All of mine so far have gone away - I've had snows with grey stripes but typically by the time they are 3 mo old I can't see the grey anymore.

Great thread Pickle010! You guys are experts for real! I want to learn from you here and will def be joining you regularly. Now I just need an entire day to catch up lol you guys have been busy over here. I think its awesome what you are doing and I truly believe your work here will change the hobby and keep many clowns in the ocean.


I have a question about breeding snowflakes. I have not bred them myself and have no experience only have looked at many pics and I saw some snowflakes in person at the ORA facility two months ago. I have seen dots of color in the white middle area a bunch of times. Usually the dots are on the left or the right side but not symmetrical. How rare is it to see one or more dots that are perfectly symmetrical on both sides of the snowflake?

Thank you for your time

finally my latest addition arrived after 3 months of waiting my Tricinctus arrived safe and sound.

I ordered a pair months ago thru Ibluewater. something happened and they died a few days before shipping them. so my new pair arrived friday. Bob @ Iblue sent them Wednesday and they survived 2 days of fedex hell. which is quiet impressive since they are the worst shippers in the clown world. they are like the powder blue tangs. most die before you get one. like 1 outta 10 survive.
so thursday morning comes and the tracking info says they are still in memphis.. i was wtf?? so i called fedex and they said they missed the flight from LAX aiprport and will arrive tomorrow. i called Bob and he said they should be fine, i wasn't so sure. he says he packs every fish to his international standard which is a 48hr shipping timeframe.
friday 10 am they show up and they are alive and happy. i was relieved. so Bob was right and he did a great job shipping.
mama is a little over 3" and the male is close to 2". i put them in and they ate right away i was pumped.
so here is a few crappy pics of them.

pic from ibluewater

my crappy pics




almost done with my new system so i will post some more pics.

Eric nice fish. Cant wait to see ur set up

Welcome along..

I wouldn't say it's rare but it's not very common either. I see them from time to time.

Hey pickle do u have any pics of ur set up anywhere? Probly on this thread. Just its hard to find stuff using my phone

Hi Alpha!
On my snowflakes, when one has dots on one side, it usually has dots on the other side as well. I actually had to go and look to see if any are symmetrical on both sides, and I found these two in one of my tanks of juveniles. Is this what you meant? It's a video, click on it.

Thank you I like the dots!




Whatup Eileen! Thanks for answering my question. Sounds like you have some super awesome breeding snowflakes. And those ones in the videos are exactly what I was picturing in my mind. Very nice!!!

Awesome babies Eileen!


Tonight is night 7 for my true percs first clutch. I went ahead and pulled the pot - figured it was worth giving it a shot.

Woke up today to a tank full of true perc fry! Love it when a plan comes together!

mine took a little break since i moved them over to the new system. hopefully back up and running soon.

I hear you - it was a couple weeks that mine took off when I moved them. That's why I expected these percs to take longer.

i hate the wait,,, im not moving mine anymore now that i got all three pairs breeding,,, i want to have good stock come october november months... my darwin female had another huge batch last night , picassos also have a good batch,,, finally got video of all three pairs breeding!!

have you posted them yet? I wanna see!

not yet but ill get to it , i got them on my cell phone and i have to transfer them...

Well my first hatch of true percs appears to be going a lot better than my first 20 or so O hatches.

Peppermint Shrimp (L. boggessi) Larvae six days post hatch! ~4mm in length

Now if I can just locate some L. wurdemanni I would be even happier!

VERY COOL HYPER!

Nice!!! there is a guy in my local club that took some shots at breeding them but didn't have much luck.

Wow those are some amazing pics.

On that thought my clowns i spent the last three days on vacation and Came back to a massive nest laid by my pair however all that remained was the residue of eaten eggs. I did have someone feedin them but at most only once a day and cant guarentee fed to saturation.

This is only their 4th nest but the thrid eaten. The first was cared for to perfection through hatch. Now is it still to early to worry about an egg eater male. Perhaps the lack of multiple feedings drove him to eat eggs. What does wceryone think?

Chicago - all you can do is keep him well fed and see what he does.

I'd give him a few more hatches but if he continues to eat the eggs then you might not have a choice but to replace him. Something else you might consider is pulling the eggs a couple of days early. I've gone as much as 3 days early and still had good hatches.

I've read that if you have a clean system (uv sterilizer) and good flow through the pot they could go longer. Typically the eggs go bad because of fungus and without the pair you have to find some other means of keeping them fungus free.

I don't know how valid it is but it's worth a shot.

It's been 5 days since the percs hatched and the female is starting to pop out again. Looks like she'll lay tonight or tomorrow.

What are you guys typically seeing for cycles with your Percs?

I have a perc/occ pair but te females a perc and her schedule is weird went from every 12-14 to 18 days but its only her fourth so theres no cycle lol.

Yea see hes eating them on the second maby thrid night so its way to early to pull

The thing I heard about was a guy using like a section of his sump in a system with a UV sterilizer - he would place the pot in spot where it had decent flow through it the entire time and he claimed he could pull the pot right after the eggs had been layed and fertilized. I don't know how much validity there is to it but I would assume the water conditions and the flow through the pot would have to perfect. I mean essentially after day 1 all the the pair are doing is keeping the eggs clean and free of fungus - So I suppose that could be replicated.

Got a nice little suprise today when i went to add a coral to my reef tank i started getting stung. I couldnt figure out what was going on till i went to adjust my power ead and got shocked real bad. Iv heard of heaters doing this but never a power head. Anyone ever experienced this before?

