Where are pics of your 250 gallon system? did I miss that day?

It's a pet store wall unit... here you go:





This is when I first water tested it. All the gravel is gone and it has some supplemental lighting in it now. At least in the lower compartments since I have some nems down there.

Now that's a nice clean unit. Wish one of those fell into my lap.

no kidding, that is sweet

I had to do a few mods - but it's working out really well. Definitely not good for breeding pairs - but it's great for grow out and holding tanks.

One word. Damn.

i am jealous.

I have my breeding pairs in the four foot version of that. I am just not using the third tier or the sump. I really like those set ups but they are hard for me to find.

Definitely not easy to find. My local petco shut down their SW tanks and have some set ups - 4 foot that would be perfect but they are willing to part with them... yet. They've been sitting fallow for at least 6 months now. I met the GM for the area and he says they will most likely get reconditioned and sent to another location. The store manager has my info though in case they decide not to do that.

my onyx are hatching tonight. woot. tons of work to do yet.

pulled the pot at 10am est. so we will see.

Good luck!

Why are you pulling the pot so early?

7 days to early? they hatched on 7 days last week.

You said you pulled the pot at 10 AM - I mean - I'm sure it's OK but the fry don't hatch until about an hour after lights out. My lights go out at 10 PM so I usually pull the pot in the evening just before lights out.

Second that

my bad, i ment 10pm. my lights go out then. i might be going out out of my mind, no hatch last night.
i thought for sure they hatched 7 days last time. temps in both tanks were the same and i didnt do anything different. i got alot of bubbles going on the eggs now. i guess all i can do now is hope for a hatch tonight.

My onyx's eggs hatch on the 8th night (temp is 82 in their tank). I used to always pull them a day early because the eggs looked right, but after letting a few hatch out I've learned that, at least my pair, will become really really active in fanning and cleaning the eggs the day they are going to hatch... doing about twice the amount of work as usual. Your pair might be totally different, but just watch how they behave next time, once the eggs turn that nice silver. A few of them might hatch on the 7th night, but the majority of mine go on the 8th.

Eric - you should be fine as long as you have a good spread of bubbles on the eggs. I've unintentially pulled hatches 2 days to soon and still had a good hatch on night 3. I wouldn't do it on purpose - but it worked out in the end.

i hope so.. first two times were a disaster. but that is cause i had added rots and tinted the water. but this time it should be ok.
but i did have a little issue. i unplugged one of my PC4 from my RKE and once of the cables dropped into the water and shut it down. so my temps went down to 75 in all the tanks. brood, egg tank and baby tank so everyone had a cold bath this morning. i got some warm parent tank water i have in a drum and slowly removed tank water and added the warm water to bring up the tanks. the babies were fine, but dont know about the eggs yet.

Lailani, i thought for sure mine were on a 7 day schedule. hehe guess they are on an 8. better luck next hatch.

Eric... make sure you take good note of your temps - a couple of degrees can change the hatch the day.

my RKE is pretty good at keeping the temp's rock solid. except when i mess something up. hehe

Just pulled this stunt last week with some Darwins....I stressed out, but it worked out fine.

LOL.. love it when it works out anyhow!

Here is a really crappy pic of one of the babies. How do you get them to sit still for a pic?

i cant get a good pic of any clown unless its dead. haha.

but great news. checked the pot at 1am est and the whole pot hatched! i am so pumped. it was a huge nest too. i added some rots and tinted the water. should i turn the lights on, or leave them off till tomorrow?

I turn the light on right away after I tint the water - they'll need the light to find the rots. It stays on to about the point they hit meta. What works best for me is a desk lamp - something I can control the angle and amount of light hitting the tank. I usually shine it in a spot away from the bubbles so the larvae don't have to fight the bubbles to get to the rots.

That also gives them a darker spot to retreat to in the tank if they want.

thought so. i have a desk lamp on the first batch and the second i am using a hood. i unscrewed on of the bulbs so its dark on one side. the lights are like 10w and are pretty weak. not to bright for them.

that should work out... on one of my fry tanks I use a florescent single bulb hood - I use two slats of wood to make a narrow gap between them to dim the amount of light that hits the water. I was just using what I had laying around.

i got some black acrylic i might use for a shade.

good news and bad news. i got them to hatch, but i only have like 20 survivors. rest are dead at the bottom of the tank. any ideas?

Temp? What kind of algae paste are you using?

temps were 82 and i am using the roto feast nano for roti food. the $70 a bottle from reeds.

I recomend this one for larvae:
http://www.reed-store.com/shop.cfm/RotiGro...OTIGREEN-LITER/

100 PAGES!!!!!!!!!!!!

Eric, I missed what kind of tank you are using for the fry, but if it's a standard 10 gallon with a full hood and light strip, then two business sized white envelopes slipped between the strip bulb and tank cover works perfectly.

I had no luck removing the envelopes until 2 weeks past Meta, but it didn't really matter anyway.

