Thanks man... I'm moving on though... Lesson learned, made some changes and moving forward.

now you cant leave me hanging like that, sounds like you have hit the mother load though. that would be the only thing i could keep a secret`
ps
other good news is my bangai started to shimmy and shake, man i wish my male would hold the eggs

Can we guess what is in store ?

And man I jump alittle every time a see your new avatar, talk about polar opposites.

You'll never guess... but I promise to get you details once its in my hands!!!

Ha ha... sorry about the Avatar - I was looking for a cute tribute picture of Cary Coleman to commemorate his death like I did Farrah but found this mug shot and well... couldn't resist.

Bring back the old Pickle!

Sweet!!! It's got to be rough for them to figure out they aren't supposed to eat the caviar.



C'mon - it's gary Coleman... I know - long before your time. I grew up watching him not grow.

C'mon I know whatchu talkin' bout. I may be young, but I am learned.

OK... back to fish... my Ocelaris pair are busy laying a new batch of eggs. Her depositer is out and he is doing the wiggle fly by's on the eggs! Try this again next Saturday night!

Learn-ed. Not learned. Haha.

Sweet! Moar babes!

its funny. when ever my father visits he says my fish humpm like rabbits, makes me laugh every time

Now you can't go and throw out some big "suprise" and not even give a hint...

Any of the fry still wiggling around?

But I did!




No... I couldn't find anything left alive 6 hours later.

I live for hints, yea I know no life

But I can not find one, this is a tease.

Hint Please

Pickle do you use anemones for your clowns? not specifically for breeding but just in general. My Ocellaris pair just started trying to host my toadstool leather and it doesn't seem to love it. If you all have any info here is a link to the thread I just started about it.

http://www.nano-reef.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=238397

I do have nems in my tanks - but not for long - I will be seperating them once I have dedicated tanks for the pairs. The thing about clowns is that they attached to a comfort item in your tank, in this case your toadstood (which isn't happy about it) and even if you do get a nem it may be 6 months before they discover it and take to it. Sometimes they go straight to the nems but you just don't ever know for sure.

OK... I'm just going to spill the beans - Only because I just picked it up and it is sitting in the back of my truck right now.

Yesterday I went down to Bakersfield to talk a guy about a sump for the new system I'm building. Turns out the guy is a tank maintenance person as a profession and used to own a fish store. After talking he gave me a tour of his home setup which was in his garage.

My jaw hit the floor when I walked into a miniature LFS - I mean he had everything - full set ups - lights - dry goods and two 8 foot long wall units each partitioned with 30 holding tanks for livestock. They looked awesome - he went to tell me how he spent $5k each to have them built for his store.

The units sat on acrylic sumps 2 feet wide by 5 foot long with a 3 foot dry side for pumps and equiptment. the second level is about a foot wide and held 6 good size tanks and the next two levels had smaller sections running the full 8 feet across.

Then he asks me what my plans are and I start to tell him about how I got into breeding and I'm setting up a system dedicated to it. I mention that one of those units would be perfect for me. So get this... he turns around and says you know... I have 2 more of these wall units at friends house but have to get them out of there. The house is in foreclosure and he doesn't know when the bank will change the locks.

He offers to sell me one for $400. It took every ounce of control I had to say that I was interested but would have to talk to the wife. I mean spending $400 is one thing but then bringing in a 8 foot by 6 1/2 foot wall unit in to the home office is whole different story.

So when I came home last night I talked to the wife - who was like: "what do mean you didn't buy it?"

I got on the phone right away and sealed the deal!

So this morning I got a truck and drove down to his place. We loaded a unit complete with lighting, pumps, heaters, skimmer and he even threw in an acrylic magnet cleaner as he figured mine where all for glass tanks.

I will need to upgrade a section of lighting for my nems but I'm not worried about that right now. Once I get it set up and running I'll sell off some of my equipment that I won't need anymore and it should just about cover the cost of the set up.

OH>>> and he also said that if he does get notice that the bank is changing the locks and he doesn't have a buyer for the other one he said he'd call me to come get it.

