 6 more make it through metamorphosis. This was a small clutch so the small number is not too discouraging. A few of them look like regular maroons but obviously they still have a lot of developing to do.

Worse I managed to contaminate my rotifers. Obviously a droplet got on me, or I used a baster or something else accidentally and cross contaminated. I was of course advised to bleach everything, but as I already had larvae going I didn't want to wipe them out. That was probably a mistake.

That being said I filtered some rotifers 20 or so times then looked at 10 samples and saw no sign of contamination. I'll give that a week and if it stays clean great. If not then I will order one small bottle of rotifers and start a new culture in a separate room in the house and have all separate equipment and only bring rotifers to the larvae room when feeding and wash out everything after each feeding.

I did manage to catch the parents laying and fertilizing eggs



Here are a couple of pics of the oldest babies

The batch after these are doing well so hopefully a lot more will make it through meta. The egg clutch currently laid is also large, so it seems like from here on out I will be getting more babies. I think I probably need 1 maybe 2 more tanks, but for now the focus will be on getting my rotifer culture reestablished. The larger larvae are big enough to eat some bbs mixed in with rotifers, and the larger ones eat mostly bbs along with b1/b2 and a small amount of rotifers. Despite the fact the culture is contaminated there still are a lot in there so in the short term I should be ok.

 

[Bob Wiley]

The last week has been really rough. I thought my cat was being stinky because we got a new kitten, however it turned out she had advanced lung cancer. She went from acting completely normal to losing the use of her back legs entirely in less then 2 weeks. Obviously we had to put her down when she could no longer move. Earlier in the year she had major surgery to remove a tumor so there was a chance something else could happen but I really thought she'd live 10 more years. My fish are what I have for fun, but my cats are my family. I lost my other original cat earlier in the year as well.

Oh man, I feel ya. I've lost two dogs this year, 11 and 13, six weeks apart—both unexpected. Both were original family members. Both mentally there til the very end. And yeah I thought they'd live for another 10 years as well. Completely destroyed my desire for months in continuing to set up our tank. (If there's a plus side to that, the DT has been cycling since March)

I enjoy following this thread so keep it up! We have 2 Mocha Ocellaris Clowns that we're hoping will give us the option to go down this road one day. They are currently in QT and will be coming out in a couple of weeks.

One question—I don't know if I missed it in here, or if it's common knowledge, but how do you get the eggs off the rock and transferred to the breeder tank?

Be well

 

[BighohoReef]

Making me want to get that mate for my maroon more and more!

How awesome! Such a cool thing to see in a personal aquarium.

Haha I was wondering if you were in this thread... I don’t know why I even questioned it.

@andrewkw how are the fry doing?

 

[californiarob]

your rots were contaminated with? ....Ciliates ie Euplotes sp ?

sorry to hear about both your cat and the oldest juvenile.

 

[susan ingram]

While I won't be able to raise these guys it was still real exciting. My lightning maroons laid their first eggs around July 30th. Of course just before a holiday weekend I have been unable to get rotifers in time. They are scheduled to arrive tomorrow. Hopefully they will arrive on time and I will be able to get my cultures going well in advance of the next batch.

I am really surprised just how big the babies are! I thought they would be way smaller. I did catch a few just to get a better look at them, and to see how hard they are to catch. Will post a couple of video clips tomorrow. It was a real challenge to pair these guys and I'm really looking forward to the challenge of raising babies. I am just a little worried however as about 12 or 13 years ago my naked clownfish laid eggs once and never again, although I'm not even sure those ones hatched or what. I know that is very uncommon and the maroons should be on a schedule from here on out.

CONGRATULATIONS!!!

 

[Poseidon's snail]

following

 

[andrewkw]

One question—I don't know if I missed it in here, or if it's common knowledge, but how do you get the eggs off the rock and transferred to the breeder tank?

I use the vossen trap, it's quite effective.

You can also see it in action here


Sorry about your dogs, my cats were 2 years apart in age as well.

your rots were contaminated with? ....Ciliates ie Euplotes sp ?

sorry to hear about both your cat and the oldest juvenile.

