Advice on breeding clowns

[Niko219]

i am an incoming junior in highschool and have an independent study period. I can get materials and equipment easily. I have quite a bit of experience in the hobby already. I am going to attempt to breed and raise clownfish soley for “educational” purposes so i dont mind doing the extra steps rather than skipping and using some easy work around like dosing a phytoplankton solution instead of culturing it myself.

(Edit: i have a pair of clowns that are laying consistently, and also have lots of connections so getting the eggs is a lesser worry, i am mainly concerned about raising the baby clown fry and keeping them alive, along with tips on rotifer and phyto culturing.)

I have a list written in my notes and i think its pretty thorough, but i hope somebody with experience in this or just anybody who notices or remembers something obvious that i missed gives me a reply. I left question marks on things im curious about or am not sure if i need or not. At the end of the list i dont know where to go from there.
Thank you!

 

[Jekyl]

Just FYI it takes a mature and stable environment before clowns will even think of mating. It may take years. You may end up with a fight on your hands just getting Maroons to pair in the first place. Also, you'll need a lot bigger than a 10g tank. Even the smaller clowns need at least a 20g.

 

[Niko219]

Just FYI it takes a mature and stable environment before clowns will even think of mating. It may take years. You may end up with a fight on your hands just getting Maroons to pair in the first place. Also, you'll need a lot bigger than a 10g tank. Even the smaller clowns need at least a 20g.

I have a pair of maroons that lay eggs, ill make an edit so people know i already have that part, and ill look into a 20 gallon, thank you

 

[Jekyl]

I have a pair of maroons that lay eggs, ill make an edit so people know i already have that part, and ill look into a 20 gallon, thank you

Sorry... With that extra info you can basically disregard my post.

 

[Niko219]

i am an incoming junior in highschool and have an independent study period. I can get materials and equipment easily. I have quite a bit of experience in the hobby already. I am going to attempt to breed and raise clownfish soley for “educational” purposes so i dont mind doing the extra steps rather than skipping and using some easy work around like dosing a phytoplankton solution instead of culturing it myself.

I have a list written in my notes and i think its pretty thorough, but i hope somebody with experience in this or just anybody who notices or remembers something obvious that i missed gives me a reply. I left question marks on things im curious about or am not sure if i need or not. At the end of the list i dont know where to go from there.
Thank you!

Sorry... With that extra info you can basically disregard my post.

Its okay i appreciate the reply a lot! Im grateful to get replies in the first place.

 

[Formulator]

I highly recommend reading this guide.

Thread 'How I successfully raised baby clownfish'
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/how-i-successfully-raised-baby-clownfish.951456/

If you can afford it, buy the starter kit from reef nutrition/reed mariculture. At minimum get the rotifer filter kit. It makes the rotifer culturing 10x easier and less likely to crash. I recommend using the rotigreen complete for the rotifer culture rather than using phyto you culture. It will be tough to culture enough phyto to keep them fed and the RG complete also contains ammonia binders and essential lipids that will help get the clownfish fry a more nutritious rotifer meal.

As a class project, I think it will be important to eliminate as many points of failure as you can. Culturing both phyto and rotifers means if anything goes wrong with either culture, you have to start everything over. This is another benefit of the store bought RG complete phyto. You can still culture phyto and use it for tinting the clownfish fry tank since you won’t want all the additives from the RG complete in there with the fry.

Pellet food can and should be started much sooner than 2-3 weeks. Usually around day 3-4 you can start to offer it along with the rotifers. You will need several sizes of pellets from Reef Nutrition. They are called TDO Chromaboost and are labeled with letters A-D to denote the pellet size. Here is the feeding schedule and size of pellets.

One more point on feeding - you need to do it multiple times per day once you switch to pellets, so make sure you can accomplish that in a classroom setting or if its at home you will need someone to do it for you while you are at school. An autofeeder is probably a good idea, but I’m not sure if they work with the super tiny pellets. Something for you to research…

Watch out with lighting. Ambient light is enough when the fry are newly hatched. If you shone a light directly on the tank, they will literally get scared to death or swim away from the light so hard they will paste themselves to the bottom of the tank.

