Baby Clown Survival

[uwscotch]

I couldn't wait, I just wanted to share my good news. I plan on putting up a new thread complete with pictures from the day of laying the eggs to the day of happy clownfish waggle. To have a thread with excellent pictures, I will wait until another round of egg laying and hatching. The next clutch should be laid Friday and I hope to update daily with new pictures and pictures from previous rearings. My ocellaris babies are now going thru metamorphasis, a very trying time for the little guys, but they are doing well consuming the brine shrimp. They still receive rotifers. I've attached two teaser pictures with a picture of them at Day 2 and 4.

 

[Beckmola24]

How awesome! They are adorable

 

[Schottman]

WOW they are spectacular to look at That is one day what i would love to with cardinal fish

 

[NaH2O]

Awesome! Looking forward to the thread!

 

[Craig Manoukian]

That is fantastic! Did you move them to a breeder tank with protection from other fish/pumps?

 

[uwscotch]

Thanks for the responses. My eggs hatch 8 days after they have been laid, around 30 minutes after lights out. I collect them by the water transfer method when they hatch, but my technique is poor and I suffer significant losses by damaging them when they are poored. As my wife tells me, a 2 inch drop is like being thrown off Niagara for the little guys. I am working on a good collector based on other peoples designs. They are transferred to a 5 gallon tank containing 2 gallons of water. This becomes my larvae rearing tank.

 

[Craig Manoukian]

Cool, can't wait for additional pics to chronical your success! How do your survival rates compare with those in nature? Just curious and you may be better than you think, eh? No predators in the larvae tank!

 

[uwscotch]

Update Day 20, true clown now.

I thought I would put out a recent picture of one of my babies. I plan on bringing greenwater, rotifers, and decaps. brine shrimp eggs to the swap meet tonight, everything you need to get started with raising babies or to just add to your tank. This one is about as long as the width of a pencil

 

[uwscotch]

Sorry for the low quality pictures. They are Macro photos taken with a zoom at 9.6x approx. 4 inches away from the surface of the water and the fish being about 10 inches total away from the camera. They are quite small and very difficult to photograph. A large memory card comes in handy since I need about 30 pictures just to get one good one. Hope I will be able to share my young with other members in a couple of months.

Pax et Bonum
Peace and all Good

Uwscotch

 

[Craig Manoukian]

That's fantastic!

 

[reiple]

Hi Craig!

Yes it is great. When breeding is now possible with us (ordinary aquarist!) then it is a leap in the hobby!

Good news.

 

[Craig Manoukian]

reiple,

Great to see you here bud! Sent yu a reply PM!

 

[Schottman]

Thanks for the brine eggs they were and will be enjyed by all in the tank!

Dave

 

[NaH2O]

Uwscotch - thanks for sharing the growth with us!

 

[wrassehole]

Congratulations, weve all been at that stage where we see our clownfish spawning and then anticipate the eggs hatching until you find out that none will ever survived. I guess the trick was to havem in a tank by themselves. good job buddy

 

[Angelscrx]

Wow not very often you see folks actually get babies to survive that is sweet. Congratulations.

I will be happy if they just lay eggs!

 

[uwscotch]

Kudos to Joyce Wilkerson

I would be nowhere today without her book. It is fabulous. I feel as though any one can do this if they are willing to sacrifice some space for live food culture. Not only can you use it for the clowns, but I feel as though if they are cultured properly and prepared correctly, are a nice treat for your show tank. If anyone wants to give it a try, I can provide people with rotifers free of charge as well as starter cultures for green water. You can also purchase decapsulated brine shrimp eggs as well as superconcentrated greenwater if you do not want to culture the greenwater. PM for details. That is probably the hardest part. A "Larvae collector" has been a life saver and easily made. I think it would be great to have many people raise different species of clowns. I will hopefully post pics of my setup so people can see how simple it is.

 

[snobanker]

I collect them by the water transfer method when they hatch, but my technique is poor and I suffer significant losses by damaging them when they are poored. As my wife tells me, a 2 inch drop is like being thrown off Niagara for the little guys.

I was wondering if you collect them in a glass container then pour them in the rearing tank? What if you slowly lowered the collection cup after collection into the rearing tank until it was completly submerged on the bottom. Then you could shine a flashlight on the surface to get the little guys to swim out of the cup? Just a thought.

 

[uwscotch]

That's a good idea. The initial collections were very haphazard and misdirected. I've since made a larvae collector that is simple to build and works wonders. Not only do you collect clownfish larvae, you also get numerous tiny shrimp and other curious plankton. The larvae are concentrated and easy to transfer. Initially, I would take a scoop equivalent to about 3 cups at a time and since the clowns congregate in a genally 1 ft square area, I would only get about 5-10 per scoop. Given that the hatch contained hundreds of fish, it did not work well. In addition, i notice that if you wait longer to take a scoop, ie waiting for the hatching to complete before you scoop, the little guys start to wander all over the tank as if they get tired of the light. In the end, the scoop still contains only 5-10 larvae and the total yield is reduced since many have swam into the rocks or hungry corals and anenomes.

uwscotch

 

[aquariumdebacle]

digital microscope

Let me know if you ant some pictures. I have a50x digital microscope. You will need to add the driver to make it work