My other 10 gallon fry tank is the cheapo petsmart $16.99 one with the two separate bulbs. I ended up unscrewing one bulb as it was the only way to offer less light. It seemed to work fine (the single bulbs were much less bright than a florescent strip anyway) but I ended up with a few beastly sized brine shrimp in there over time. They must have hid from the fry under the unlit side, gobbling up the Reed's Rotifer Diet that I was feeding the tank. They looked like little submarines and ended up being nearly the size of the larvae themselves. I ended up netting them out as they were freakish and I often mistook them for fry. Not a big deal though.

Eric - I would look at the ENTIRE process - from the brood stock - diet / water conditions to how you are cleaning your fry tank for use. I can't tell you how long I chased my tail because I used bleach to clean my tanks and didn't neutralize it after. Don't skip over what you might think is simple - it cost me months of progress.

A lot of those foods at reeds will work and at $70 a pop it pricey to figure out which one is going to work best for you. I'm using the roti-grow plus and have had minimal losses since switching to it.

After a week of two tester babies living in the large wall unit tank I moved the rest of the first hatch of Snow / O's into it last night. By morning I had lost one of them. The temp dipped to about 78 or so from what I could tell. It may have got a little cooler over night but that's what it was in the AM. The rest of the fry where swimming and eating so I bumped up the heater in that compartment and the temp is holding steady around 80.5 right now.

It's my first loss in my last 3 hatches. Man that seems weird to say.

Can you guys and girls post some pics of your broodstock sumps and what you have in them? Setting up a rack system and just curious if I should do anything different than my reef sump with the usual stuff and Chaeto. Eric showed me his is he does not use an macro algae and he has the cleanest sump I have ever seen. What is everyone else doing for a sump?

filter socks are mandatory or you could do as i do and use $.33 nylons from walmart. throw in a few tbs of carbon and some poly fill and your good to go.

great idea pickle i will check it out. i might not have cleaned out the tank good enough cause its a brand new tank. the last tank i cleaned it with bleach and vinegar, but this tank only vinegar. i havent lost any since the hatch.

Saippenu. i got the hood with the 2 bulbs. i just unscrewed on to make the one side darker.

I think i am gonna buy the nanno that hyper linked to. i thought i bought that stuff cause i wanted something better than just straight nanno. should be here wednesday.
I dont use anything else in my sump except socks and a UV. i might try some carbon. but stuff like that is always a pain for me.

I don't even have a sump - LOL

Seriously though - with the amount of water changes I'm doing and constant pulling and replacing water for the fry, my water quality stays excellent.

I'm still going to plumb them eventually.

it's happened... except not with the wild caught lighning maroon
not much on how it happened.

http://reefbuilders.com/2011/04/01/lightni...content=Twitter

Please see the last line of the article.

Had me fooled...and excited.

That would be a sweet pattern...

I liked marine depots april fools... mini beluga whales!

that pattern is real, just those were photo shopped by matt, he has one of the 2 collected lightnings. very pretty fish, hes a local and also the breeder that i got my onyx from so i got to see the lightning up close.

http://www.lightning-maroon-clownfish.com/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjPMeY4ZTQA

Matt has done some pretty awesome stuff - my understanding is that the lightnings they have had gone trough some pretty major issues and they almost lost them. It would be pretty awesome if they can duplicate that pattern and get those out to the public.

whoops, my bad...

I only skimmed through the first couple paragraphs and got excited.

would be nice if the pattern became available, but I don't know if I'd like the part where the fish would be stressed to near death to get the patter.

matt (the owner of the fish) is a breeder, he does plan on breeding it and with any luck some of the lightning paterns will pass on, it might take some back crossing but it will be tried.

the reason it took so long is he is very concerned about bloodlines, he wants to only breed the lightning with another maroon collected from png. the seasmart collection program was shut down early and no one new about it, that left him and bluezoo waiting for nearly 6 months for another suitable female maroon that would never come. he has a basement full of maroons (including my old 2) but only 1 suitable male that was collected from the same waters as the lightning. its taken this long because he is being extra careful with the fish and now has decided to let it become female to reduce the risk of death (females are fairy notorious for turning on the males and killing the for no apparent reason even if they have been mating for years.

now were waiting for him to be back in own (he speaks at different reef clubs and events across the country primarily of fish breeding) so he can begin the long process of pairing the lightning with a smaller male so it can become female.

i had a buddy text me to read the article. he was all excited. hehe it was a great joke. thank god i read this thread before reading the article or i would have pee'd my pants.
i for one will buy one if they become successful in rearing offspring with them.

your not the only one thats for sure. hard to say if it will ever show again.

Little bit of a scare yesterday - I spent the day outside doing some long overdue yard work (got the sun burn to prove it) and came in to find that the fish room had tripped a fuse!!!

No idea how long the power was out but luckily everything seems to be alright. I can't believe I'm going into my 4th hatching tonight with this pair and I still have all 3 previous hatches with only 1 loss so far.

The second clutch is starting to get in second stripes and a couple of them have white markings that seem to extend to the tail - I can't wait for them to get a little bigger and really show that color.

Do you folks have your breeding pairs in their own seperate tanks or or do you have a larger tank divided into chambers?