2nd attempt at raising clownfish fry.

[Reef Nutrition]

I recommend stop using RG Complete. Switch to their product Rotifer Diet. Freeze it and and break off small chunks to use it. Don't let your fry tank turn clear. Keep it tinted green. Rotifers don't store food. If your water turns clear the rotifers have no nutritional value and all the fry die. Rotifer Diet works great at producing rotifers. A salinity of 1.20 works great. If the culture becomes to dense it will crash. Key is to harvest and replace water to keep density down. If you keep your fry tank tinted green with Rotifer Diet and a culture of rotifers in there I believe you will make it to the next step which is hatching brine shrimp. Decapsulated is the way to go. Reef Nutrition / Reed Mariculture sell a product of pellet food called TDO. It starts with TDO A1 and is a very fine powder that you start trying to feed day 2. The sooner the fry learn it is a food source the better. Good luck

Hello there Blue Lip! Are you using Rotifer Diet exclusively for your rotifer culture and then feeding them to your animals without secondary enrichment? If so, what are you feeding the rotifers to and how is your survival and deformity rate? Also, while Rotifer Diet is an excellent feed for culturing rotifers, it does not contain ClorAm-X for ammonia neutralization and a pH buffering component. The idea behind RGcomplete was to come up with a feed and enrichment for rotifers with the added benefit of ammonia neutralization and pH buffering properties so that the hobbyist/breeder doesn't need to focus on pH and ammonia for the rotifer culture. It's also much more dilute and easier to work with than our Rotifer Diet. Rotifer Diet is much more concentrated and more for commercial operations. RGcomplete is geared towards smaller operations, but is not the only choice.

Thanks for using and recommending our feeds; we really appreciated it!

Chad

 

[Blue Lip]

I use rotifers diet for growing rotifers and have not had a crash since I switched. I add it to the fry tanks for green water. I also culture live phytoplankton and add it to the fry tanks. I was once asked if my fish had flared gills. I did not know what that was until I had a batch with a few that had it. It was only one batch though. I do get some that don't have good air bladders and basically sink. I have been breeding latz clownfish and they are incredibly aggressive when they are tiny so no matter how many hatch they usually dwindle down to one or two per 10 gallon tank. The weaker fish get picked off in battle starting right after metamorphosis.

 

[AcroDesCoraux]

Hi Blue lip, I am going to try to raise my clownfish fry as well, I have a Rotifer culture and I was wondering where did you get your live phytoplankton culture?
Thanks

 

[Blue Lip]

If you are going to culture nannochlorpsis then I recommend ebay. There are multiple sellers and you can get a fair amount to start with. Seahorse Source has other varieties. You will also want to get f2 fertilizer.

 

[Sir Chris]

Baby's need live brine. Live is needed. Then ween em 2 frozen and pellets. Lost a Darwin 2 being a harum fish it wouldn't eat and wasn't weened b4 the store received em so they replaced it as they lost 1/2 of em. My fav lfs has breeding tanks and nfs fish and saw maroons with eggs. And the owner loves me so I asked him more and Took me in back and showed me 20 more tanks with stocked with pairs a terra-cotta botbroken 2 give em a lot of options and 1/2 were all at different stages about 5 months ago. And fed live brine 2 the baby's he had in back as he knows I love feedings and said only live they will eat. As I told him I've paired a Darwin with a snowflake now so he's mentoring me

 

[AcroDesCoraux]

If you are going to culture nannochlorpsis then I recommend ebay. There are multiple sellers and you can get a fair amount to start with. Seahorse Source has other varieties. You will also want to get f2 fertilizer.

I heard of seahorse Source but never thought of looking on eBay, thank you very much.