Alex's Clownfish Breeding Journal

[Alexcyf]

Hi all! This is my 3rd attempt at harvesting my clown fish fries. Din worked out very well the first couple of times but I've learnt much from my mistakes. Here's a video of my previous fry feeding on baby brine shrimps.


Currently, I still have a 3 month fry still surviving and feeding on pellets.

Hopefully this attempt, I will be able to increase the survival rate! I will be documenting this attempt's journey on Reef2Reef. Firstly, to record down this exciting journey but more important, to seek advice from everyone. Do feel free to give me any suggestions and feedback to help me improve the survival rate!

 

[Alexcyf]

Hatch Night - minus 10 days

As many know, on the day, or sometimes, days before the eggs are laid, the mated clowns will be cleaning up the surface that they intend to lay their eggs on by fanning or cleaning the dust/algae etc off with their mouth. Here's a video of my pair of Picassos doing that. Well, its actually a footage from last year.

By about couple of hours before lights off, the clowns have started laying their eggs. Here's another old footage of the clowns in action.


Previously, I had much issues with the low eggs counts, and possibly malnutrition eggs. The clowns usually ended up laying less than 50 eggs, which would have dwindled down to less than 5 by hatch night. The main reason I guess is probably due to insufficient feeding, or the right food. So I up their diet, and fed more of a locally mixed frozen food by one of the LFS.

I heard from some other reefers that they need prawn/squid meat to increase the 'stickyness' of the eggs, probably also to ensure that the sacs are nutritious enough for the babies.

Thats probably why I guess this attempt, my clowns laid 200 over eggs. Sorry for the poor picture!

 

[Alexcyf]

Preparation Phase - Hatch Night Minus A week

The promising batch of eggs has prompted me, to start my preparation, and I need to ensure that nothing goes wrong this time around.

Usually it takes exactly 10 days for my clowns' eggs to hatch. So yup, I hope I did my preparations work well this time around. The toughest thing about breeding I suppose its what to feed the clowns. Usually that is the first challenge of the fries to survice. To find suitable food! Essentially within a few hours, the fries need to feed on rotifers.

I have tried a few different methods to established my own stable supply of rotifers. I can't be going to LFS to buy rotifers just to feed the fries. So, I have tried cultivated my own plankton.

Well, it din worked well. The plankton crashes too easily. A single bit of contamination, perhaps a stray drop of water with tens of rotifers, will wipe out the entire plankton culture. My home setup is not proficient enough to ensure healthy sustainable supply of plankton.

So I found the best solution, that is Reed Mariculture's Rotigrow. Frozen plankton culture that rotifers can eat! And I don't have to worry about contamination anymore. So, I got my culture of rotifers up easily, buying a small batch of rotifers from my LFS and growing it for a week.

 

[Alexcyf]

Hatch Night - Day 0

And it is the night, once my lights go out. I have about 30 minutes to 1 hour, before the first fry appears. 2 hours odd for all of the eggs to hatch. So its time to set up my fry tank with newly transferred tank water, so that the fries can adapt easily to the parameters. Added a few essential items!

1) A thermometer and a SeaChem Ammonia alert to help me monitor the water parameters easily.
2) To ensure that the tank water don't go over 28 degrees Celsius (Singapore is really hot...) I installed a fan to cool the water down.
3) To ensure optimal light conditions, I have also covered the fry tank with opaque paper, and installed a little LED study lamp. Essentially, just enough light for the clowns to hunt for their food.
4) Yup of course, food! So that the fry can start hunting the moment they are added into the fry tank
5) Lastly, most importantly, an air stone

Next, it is to wait for the moment! I stopped all the return pumps, as the eggs are in my sump/refugium. Armed with a torch and a scoop and 3 hours of my time, I caught about over 80 fries this time round. Not too shabby, considering my next highest count was 13 Worth sleeping at 3.30am for these babies

Here's a video of the harvest

 

[Alexcyf]

Day 1

Important, and of course most tiring thing, is to ensure good water conditions by changing water daily. So, it is gonna be a daily 5 litres water change with my Main Tank water. Including the addition of sufficient rotifers to keep the fry going. Drawing motivation from them feeding happily. You can noticed them in the video swimming and stopping and curling the tails, that is a sign whenever they eat something

 

[Alexcyf]

Day 2

The saddest part of breeding is it is difficult to avoid casualties. On Day 2, according to many online sources, is supposedly a high mortality period. Well, very true, i have 23 fries dead thus far, and I found 10 just within the Hatch night + 45-48 hours

Good news is, this morning when I wake, no more new losses. About 50+ left. Let's hope for the best!

 

[Mattie-KCCO]

Awesome read. Definitely following along.

 

[Alexcyf]

Awesome read. Definitely following along.

Haha thanks for reading! Will try to post pictures and video regularly. In a couple of days, I will be starting to hatch baby brine shrimps. Will share a little more about my DIY hatchery and a workable process of successfully separating e BBS from the eggs

 

[Blue Lip]

Sounds all to familiar. Best of luck!

 

[revhtree]

Following!

 

[Blue Lip]

Haha thanks for reading! Will try to post pictures and video regularly. In a couple of days, I will be starting to hatch baby brine shrimps. Will share a little more about my DIY hatchery and a workable process of successfully separating e BBS from the eggs

Use decapsulated brine shrimp and you skip doing that.

 

[Richie49]

How do you cultivate rotifers?

 

[Blue Lip]

Get rotigrow from reed mariculture. 5 gallon bucket and an air pump.

 

[drewstaxplaya]

updates?

 

[Alexcyf]

updates?

Haha sorry ! Been really busy, some new sps and lps shipments, plus the continual Maintainence of e fry tanks and rotifer culture and hatching and harvesting of fry and bbs. Coupled with the fact that Pokemon Go just launched in Singapore..

Nonetheless, the babies are doing alright, almost able to keep at least a few from each batch past metamorphosis.

Have about more than 10 or so surviving frys ranging from 5months to 2 weeks old. Tomorrow night is another hatch night. Will try to post some pictures soon!

 

[Aqua fire/medic]

This is awesome!

 

[drewstaxplaya]

sweet good to hear theyre doing good

 

[Alexcyf]

Caught some time to shoot some video!

 

[Rjramos]

Check out MBIsite.org. Marine breeding initiative. They have a lot of journals there from hobbyist and professional breeders to get great info from. I have 2 journals on the site. 1 for neon gobies the other for Midas Blennies.

 

[Macropora]

Thanks for sharing!