I'd post pictures... but right now it looks like a pile of acrylic boxes in the back of a truck. Next week I'll start putting it together and get some shots up.

nice!

yah i cant keep a secret either. sweet score.

Awesome score bro!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

He shoots you SCORED

Thanks!

Now I just have to get this thing put together.

Looks pretty straight forward though.

Cell phone pic... but a sneak peak!



I have two sections like the one in this pic. I'm going to pull every other divider and replace the remaining dividers with black acrylic. That way this level can house my pairs.

Wow I missed so much! It was a good read. Sorry about the last clutch. You thought water quality but I believe what you have been told and it was the food. Good luck with the next one!

Yeah... I'm not taking any chances either way. I'm watching the diet of my pair and making sure to keep up on the water changes. Beyond that I don't think it's the food that the fry got as they can go 24 hours before needing to eat. Since they didn't make it 12 hours - I have to assume it was something else.

So I read a thread the other day on another forum where the op stated he did not do w/c on his grow out tanks at all. Others seem to concure so is this the norm ?

Oh yea huge score there

I just replace top off. Before hatch out day I put my sponge filter in and let it ride. I do use a amonia badge but only syphon the bottom if it gets gunky

I try to have great water quality going in - so I keep the water as clean as I can in my tank with my pair... What I've been doing is cleaning the bottom of the tank because when I use crushed food a lot will settle on the bottom of the tank and start to grow... that can't be good.

But more often then not now it's a quick vacume, check salinty and put back a little more then I took out. They are in a 10g and I'm probably using about 8 gallons in there now.




Are you starting them with new water? I have a sponge filter that will be ready go with the next hatch but I'm curious if you are bringing tank water over with them or using fresh mixed water.

Congratulations!!!

Are you going to breed other species of fish as well once you are more experianced with this?

I honestly haven't got that far - If I get clowns down then I guess I would look for something more challenging. Right now I've got my hands full with this though.

What ever way you go it'll still be awesome

Okay
Routine
Day of hatch
Morning
Bring in from garage 4 gallons of water
Add water to reef tank and pull the same out
Dilut pulled water to a sg of roughly .019-.020
Place diluted water in 5.5 with sponge filter and let water settle
3pm filter from bottom of tank any particulates
Pull tile place in tank and add rots and nano 3600 after checking bubble rate
Check in am and see how everything went add more nano and top any evap off.

That's good stuff right there... thanks!

You know... the process I use isn't that different. I put 5 gallons of fresh water in the evening before and pull about 4 out - the rest is pretty close to waht I do accept I'm up all night scoping the little buggers out because my fish wont lay in bloody pot or on a tile.

When this new set up is running that is all they are going to have. (pot and or tile) I'm sure it will upset them for a while but they'll get over it.

I love the tiles. Makes it so much easier.
On a good note for me the wyoming whit and reg occ are starting to clean. They are very skitish though. Almost like they are scared because I took them out of there element. I am keeping my fingers crossed
What other pairs do you have. I know the snowflakes anything else.

A pair of true percs - that are getting split up and eventually paired with picassos
Two Snow / Oc pairs
One pair of of Oc

I would like to find a nice mated pair of Black Ocelaris or Onyx.

If you were only closer. I have a pair of onyx that are going strong right now. I might reduce my stock down to 5 pairs from 9.

What else are you thinking of cutting lose?

Quick Update - The babies are still doing well -

What's interesting is that some of them never went into Meta - I mean I have 8 clown fish that are deffinately through meta and are little clowns. Very little clowns. And I have a few that still look like little alienz. They are active - they are eating well but no head stripe and still have the larvae body shape. Being that they will be a month old on Sunday I don't have too high a hope for the alienz. I'm sure that it was a nutritional issue with them.

What's else is neat to see is how early on the clowns start to establish dominance. One of my larger more defined babies has set herself apart as being in charge. She will chase other fish and seems to be much more aggressive at feeding time. I didn't expect to see them setting themselves apart like that for a long time yet.

This is interesting. The question now is can the little alienz still hit meta or are they doomed?
Are they still much smaller than the other fish?
Is there a point when you have to cash in your chips on them and remove them from the tank?
Are they still eating correctly?

