first thing I did was get on YouTube and watch Luis Perez’ video series. He literally films the first 30 days and breaks down the main concepts. It’s not edited for brevity but it’s full of good details.
You definitely hit on the hardest most time consuming part, which is the rotifers. I ordered from reef nutrition and started with the rots, the rotigrow, and used the same layout they recommend for the rot grow system.
Initially I used two five gallon buckets but quickly found out that I burned through a lot of rotigrow and didn’t use nearly the amount of rots I thought I would.
The hard part is keeping the culture going during the clutches. Fry only need rots for the first few days and rots generally multiple sufficiently in the fry tank so not a huge need to continually refil from the rot grow system. This is my setup
Cord management aside, you can see the basic rot bucket and three grow tanks. I also have a larger grow tank on display and to give room as the grow.
I have continued to do daily water changes 1/3 on the rots, the ammonia will build up very quickly so water changes are a must for the rots.
Lighting can be tricky but honestly after a few clutches you start to understand that fry and gonna be fry so don’t overthink the lighting. They will stay near the sides of the glass and they won’t swim like you would expect. Mostly the bunch in the corners and in large groups. I’ve heard this is over lighting but in my experience lighting didn’t change this behavior.
i did black out my fry tank and use overhead lighting to light the room more than the actually tank. Dimmer is better but you should have enough light to work in.
I don’t cycle my lights or turn them off until I move the fry into a main display. If you have extra AI prime lights it’s once less thing to manage if you can put them on the day/moonlight schedule.
you can start with one breeder tank and a rot bucket, but once the next clutch comes you will need a second breeder tank to move them over into, and then you move your new fry into the first tank.
The second fry tank is also just an air stone or sponge filter and will need water changes around every other day. This tank you won’t darken with rotigrow so the water lasts a little longer.
The third tank is long term grow out and should include more aggressive filtration such as sand, live rock, and filter socks. The more the better cause this is where the water changes can slow down and you can relax a bit.
So: Fry tank (0-14) air stones, heater and rots,
Grow out #1 (14-30) air stone/sponge filter, heater, no rots, using TDO or preferred small size pellets.
Grow out#2 (30-beyond) normal reef filtration no power heads.
Display tank and beyond (90 days and beyond) fish store or normal reef tank setup.
