Clownfish Breeding Newbie

[scrubit]

i've been using two 10gal tanks, both like the one in the pictures to raise bangaii cardinal fry. Both are on very simple scrubbers made from $5 plastic trash cans. The pump is controlled by a ball valve, and the suction thru the plastic canvas is very minimal. I've seen the tiny fry swim right by the canvas with no problem...flow in the tank is very low. Each tank has a couple pieces of rock from my main sump that had plenty of pods, snails etc to work on left over food. The first tank was set up about 4 months ago and i feed the fry 5-6 times a day, and not one water change has been needed in that time...
Don't have any experience with clowns, but for what its worth these setups are working great for cardinals

[Ace25]

Thanks for the tips. Looking at the pictures I think clownfish fry would easily go through standard plastic screen if used as a barrier between the pump and tank. If you put some filter bag material over the mesh that would work. The biggest difference between clowns and bangaii is that bangaii grow up in the fathers mouth and get to a sufficient size where they can handle the flow when they leave dad. With clowns they come right from the eggs and have to fend for themselves from the first second of birth. I think it would take about 1 month before the clownfish get to a comparable size to bangaii's.

I will say I do envy you, Bangaii's were the fish I REALLY wanted to breed because of their endangered status. But one of the turning points for me trying the clowns was when I read that our hobby has actually OVER harvested clowns from the wild in the last couple years. I really don't like our hobby having any real negative effect on the oceans, to me one of the education parts of this hobby is learning and practicing conservation. So since clown fish, even common ocellaris, are being harmed by our hobby I thought I would do my part and try and give back a hardy fish that will benefit the hobby.

(Old article but recent news I have seen, but can't seen to find on google right this second, has stated the problem has only gotten worse in recent years)
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/unle...-for-nemo.html

My setup was certainly "fly by night" though, but so are most of my "first" projects. My LED experimenting, ATS's, etc etc.. so while I don't plan on continuing to breed any new clowns for the rest of this year, I have learned some valuable methods and thought of quite a few ideas on how to incorporate and build a proper "breeders station" that has everything from multiple tanks/partitions to sections for growing and easily harvesting rotifers and phyto. So while I may not use any of these filtration methods you guys are mentioning on my current setup, I am listening and taking notes for ideas when I do build a better setup so I appreciate ALL the comments.

I just counted all my babies now that they are big enough to get an accurate count. The total today is ..... "the answer to everything". See if there are any geeks here that know what that means. Google will give you the answer quickly, just curious if anyone knows the answer without googling it first.

[Floyd R Turbo]

42!!!

[scrubit]

Thanks for the tips. Looking at the pictures I think clownfish fry would easily go through standard plastic screen if used as a barrier between the pump and tank. If you put some filter bag material over the mesh that would work. The biggest difference between clowns and bangaii is that bangaii grow up in the fathers mouth and get to a sufficient size where they can handle the flow when they leave dad. With clowns they come right from the eggs and have to fend for themselves from the first second of birth. I think it would take about 1 month before the clownfish get to a comparable size to bangaii's.

I will say I do envy you, Bangaii's were the fish I REALLY wanted to breed because of their endangered status. But one of the turning points for me trying the clowns was when I read that our hobby has actually OVER harvested clowns from the wild in the last couple years. I really don't like our hobby having any real negative effect on the oceans, to me one of the education parts of this hobby is learning and practicing conservation. So since clown fish, even common ocellaris, are being harmed by our hobby I thought I would do my part and try and give back a hardy fish that will benefit the hobby.

(Old article but recent news I have seen, but can't seen to find on google right this second, has stated the problem has only gotten worse in recent years)
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/unle...-for-nemo.html

My setup was certainly "fly by night" though, but so are most of my "first" projects. My LED experimenting, ATS's, etc etc.. so while I don't plan on continuing to breed any new clowns for the rest of this year, I have learned some valuable methods and thought of quite a few ideas on how to incorporate and build a proper "breeders station" that has everything from multiple tanks/partitions to sections for growing and easily harvesting rotifers and phyto. So while I may not use any of these filtration methods you guys are mentioning on my current setup, I am listening and taking notes for ideas when I do build a better setup so I appreciate ALL the comments.

I just counted all my babies now that they are big enough to get an accurate count. The total today is ..... "the answer to everything". See if there are any geeks here that know what that means. Google will give you the answer quickly, just curious if anyone knows the answer without googling it first.

Fly by night for sure, as you can see by my pictures! Didn't occur to me that the cardinal fry are a bit more mature when they arrive, they are so tiny. Having a scrubber on the fry tank was the only way i would do it...without one the constant water changes and water quality issues would wear me out in no time.

[Ace25]

Few more videos.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-dbXYTd6BA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5maezufOMEo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jfzoiKCcG0

[joelespinoza]

Well if you are willing to ship them I would CERTAINLY take some off your hands. If you dont want payment for them I could at least pay for shipping...

[joelespinoza]

Get a divider for the 10 gallon tank, just a solid piece of plexi, drill a handfull of holes (5-10 maybe) with the smallest drill bit you can get, then put the pump pickup (going to an ATS) and return on one side and put the clownfish babies on the other. Even passive diffusion should be plenty of watermovement without causing any significant turbulance on the side with the babies. You could even add 2 dividers, with the pump pickup and return in the middle and different hatches on each side.

For cleaning the bottom get a handful of Narcissus snails or some small shrimp like these guys:

The shrimp in that video are going a bit nuts because they just got thrown in the tank, from the Gulf of Mexico, without any acclimation. But normally they are very calm, they seem to basically be the saltwater version of freshwater ghost shrimp. They seem to work good as a clean up crew or lunch for larger fish =)

[Ace25]

Thanks for the tips, those are very helpful and I will probably use that method next time. Ya, I tried a few astrea and cerith snails in the tanks, unfortunately they don't eat anything I want them to eat but I had a feeling that would be the case. I agree, nassarius snails are probably the correct snail to use to clean up the food, but my only worry is if they can't bury themselves like they normally do, will they end up eating the baby clownfish when they go to sleep? The clowns seem to all huddle up into a ball in a corner when they sleep and seems like they would be easy pickings for a nassarius snail to eat during the night.

[joelespinoza]

Thanks for the tips, those are very helpful and I will probably use that method next time. Ya, I tried a few astrea and cerith snails in the tanks, unfortunately they don't eat anything I want them to eat but I had a feeling that would be the case. I agree, nassarius snails are probably the correct snail to use to clean up the food, but my only worry is if they can't bury themselves like they normally do, will they end up eating the baby clownfish when they go to sleep? The clowns seem to all huddle up into a ball in a corner when they sleep and seems like they would be easy pickings for a nassarius snail to eat during the night.

I have never seen any signs of Nassarius snails going after anything alive... If you are worried about it, feed the babies some Nutri Mar Prawn Roe, I bet the babies will love it and Nassarius snails go CRAZY for that stuff. If you feed them some of that, there is almost no chance they will eat anything else.

Also I dont see why you could not have a thin (1/4-1/2") layer of fine sand in the bottom. It would probably help with the detritus and give the bacteria more surface area.

BTW if anyone has a ton of Nassarius snails snails in your tank, at least once you have to get some prawn roe to feed them, my girlfriend giggles everytime we feed it to the tank, because they all come up so fast it looks like the snail version of night of the living dead.

[kerry]

Nassarius will take live if the opportunity arises. I have seen mine try to get my sleeping wrasse while he was in his hole in the live rock.