The clownfish laid more eggs last night and I was lucky enough to be there to capture it on video!

All clownfish are doing well. I have not lost any since just after metamorphosis.

Here are some fairly recent pics, but I think they are even bigger than this now!

Unbelievably, all of the clownfish survived the trauma of the severe temp drop. My wife called and went to the basement to check if any of the babies had made it. She says, “There are like 50 fish swimming around. What died?” There were no fish on the bottom and they were all orange again and swimming. She gave them a little extra food and they were eating like crazy!!!

Incidentally, I have switched form live baby brine shrimp to the Ocean Nutrition Instant Baby Brine Shrimp. It is a small jar of baby brine in a fluid. The babies love it and they are really starting to grow!

I am also crushing the New Life Spectrum Grow food and putting it in there. Some of them eat it, but they are not fans. I have to start weaning them off the brine.

Woo hoo!!!!! Disaster Averted!!!!

Bad news.

I think I may have lost all 50 of my remaining babies (which were approaching 1 month old). My heater died last night and when I went to feed them this morning most were immobile on the bottom of the tank. 2 or 3 were swimming barely. And their color went from bright orange to a pale pink. Tank temp was around 70.

I got a new heater in there and fed them, but I think all is lost on this batch.

Will post an update tonight when I get home and check on them….

Well, I hit a wall with my baby clowns last night. Two factors led to the downturn.

1. Both of my brine shrimp cultures crashed the other night, so I was not able to feed them baby brine shrimp at all since Monday morning. I fed them rotifers and crushed flake food Monday night, and twice yesterday.
2. The salinity was rather high in the tank so as part of my almost daily water change I added a lot of fresh RO/DI water. I wonder if the salinity change was too much for them.

Regardless, I lost about 10 babies. The brine shrimp were ready this morning so I fed them a lot to help them catch up. Their color was not good.The bright orange was now pale. I am hoping I still have some babies when I return home this evening.

In addition, the new batch of fry should be born this evening, but I am not prepared for them and so I will let them go.

And finally, it is entirely possible that my bangaii cardinal fish are also breeding. More on that later

And, the baby clowns have almost all passed metamorphosis stage! I lost one in meta. They are looking very cute now and I will try to get pictures tonight.

At this stage, most of the clownfish have pink/orange bellies, a sign that they are eating brine shrimp.  But a  few still have silver bellies so I continue with the rotifers.  And I am not positive, but I think some are getting used to the flake food.

Metamorphosis is hard to see happen with ocellaris because it happens over a couple of days, but I think we are in the middle of it.

In the meantime, mommy is preparing to lay another clutch of eggs (tomorrow evening I believe). 

So, on to the pics.  Some are better than others.  Without a really good macro lens, my abilities are limited.

 

 

 

 

A special thanks has to go out to a bunch of people who helped me get through this:
1.  Big Al from the Delaware Valley Reef Club who provided me with advice, rotifers and a link to MOFIB.
2.  Eric, Kathy and Randy at Reed Mariculture who helped me solve my rotifer issues and more!
3.  Kathy and Mark over at MOFIB who helped me create my larvae snagger and talk me through what to expect on hatch night!

And, now, for the pictures.  They are not the best, but you can see the fry!

 

 

  

No pictures, sorry. But here is an update and observations:

I think I ended up with over 100 fry. I have 2 bangaii cardinals that hung out int he mid level of the tank and just ate them as they hatched and swam to the light. The large amount that gathered outside the filter pad were easy to grab by submerging my rectangular fish box (catcher thing used in pet stores) righ next to them and they flowed right in!

The move to their basement tank went smooth with one, possibly fatal, mistake. In my rush to get them food (which I now read didn’t need to happen until this morning), I scooped up rotifers and instead of filtering the water back into the rotifer containers I just dumped that (probably nasty water) right into the fry tank.

This morning I turned on the lights in the basement so they will have ambient light and I fed them (correctly this time) with a ton of rotifers. There were definitely some fry alive, but I noticed that some were on the bottom of the tank. Not sure if they were dead or sleeping ?????

Follow up questions for those following along:
1. What should the bubble rate be in the fry tank? I have a 10g square glass tank (covered on three sides right now). I have a small heather in the middle on the bottom of the tank and a bubble coming up around it to circulate the heat. Because it is a rectangular tank, I also added a second bubble line in the one corner to provide added circulation. The only other thing int here is an ammonia badge.
2. I have read differing stories on lighting for these fish. Too much and they spiral and die. Too little and they can’t see to eat. The tank has a fairly powerful light (forget what right now) on it, but it is not on. Its not MH or anything. But I think it is 36w of T5 lighting. When can I turn this on for them?

Now I am away overnight and counting on my wife to take care of these little guys until i return tomorrow night!!! fingers crossed!

In the meantime, my new ATO malfunctioned and flooded part of the basement. To compensate for that screw-up I opened the drain valve (directly to sewer) and then forgot I did it, emptying both my sump and fuge!!! So, in the middle of this birthing I was scrambling to make new salt water and refill the tanks!!!! Not quite done yet, but getting close!!!! ARGHHHHH!

Oh, and my wife bought us a puppy this weekend…. joy!  Its a golden doodle and it is very cute…  I am NOT a dog person, but may be turned around.

So, on to my rotifer problem.

Batch 1: Ordered from Reed. Made a mix of saltwater and split the rotifers into 2 5-gallon buckets. Water was 1.026 and too high I think. Also added them to almost 4.5 gallons of water. Lost them right away. Something was bad. Not sure what.

Batch 2: Ordered 2 rotifer cultures from Reed. Put them each in their own 5-gallon bucket of 1.015 water. Slowed bubbles to 1-3/second. They did really well for 4 days! Feeding roti-diet from Reed.

Then it was time to start harvesting and replacing water. Instead of siphoning them, I poured the buckets through my sieve (from Florida Aqua-Farms) and then literally poured new saltwater from my tank water into the buckets. Water temp was different, salinity was different. and the rush of water may have knocked off all the eggs. Also added phyto from my cultures, not roti-diet.

Lost both of those cultures. No rotifers showing up when I take cupful of water into a clear glass and the water does not clear when I add roti-diet.

Reed has been kind enough to send me 6 million more rotifers (their customer service is awesome) due to arrive on Tuesday. Also received a call from Eric at Reed. He thinks I need to have my bubbles higher, way higher. Lots of bubbles but so much that foam is forming. Also, he thinks my basement may be too cold and thinks small heaters may help (basement is around 68 degrees) and the water is probably too cold.

Also, he recommended getting Chloram-X which I don’t have, plus putting in their filter media which I do have.

I am also thinking of bagging the phyto culture stuff and just using the rotifer diet from reed. I know its expensive, but it is sooo much easier than the phyto with my schedule and three kids at home.

And today I picked up a ton of rotifers from a fellow club member to augment my existing culture.  Hopfeully I will have enough for this batch of fry.  After all I will have 6 rotifer cultures going!!!