I suppose anything electricity driven can do it. Typically people pull one plug at a time and test the water until they find the culprit. What kind of powerhead was it? You don't hear that all too often.

Might want to invest in a grounding probe and make sure your tanks are on GFI breakers.

what are the signs of electric running through the tank?

Yea!!!!! Finally my first spawn! Occy & Full snowflake......and we leave for vacation tomorrow

But, I couldnt have made it this far without all the great info and help on here...thanks again everyone

Jasen

Awesome Jasen! (I'llsendyoumybill)




When you touch the water and you get zapped.

At a glance - dead or dying livestock and corals - cloudy water - and you get zapped when you touch the water.

Sometimes you can get a little bit of stray voltage and your hand will tingle when you touch it and yet other times if you don't have the proper grounds or safety outlets in place it could kill you before the circuit breaker trips.

I've seen tanks recover from bad shocks but it takes a lot of water changes and carbon once you've isolated the problem.

Well the percs are getting better at the whole "making a nest" thing - came home from work to find a fat nest packed in nice and tight. These two aren't playing games.

Their first hatch is doing great as well I under estimated how many eggs I had because I've got a couple hundred fry swimming around in that 10g right now. They are noticeably different from the O's. (as most would expect) Their color as fry is much more orange than the Ocellaris.

Anyhow, looks like I'll be hatching out a few more hundred of them next week - then I'll probably skip a few hatches to save room for the Snowflakes.

Yea i got shoked a little bit buy it must have been only happening for a day or so. My livestock and corals showed no signs of anythin different and i discovered it was the powerhead bc i touched it and got shocked so i unpluged it and stoped gettin shocked by the water lol its an aqua clear 70

By hatch 8-9 if my male still eats the eggs ill switch him for a grade B picasso looking more like an A all the time i bought as a reg perc for 12 bucks. Hes paired with a low b picasso so i might wait. Hopefully i wont have to switch em

Thanks for the info!

Quick update... the percs are 9 dph and looking good. Starting to see some signs of meta! I still can't get over the initial difference in color between the perc fry and the O fry... the percs are a deeper orange / rust with blue color where the O's usually just look almost brown until they go through meta.

Got a hatch of Snows tomorrow night and the percs are 14 days between spawns right now. I wonder if that number will tighten up like the O's did.

awsome, i got another big hatch tuesday night and i have about 400 that are 15days old now all stripes showing, new ones are 2 days old had a good hatch with them... collected a crap load lol now for the 2 month wait,,,

I hear that one ... I actually passed up a hatch last time, I'm just running out of room. I just have to order some bulkheads and I can start putting my new holding tanks together. I'm not going to let all those tanks I got at the $1 per gallon sale sit idle much longer.

yeah im at 3 hatches right now and i got room for 2 more only. then i have to go buy more tanks and sponge filters,,, i will update soon but i want to get some pics that show actual colors and white on these fish,, this is getting good every day... my o's get there stripes in at 12+ days as where my percs took forever, and i mean forever... got alot of really wide head stripes on alot of my o's.... well see still waiting on ww to lay again been 14days now i think....

The wide head stripes are the ones to watch. I can pick my snows out at Meta now. I'm still surprised at just how many of them I'm getting every hatch.

Jasen, is your spawning snowflake one of my babies? If so, you'll definitely have to post pics of the "grandbabies"..."grandfishies?" when you raise them. It's probably best that you left for vacation...most breeders skip the first few hatches or else they get eaten. I'M SO HAPPY FOR YOU!!!!!!!!! I know your daughters must be so excited!!!

yeah im getting high percent snows with this pair now, im waiting for my ww to hurry up and give me another batch see how they do this time... picasso/snowcasso pair im thinking of letting them go cause i have way to much to raise now with these snows and when ww get going i will be flooded... well see

You can Definitly ship em my way lol id be glad to take em off ur hands whata ya say

lol im sure.. i got a person wanting them now... dang pickle im on your thread more than im on mine..lol

Inorite? It's a big suck hole that just keeps bringing everyone back. It's all good though. I'm spending my day packing up and delivering fish!

Just picked up a new phone for my wife and played with the video camera on it - think I'll be using it a lot! lol

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdS_Lw0O1Y8...yer_profilepage

What would you say is the going price for a successful breeding pair of snowflakes? What about a succcessful breeding pair of Black Ice?

you can basically put any price you like on them and if there breeding they will sell i guarentee it... clowns are very high demand especially designers ones like the ones you mentioned.. breeding pair more mola babe

My lfs is selling them for 129 a pair. Not breeding but still dirt cheap for a bonded pair of snows

+1 they are very high in demand right now.

if yo are serious lets work a deal.

I'm not sure if I'm going to sell any just yet - just trying to get a feel for what they are worth should I decide to sell a pair. Some of my pairs have synched up and I had Picassos, Black Ice, and Snowflakes all hatch last night! I actually put the Picasso and Snowflake pots in the same tank to hatch out because I ran out of room! It worked though, but I'll probably have to split them up after a few weeks. I know it's a good problem to have, but that's a lot of babies all at once. Sure hope my rotifers hold up!

you know where i live. come on up and i can give you 2.5 gallon of rotis
i will split my batch now so if you want you can have plenty
aint itr nice being soooo close

I need the two of you to relocate to the central CA region. Thank you.