When I bought out another tank and got a pair of mated clowns with it earlier this year, I didn't know what to expect. I briefly tried to sell these before the family got too attached, which took only about two days before they were off the market. These are in my frag tank since I already have a pair in my display and I didn't think much about them until I removed their hideout to clean it and I noticed that they were laying eggs. Their home is a piece of PVC pipe they are hosting due to the green hair algae that is growing all over it. The first batch of eggs I left alone and waited until they disappeared, problem solved. Two days later there was another batch. OK, so I paid a little more attention and started researching some. My son and I watched that batch hatch out last week and that was pretty amazing, baby clown fry everywhere, but I still let them disappear. I didn't have any of the right food or equipment, but it made me feel guilty. So I ordered some stuff this week and here we are. Now these aren't designer clowns just regular Ocellaris clowns, and the goal is seeing if we can get a good number of them (or any to start) to adulthood. Tonight could be hatch night, but I am hoping for tomorrow. Thanks to @bobz for patiently answering my I have no idea what I am doing questions and Kevin at Heisenberg for the nanno. Also, thanks to my wife for allowing me to turn a bedroom into a clown nursery and rotifer farm, it's a good thing she thinks clownfish are cute.
My clowns are spawning, so why not try to raise them?
- Thread starter Cook
- Start date
Hatch night should be tonight. I have a 10 gallon for the fry. I painted three sides black and taped a piece of black film over the front. I have a black bag for the top also to partially cover it and allow different degrees of light within the tank. I’m trying a lamp that is several feet away, if it’s not enough light, I’ll have to find a fixture.
I have rotifers from Reed’s aquaculture.
i don’t have enough nanno to tint the tank very much yet, we will see what happens tonight.
I have rotifers from Reed’s aquaculture.
i don’t have enough nanno to tint the tank very much yet, we will see what happens tonight.
We made it to day 7 with probably a dozen fry from approximately 150. It's hard to tell at the moment how many there really are. We have learned a ton and we at least can self sustain on rotifers and nanno. As luck would have it my clowns have decided 3 spawnings back to back are enough for now, so we will see where this goes from here. I need to move their tank into my office today or tomorrow and perform a water change, so fingers crossed. I will be dripping 10 to 20 percent new water in from the parent's tank.
I lost the lone baby clown when I moved tanks at 21 days to prepare for another hatch and then the clowns ate the eggs. These eggs were a surprise because the clowns laid them in a different place. I'm not sure what happened with the baby clown, I moved the sponge filter, transferred the tank water, and moved him in a cup. The tank temp went up about 3 degrees overnight, because I used a different heater, so wondering if that was the problem.
Thanks to @kbuck - Heisenberg, for bailing me out this week, I ran out of rotifer food. If you need nanno or copepods, please reach out to him, great guy. Hatch night should be this coming Wednesday night. I'll be setting the fry tank up Monday. This time, I'll have everything needed. I'm hatching them out in the frag tank and collecting in a Vossen laval trap. I have one interesting wrinkle, the extra black clown I have has been making some moves on the female. We will see if that means anything after meta.
So, hatch night was Wednesday. I had trouble getting the larval trap adjusted properly and I am not sure how many I actually caught in the process. I'll know better once I can remove the blackout materials Saturday or Sunday. One of my rotifer cultures crashed, good thing I had two going.
Down to about a dozen or so fry, I didn't capture nearly as many with the trap as when I siphoned them out of the tank the previous time. I waited two days to do a water change using only the parent water and using a little Prime each day to keep the ammonia down. Next time, I'm going to drip in a gallon a day of parent water and change 20%, again via drip, on day three to see if that helps.
I have a few more fry (~15) that are now 12 days old and they have transitioned to TDO B1 fed two- three times a day. We had a pretty successful hatch Saturday night with better trap positioning and I removed the suction cups that came with the trap and used magnets to remove the gap between the trap and the aquarium glass. I siphoned a few stragglers into a 25 micron sieve that were strong enough to escape. I can see why people place the eggs in a fry tank prior to hatching, but I like watching the parents interact with the eggs.
Pretty cool Brian! I don't know if I could pull that off with everything I have going on.
30 day mark. They have all survived a gradual salinity increase that I have been slowly lowering over the last three days to more normal levels. I had more fry survive Meta than I thought also. I lost 11 due to the storm and have 19 happy babies.
Tremendous dedication! thank you for sharing.
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