My Clown Fish Just Laid Eggs Need Some Advice .

[Luke.]

Hey everyone , my clown fish have been paired for over 3 years now and for the first time I got to watch them lay eggs , my question is what do I need ?

I have a 5, 10 and 20 gallon tank kicking around the house ,
a nano power head ,
and I'm pretty sure a hob filter (can be bought if needed)

It's on 3 pound rock I can easily take out , and can buy rotifer when I need .

My questions are

1. How long do I wait before removing the eggs into another tank ?

2. How often do I do water changes ?

3. Water prams should be the same as my reef tank? (Stick to the same salt , water temp , solinity)

4. And when do I start to feed them / how often .

5. The male is your typical "nemo" clown fish and the female is black with white stripes and orange fins and face . What could the babies look like (in your option)


That's all I can think about right now but please leave me some advice and tips ! I like to keep things simple and cheap if possible ! Thanks for reading !

 

[dale]

i heard you need live food for them,, 2 diff kinds with strainers n what not to catch them , last i looked into it you would need plenty of prep time and a ton of info on how to do it, plus the live rotifer,.. i think , then baby brine shrimp, then adult brine shrimp.. if i remember correctly....

 

[dale]

there is really nothing you can do unless you are properly prepared and very dedicated, multiple feedings a day growing the food,,, if they have eggs now, they will again, if you are serious, you will have the time to get what you need going cuz they will breed over and over again

 

[Janice]

ask @kjsmithl he knows all about raising Bengalis

 

[Janice]

very jealous BTW!!

 

[Salty Cracker]

I concur, I have a matched pair that have laid eggs pretty much every 2-3 weeks for the past 8 years. Fry disappears immediately. You either need a dedicated setup of tanks and live food, or you just need to accept that they are fish food themselves. The fry hatch the night after you can see their eyeballs with a flashlight. After they hatch you will see them all over the tank, I suppose you could suck them up with a turkey baster or some such thing if you were intent on keeping them.

 

[Luke.]

Thanks for the advice ! And yes they are all gone this morning , as I expected lol , so what all of you are saying is have the tank set up ready to go , then once I see the eggs just take them out right away

 

[dale]

... and the food, you need live food the minute they hatch

here is a vid of some guy doin it

 

[Janice]

This video turned me off on trying to breed clown fish!!! Way too complicated for me. I am attaching a link to the Wikipedia explanation. Can anyone tell me whether just following the simple Wikipedia process will work?

http://www.wikihow.com/Breed-Clownfish

 

[TORX]

That wiki really doesn't say anything. It is dumbing down the process. Breeding clowns, or any fish, is a huge process and a lot of work. That video definitely speaks a lot of truth. Good luck if you decide to venture down this road.

Sent from my SM-G950W using Tapatalk

 

[Nonuser]

Do it! it cant be that hard

http://www.fellsman.se/akvarium/raising_clownfish.pdf

There is a good guy in KW (on Forum) with phytoplankton cultures going. I think he might have rotifers, but im not sure. He does have Copepods.

 

[Josh]

sustainable sells rotifers i beleive

 

[Jesse Servant]

I've successfully raised a batch of maroon clown fry thru metamorphosis, so here's some answers to your questions based on my personal experience.

You will need to be fully prepared in advance with a fully sustainable rotifer culture, as well as a food source to maintain those rotifers. There's a few phytoplankton strains that work, I used nannochloropsis. Setting up and maintaining these cultures is the first and most important step.

Use a 5g for fry, I only had it half full for the first week to make it easier to maintain rotifer density. Once they start eating artemia and dry foods, you can start increasing the water volume.

1. Don't move the nest site until the afternoon of hatch night, typically around day 8. Once you've seen a few batches go thru the whole development, you'll know the day they will hatch based on their color. They get a very silvery tip, most noticeable on hatch day. I tried catching fry on the night of hatch, and that proved pretty unsuccessful. I found giving them a 4" clay pot to lay on was best because I could easily transport it to the fry tank and aerate the eggs.

2. Water Changes.
Use an ammonia alert badge and change water in the fry tank as necessary to maintain suitable levels. I used parent tank water with the salinty adjusted until after meta, then switched to fsw

3. Water parameters.
I filled the fry tank with parent tank water, and slowly started adjusting salinity down to 1.019 over a couple days as soon as they were moved over. Then used Salinty adjusted parent water until meta, then fsw

4. Food source.
Live, gut loaded rotifers should be available as soon as they hatch. They have about 3 days worth of yolk sac to live off, and they need to have developed their hunting skills by then. Maintaining a consistent rotifer density is important over the first week to 10 days, at which point you can start giving newly hatched brine shrimp daily, and slowly switch them over completely. From here, it's about trying to get them to eat a variety of frozen\dry\live foods to get a
From balance of nutrients.

5. Genetics.
Not too sure about specific genetic traits that are dominant in each of your fish, so I can't answer this one. Doing a bit of reading on this one should give you some idea of what to expect.

It's a lot of work, and it might take you a couple batches before you are successful, but the challenge is worth it if you are truly interested in the breeding and fry development process. It's quite amazing to see them change so quickly in the first weeks, and once they become a small group of juvi's, they're very active and entertaining to watch. There's lots of resources out there for info, I used the book "Clownfishes" by Joyce Wilkerson as my main guide.

Good luck!!



Sent from my LG-H831 using Tapatalk

 

[Luke.]

@Jesse Servant wow that's amazing Info! I think it will take a long time due to not very bright clownfish how like to eat the eggs lol , I've read it can make many times before they understand what they are and even then can still eat as many as they like . That's my biggest issue , in the past I bred/kept alive cultures of pods (which in my option was a pain for me ) not use if Rotifers & brine are easier

 

[Janice]

@Jesse Servant that is a much simpler explanation than the video. Thanks!

 

[Nonuser]

any pics of the frys?

 

[Luke.]

any pics of the frys?

No lol I wasn't ready for em this time around !

 

[Luke.]

Not sure if anyone is following this , but it’s been about 4-5 days since my clown fish laid there 2nd batch of eggs and eggs to hard to take a picture but I can start to see the little eyes , but there’s only 6 eggs left , I don’t really want to try all this work for 6 eggs that might not make it ,

Is there a number of eggs that you think would be worth take out and trying to hatch and raise ?

 

[Josh]

6

 

[Luke.]

6

Lol ... actually ?