Yes. The first place I got rotifers from was a disaster and a half. Besides those things there were also various copepods ect. However the Euplotes were the real problem as they reproduce way faster than the rotifers and take up all the oxygen and food. That being said I didn't contaminate my second batch of rotifers until I had a large culture so I am still producing enough to feed my current larvae. I have started adding some baby brine as well since they are bigger and this is also giving them a chance to reproduce in time for the next clutch.

If I run out of food for the next clutch I will start a new culture in a completely different room with entirely different equipment. If I didn't have a lot of unexpected expenses I would have just ordered new rotifers this week but since I am in an isolated location I just can't pick them up locally and shipping is both expensive and problematic. Plus this does give me a chance to see if it actually is possible to clean the culture myself.

If anyone has any thoughts on raising rotifers I would say a microscope is absolutely essential and the culture needs to be checked at least every other day if not daily. I wasn't monitoring with the microscope because I could see I was pulling out a large amount daily. With everything going on I just didn't think to keep checking them. If I caught the contaminate earlier it probably would have been easier to deal with, but in a few days their population has exploded.

If I had just got rid of my earlier larvae and bleached out their tanks / airline and every other piece of equipment I wouldn't be in the situation I am in now. Of course I wouldn't have 6 baby clownfish either but it's still to be determined how detrimental this will be going forward.

 

[californiarob]

I had rot crashes this year for the first time ever ( been rearing clowns since the late 80's) and was told it was Euplotes, but i could not see on my microscope (old and crappy), i live close to UC Davis college which is a medical school and bought a very nice high powered microscope from a student now though( i wanted it now and could not wait), I have new cultures going with sterile equipment and so far no problems, the one thing I can tell you is years ago I never had a problem like the most recent crash, at least with rots it was green water crashes that was the issue, I always had brine in my rot cultures from spillage from brine tanks, recently I went back and read my old book "Plankton Culture Manual" circa 1987 it mentions brine will eat the ciliates sp Euplotes, this might be why I never had a problem, i am going to start a thread on this subject.

 

[andrewkw]

My main rotifer culture seems to be producing less, but my backups are producing more. I do still plan on getting a new clean culture to do in another room but hoping to hold out for a few weeks. Just the costs of this product are starting to spiral out a bit and had some other unexpected expenses lately.

That being said clutch #5 hatched yesterday! Hundreds more larvae. I have started a 3rd tank for them. The next day they seem to be doing fine. I am embarrassed to say this but I covered the other tanks with hoodies late last night, and one fell in the middle tank (with the 11 day old fry). I seriously thought they'd all be dead, but other then 3 or 4 that have passed away they seem fine.

Here is a video update showing the latest guys caught in the trap + both other sets.

 

[andrewkw]

I had a relatively big die off in the tank with the 12 day old larvae. Not sure if this is related to my hoodie falling in the tank or just the metamorphosis process. All the ones that died were still in early stages and the ones still going mostly have stripes now / are actually looking like babies.

Clutch #5 seems to be doing well so far, no major die offs there. I am wondering what is a realistic survival % once I really get going?

 

[californiarob]

prolly just metamorph, I usually see the most 2-3 days when yoke wears off and then the first couple of days of metamorph.... I have a hard time calling it META as in my day we called it morph. your doing a great job

 

[andrewkw]

I lost one of the oldest babies but I actually had one more then I thought. (August 28th hatch). Seemed really thin compared to the others so perhaps wasn't getting enough good. They really don't seem to go overly crazy for TDO B1/B2. I feed a tiny scoop a couple of times a day. I also feed a combination of freshly hatched bbs and 1 day old - I just keep hatching new ones every 24+hrs and keeping some from the day before to feed. Maybe they are old enough to try some crushed up / blended LRS? Fertility frenzy is not an option right now, I just have reef frenzy.

My middle batch which had the previous die off seems to have stabilized. Still there are some larvae kicking! The hatched on September 8th. Obviously the majority of the survivors have gone through meta and are looking more and more like baby clownfish. Tough to get a count as this is the tank I foolishly decided to paint black all sides.

Also for some reason the parents haven't laid today yet. Of the 5 previous batches they were all exactly 11 days apart and always laid before 4pm. Granted it's not even 5 yet but the main tank lighting is on and no eggs. Hopefully they will lay either later today or tomorrow. I'm not sure what is weirder that they have always been on an exact schedule or that they no longer are?