Make sure your teacher understands the delicacy of what you are attempting. You may do everything right and still kill all the fry. Some people get lucky on their first attempt, but it is rare. Most of us lose a few clutches before we get it right. So I guess what I’m saying is, make sure you can still get a good grade from the class even if you don’t succeed in raising any fry to adulthood. It is a real possibility. Not saying this to discourage you, and I’m sure you will get some to survive if you have a whole semester. Just be prepared in case of the worst. This is not easy by any means.

Good luck!!

 

[Niko219]

I highly recommend reading this guide.

Thread 'How I successfully raised baby clownfish'
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/how-i-successfully-raised-baby-clownfish.951456/

If you can afford it, buy the starter kit from reef nutrition/reed mariculture. At minimum get the rotifer filter kit. It makes the rotifer culturing 10x easier and less likely to crash. I recommend using the rotigreen complete for the rotifer culture rather than using phyto you culture. It will be tough to culture enough phyto to keep them fed and the RG complete also contains ammonia binders and essential lipids that will help get the clownfish fry a more nutritious rotifer meal.

As a class project, I think it will be important to eliminate as many points of failure as you can. Culturing both phyto and rotifers means if anything goes wrong with either culture, you have to start everything over. This is another benefit of the store bought RG complete phyto. You can still culture phyto and use it for tinting the clownfish fry tank since you won’t want all the additives from the RG complete in there with the fry.

Pellet food can and should be started much sooner than 2-3 weeks. Usually around day 3-4 you can start to offer it along with the rotifers. You will need several sizes of pellets from Reef Nutrition. They are called TDO Chromaboost and are labeled with letters A-D to denote the pellet size. Here is the feeding schedule and size of pellets.

One more point on feeding - you need to do it multiple times per day once you switch to pellets, so make sure you can accomplish that in a classroom setting or if its at home you will need someone to do it for you while you are at school. An autofeeder is probably a good idea, but I’m not sure if they work with the super tiny pellets. Something for you to research…

Watch out with lighting. Ambient light is enough when the fry are newly hatched. If you shone a light directly on the tank, they will literally get scared to death or swim away from the light so hard they will paste themselves to the bottom of the tank.

Make sure your teacher understands the delicacy of what you are attempting. You may do everything right and still kill all the fry. Some people get lucky on their first attempt, but it is rare. Most of us lose a few clutches before we get it right. So I guess what I’m saying is, make sure you can still get a good grade from the class even if you don’t succeed in raising any fry to adulthood. It is a real possibility. Not saying this to discourage you, and I’m sure you will get some to survive if you have a whole semester. Just be prepared in case of the worst. This is not easy by any means.

Good luck!!

Just the kind of reply im looking for! I greatly appreciate the advice. Without doing anything extra with teachers and such, i think i could go into my lab to feed them at 7am, 12pm, and 2pm. Do you think those three times will suffice? Ill have to figure something out for the weekends though.

 

[Formulator]

Just the kind of reply im looking for! I greatly appreciate the advice. Without doing anything extra with teachers and such, i think i could go into my lab to feed them at 7am, 12pm, and 2pm. Do you think those three times will suffice? Ill have to figure something out for the weekends though.

I think you really need to feed them about every 4 hours for the first 2-3 weeks at least. You might want to look into the autofeeder option. Eheim makes a good one you can get on Amazon for $30. You will just need to play around with it to get the right amount of food dispensed with the smaller pellets.

 

[Niko219]

I think you really need to feed them about every 4 hours for the first 2-3 weeks at least. You might want to look into the autofeeder option. Eheim makes a good one you can get on Amazon for $30. You will just need to play around with it to get the right amount of food dispensed with the smaller pellets.

How would i do it when they only eat rotifers? would it be harmful to put extra rotifers when im feeding them? Ill use a sieve so it would only be the rotifers and no excess nutrients or anything. The only problem i could see with that is that the rotifers die soon after they get moved to the clownfish tank and spike the ammonia. But i also feel like the rotifers wouldnt contribute significantly to ammonia for their size

 

[Formulator]

The rotifers shouldn’t die right away as long as you keep the salinity of the culture close to the salinity of the fry tank and have the fry tank tinted green with your phyto. Ideally the rotifers will continue to eat phyto and reproduce to some extent in the fry tank itself.

I wouldn’t put any extra in there though. You would be surprised how much ammonia they do generate and you also don’t want them to starve themselves out and die before the fry gan eat them.