Clownfish Breeding Newbie
I am a newbie at this.. I have had clowns laying eggs/making babies for quite a few years now, but never attempted to catch/raise any of them until I got a bug in my a few days ago to give it a try (even though I knew I was not ready).
Friday night, 1/2 the eggs hatched (very odd, first time I have ever seen 1/2 hatch and not all). I catch a dozen or so and with no prep at all, try them in an old sump with a heater and air stone. Since I have no live food for them (which I read is 100% critical, without it they will not make it) I decided to just try what I have on hand. Well, dummy me, first attempt was a massive failure on my part. I should have kept reading the how to's to see they do not need any food for about the first 24 hours, but after that they need a lot. I put in way more "Brightwell AminOmega" (used for soaking food with) than I should have and wiped out the babies by morning. No biggie, first attempt, did so in a hurry right before bed. I was expecting failure.
Saturday night, cleaned out the sump, started over. Caught 2 dozen babies that hatched that night.. still about 50 eggs left, but at 2am I was done waiting, but morning all the eggs were gone. So I have 24 baby clowns in the tank at 11pm Saturday night. I put in just a couple drops of Vita-Chem this time so I don't foul the water. They are in about 2-1/2G of water in the chamber in the sump (this is obviously a sump not in use). I changed out 1G of water every 4 hours for the last few days, all the while putting in a lot of "coral food", frozen cubes of H2O brand food, along with Vita-Chem. The babies are EATING IT UP! They are like pac-man munching away. So I read babies usually will not make it past 48 hours unless they have live rotifers.. I have passed the 48 hour mark and some how I have not lost a single one so far. I was expecting to come home from work today and see them all dead, but to my suprise, the opposite, all alive and active.
I understand I am a long way from calling this a success, but if things work out like I hope, I am thinking I may be the first person to raise baby clown fry off nothing but "dead" food, which goes against everything I have read. If anyone knows/read of others that had success without using live foods I would love to read about it. I went from "eh, not really into that part of the hobby" to "OMG I wanna figure this out and have 100% success now if it is possible" within a couple days. LOL. I am betting at least a few people on here have tried their hand at raising clown fry... if anyone has any tips, suggestions (other than the obvious, get live foods growing) I would love to hear them.