Breed Clownfish | Saltwater Fish

[gmack]

Hi My name Greg and i am trying to raise clarki fry

I have a 220 gal tank mixed reef,running for 2 years. My clowns started to lay eggs and i thought it would be great to raise them. Hahaha.I have had nothing but loses after losses. thus I am looking for awnsers or is there one?
The day before the hatch i set a 5 gal tank with a small amount of green water and load it with rots.
Hatch night I removed fry from main tank with a turkey baster and put in the 5 gal half full of water.I had lots of fry guessing, I would say 90 or 100 or more. The next day 6:30 am fed rots and off to work.
6 pm only 5 or 6 dead. feb rots and do a small water chang 1 1/2 liters of water.
next moring fed rots and of to work. home around 6 pm to find 30 dead or so vac, change 1/2 of the water and fed rots. this is as far as i get next day all 2 dead.There are still lots of rots in the tank.

my tank is blacked out for the first 36 hrs after that i let a small amount of light in , give it more each day. they seem to want to swin through the bottom of the tank.

amonia is ok

sil is 1.24
temp 78

any help Please

[davek0819]

The few things I see that I did different..... the lighting- I lit my tank for about 16 hours starting at day one, some have kept the light on 24/7. The first light I used I stole off my refugium, 28watt 50/50 compact flourescent. The light I currently on my fry tank is a single strip flouresent light that I had for a freshwater tank. Wilkerson noted in her book something about fry swimming towards the bottom, but I'll have to find it. I'm thinking that it has to do with the brightness of the light.

I think my salinity is lower. I'd have to check the numbers they suggest but I think it's more like 1.20. It equates to 3/8 of a cup of salt per gallon. When I did a water change in the beginning I would remove water from the fry tank, siphoning the bottom, and replace it with water from the main tank with a little bit of RO water added to it, to dilute the salinity.

I kept a log of what I did in the clarkii post on the site which has a little bit more info than the log I have at home, but from my notes I have the following: day 1: heater 73 degrees, rotifers am/pm (I had to purchase a submersible heater so it wasn't added to the tank until that afternoon). Day 2: water change 1 gallon, heater 75 degrees, rotifers am/pm. Day 3: Water change 1/2 gallon, rotifers am/pm, started co-culture. Day 4 rotifers am/pm added 3 drops of kent. (some suggested idodine helped with the morph, if you have a essential elements for your main tank. Day 5: 1 gallon water change, flake pm, rotifers am/pm, removed black sides. Day 6: 1 gallon water change, rotifers am, 3:30 brine shrimp, 8:30 brine shrimp, 5:00 flakes, kent 3 drops, ammonia indicated alert, scrubbed bottom, stopped co-culture. Sort of kept going from them with pretty much the same schedule. I ended up doing alot of water changes because I was nervious because Wilkerson suggested clarks need better water quality. My first attempt, I started with around 150 and prob ended up with 50 after the morph. My survival rate seems to be a little better on the last couple batches, I started out with less and did less water cahnges, go figure. Any questions please ask or pm me.

[davek0819]

Greg,
It was bugging me so I looked it up. I pasted the information on lighting from Wilkerson's book. Keep in mind your using a 5 gallon tank so the light levels should be lower than suggested.

Not sure if it's the problem, but does it sound like what your fry are doing?

I also read, by adding the photoplankton w/rotifers to co-culture the green water helps the young fry spot the food. Depending on what day your on, you might be beyond this stage, but might help for the next batch.

[gmack]

Thank you

Your info was very helpful, I have add light and slowly drop sil to 1.20

Today is day 6 and all is well, feeding rots/ baby brine/ orthomine a and they are doing well. I have 30 fry left and they are swimming well, 50% water change every day.
I have a new batch comming in 4 days,
Can I put them in with these ones or will they kill or eat each other. I do not have an other tank.

Thank you so much your help is my success

[davek0819]

I appreciate the compliment but I think you success can be attributed to all your time spent doing water changes and raising little specks of dust called rotifers for food. I'm not sure if I can answer the ? regarding combining them. My second batch didn't fare so well so. I had about 8 clowns from my third batch that made it through metamorphesis that I combined with around 50 clowns from my first batch, they were on around day 37. The third batch was around day 12. So far I only lost one of the 8 from the third batch. My big concern was making sure food made it to them. The larger clowns never bothered the smaller ones. The first batch is pushing around 1/2" and the third batch is about an eight of an inch.

I guess make sure you have alot of rotifers on hand that the fry can find some before the first batch eats them all. Some of the earlier posts on here might have some info about combining them.

At Day 6 - my clarkii fry started getting their black tails, they morphed at around day 9 and 10. Did you add any suppliments, like essential element...etc that you might use for your reef tank? There was a reply from "admin" in a post where iodine/iodyde helps with the morph. I used a couple drops of a kent product that i had to feed my corals, spaced out the name at the moment. I added to my water change water maybe twice a week. Good luck with the morph!!