Clownfish Eggs

Ok ladies and gentlemen last night my Bangai cardinal had eggs in his mouth this morning no eggs so that was only for one day and i was all excited, So then afternoon feeding frozen food not really paying attention and hen i look at my male clown rubbing his belly on the rock and then the female repeating needles to say i'm all excited but have no set up for fry. What's the minimal equipment to be successful?

A cot, bottle warmer and good supply o nappies.


John

jwm wrote:

A cot, bottle warmer and good supply o nappies.


John

Grand I'll get them off me sister.

I'll upload a video if youtube ever gets done.

Congrats on the spawn ,you don't. Need to much gear for this but a fair amount of time .i will post a more indept reply later from my experiences attempting to raise clownfish fry
John

as i said congrats on the spawn its now up to yourself to decide if you want to try raise the fry which can be alot of work but very rewarding if you can manage[ive only ever managed to get 2 fry throught metamorphis so maybe im not the best person to write this but learning from my mistakes might help you. i tried this with occelleras but its generally the same for all clowns.
first of all your clowns have laid in a reef aquarium which can be difficult becauase on the 6th or 7th day you need to either remove the eegs to a rairing tank ,set up a fry catcher,oryou can try to catch them with a spoon on the night they hatch.
if you can remove the eegs on the rock they were laid personally i think this is the best option ,the rairing tank needs to be at least 20l .you need to cover the sides with either a black bag or black paper to block out light , put polystyrene under neath and some eggcrate on top,you also need a small heather which you need to cover the light on this with electrical tape [clown fish larvae are attracted to light but will burn themselves of the heather]an airstone set just enough for surface movement you dont want the larvae been blown everywhere.Also set the airstone beside the heather to help distribute the heat around the tank.put some eggcrate on top of the tank to hold your light.now lighting is what i found the most difficult thing to work out.the larvae require about 12 hrs of light every day for which time they need to be constantly eating.if the light is to strong you will find the larvae will stay at the bottom of the tank which is no good,the need to be in the top half of the tank so adjust your light up an down to suit.be very careful if yourusing incandesent lights because these can be too bright and also heat the water a small flourescent is best.

FEEDING
feeding clownfish larvae can be challenging to say the least,for the first 3 or 4 days of there life they must be able to see and catch a rotifer without having to move one and a half times its own body lenght and as a larvae is only about 2mm long this adds up to alot of rotifers.if they dont get this they expend to much energy trying to get food.so you will most likely have to set up a rotifer culture with greenwater cultures to feed the rotifers so that you have enough rotifers.
add rotifers to the tank four times a day if you can ,this can also lead to water quality issues so i always added some polyfilter to help with this.larvae need rotifers until they methamorphis which generally happens after about day 14 .you can start to also feed babybrine about day 7
water changes should not be done for the first 2 days and then 20%up to day 8 and 10% up to metamorphis .

the best of luck with this project if i can be anymore help please ask
john
ps.i see fronm your video they are gold band maroon clowns ,theyndont develop the gold band till about 12mnths old

Well i don't believe i will be successful this time as there is a lot less eggs this morning, But now that i know they are spawning i can try and get a good set up for them as i believe they spawn quite regularly.

Thanks for the info john, i suppose it just takes practice to raise the fry as most people who do it are full time breeders.

the parents could possibly have eaten some orelse a clean up crew, the clowns may need a bit of practice too.if these eggs dont survive it might be wortwhile adding a small flowerpot and hopefully they spawn in this next time.
if you decide to move parents to a tank pf there own it can take up to 6 months for them to spawn again.
john

Very weldone mate wish you the best when you go to raise the fry

John great advice have this bookmarked for when HOPEFULLY my pair spawn

Sean

BlueRam wrote:

Very weldone mate wish you the best when you go to raise the fry

John great advice have this bookmarked for when HOPEFULLY my pair spawn

Sean

Thank's you never know they might already be at it i was lucky to catch them,
Otherwise i probably wouldn't have noticed.

I'm down to about 5 -10 eggs and i don't believe this to be the first spawning so i'll have to put in something removable
and get proper set up.

What about macro algae in the fry tank as filtration and supply of food.

The cultivating rotifers seems like the hardest part of the set-up

clownfish larvae imo need to hunt their food so it needs to be very mobile,rotifer cultures can be a real pain well they wee for me anyhow.you can get an algae paste to feed the rotifers but in my opinion i dont think its as good and can pollute the water easily.if you do manage to get greenwater going you can actually feed your rotifers in your larvae tank so your rotifers are multiplying while being eaten if you know what i mean
john

my pair spawned again last friday for the first time in a while soimgoing to give it another go,after speaking to darren dalton aka platy who read my post he reckons thatb i should do without the light over the tank altogether as the larvae spend to much time near the top of the tank whereas the rotifers swim all over the place.he also said they could do without food being added for the first 2-3 days as they still have their egg sac,s i will be removing the eggs about next thursday , i already have my rotifers on the go and have set up a green water culture.
sure all we can do is try
john
ps sorry for hijacking your tread jambo

were do you get your rotfiters from and your green water cultures from? I've been looking for these and can't seem to find a supplier,can any one help,thanks guys

Whatever you are doing, keep doing it, your Fish seem to be in great Hands.

Kev.

john wrote:

my pair spawned again last friday for the first time in a while soimgoing to give it another go,after speaking to darren dalton aka platy who read my post he reckons thatb i should do without the light over the tank altogether as the larvae spend to much time near the top of the tank whereas the rotifers swim all over the place.he also said they could do without food being added for the first 2-3 days as they still have their egg sac,s i will be removing the eggs about next thursday , i already have my rotifers on the go and have set up a green water culture.
sure all we can do is try
john
ps sorry for hijacking your tread jambo

Congrats hope it goes well and no problem with hi-jacking we could probably start some clownfish sticky,
my ones spawned 2 weeks later again but ate them within the night and i expect them to spawn again in the next couple of day's again and as i'm back in college i think breeding clownfish might go on the back burner and i'll just try and learn as much about breeding as possible.

P.S john keep us up to date on your success with your fish

Just like clockwork every 15 days, i come home from college and there my clowns are with a couple of hundred eggs.
This is really frustrating me can you only get rotifer cultures from ebay i'm sure seahorse have there own do they not sell them as that's probably the biggest thing holding me back.

Lets hope they don't get eaten and at least hatch this time.

have you tried frozen rotifers at all

Give SH a ring and tell them about the fry and see what they say is best to do

Have you got another small tank you can put the pair into?

Sean

I wouldn't move the parents but would move the eggs, i don't have a tank yet but would set one up fairly quick if i had rotifers as that is the biggest stumbling block.