Another pair of occs.
A pair of c quest onxy w ora misbar
A pair ora grade a picasso and a sea quest black and white.

My fear is the little ones might be doomed - I'm not going to do anything to force the issue. As long as they keep eating and stay active as they are I'm going to allow it to play out and see what happens. IF I start to see that they are going to be a deformed pack of Jacob's running around I'll have no choice but to cull them.

There are deffinately smaller then the healthier looking / striped / through meta fish.

Speaking of Jacob specifically did he make meta or did I miss his air tube demise somewhere?

To be completely honest I've just referred to all the clowns that seem to need helmets as Jacob, so I still have a couple left. (nooffencemyfriend)

I believe he offered it. LOL well I am still pulling for a delayed meta for ya ..

I just went through all 18 pages of this thread, and what a journey so far! Looking forward to seeing that new setup full of clowns.

Pickle, we need updates!!!!

seriously i think you need to talk to those snowflakes do some clown whispering and get them rocking the tank...

hey i promised mine that i would order play boy if they started getting freeky, now i will have to keep my promise
honey i promise its for the fish honestly i will come inside the house in a while i am cleaning the tanks

I know I'm long overdue for an update...

It's been a crazy weekend - school ended last week for the kids and the wife took them on a trip up north to visit with her girlfriend - "Oh wow honey, you know I'd love to go spend some time with your wacky girlfriend but I've got a hatch on Monday night and this new system to get set up."

So they left first thing yesterday and I expected to get a lot done - didn't work out that way - the home office is pretty full. Mostly full of tanks, I have 8 running right now and my desk and computer gear - yes all of it. Of course the unit will only fit against 1 wall, the rest have windows or doors. So I have to rearrange everything just make room to start getting it in here. As I'm starting I get a call from the wife who had made it most of her trip and the transmission on her car starts to go out. I just had the transmission rebuilt 3 months ago!!! Needless to say as limited as I was in being able to physically help her it still threw me off. Luckily we have AAA - unfortunately for her she was in such a remote area that it took AAA 2 hours to get to her. So her 4 hour dive with 3 kids turned into a 10 hour ordeal and a car in the shop some 280 miles from home. If they conclude it's anything that has to do with work that was done already, you can bet one way or the other I'll get that car back down here for them to fix under the warranty.

So by about 11 last night I got everything moved to get the new unit in. Today I'll be starting my build up.

In fish news - couple of things to share. My buddy AJ who just joined N-R (egos4life) wanted his frag tank back and wanted a mated pair of golden stripe maroons out of it. Always willing to help a friend in need I went over to his place night and picked them up. They seem to be adjusting well - so far they only come out for feedings and I started the morning by making sure they where stuffed - they went crazy for mysis and brine and then still had room to take some formula 1 but they left a few flakes floating at the top of the tank - I think they had enough. I'll post pics of them later as they are still being shy and only coming out to eat. She is large 4"+ and little dull in color her bands do not "pop" like the males. The male has nice colors and little more adventurous. He spends his time between her and the 6" pot that is in the tank with them. The person AJ got them from said they had been laying regularly for him but they hadn't spawned for AJ - We'll see if I can get them back on track.

Of course the trip to his place took a while - I tried to get to his place without directions thinking I'd remember the route and landmarks. The thing about living in farm country - roads never look the same from month to month depending on what stage of growing stuff is in. I'm sure he thought I was challenged when I called him to talk me in to his place and to find out how far off I was. Then I couldn't just grab the fish and go - I had to check out his amazing system, as if the coral and fish weren't awesome enough I had to watch his vortec go through it's cycles. I can see now why they get the big bucks for that stuff. I definitely couldn't leave without seeing his dogs. AJ breeds mastiffs and had a litter of brindles in the back yard. OMG they are awesome, my wife would definitely leave me if I brought one of them home right now though. He introduced to me to the father as well - he was HUGE and just had the most amazing temperament. All boy though - peed on everything he could get near. Hell I was afraid to stand still for too long.

OK ok... back to fish...

My snow / oc pair - no change really - they are cleaning the pot and eating like pigs. And my Oc pair are tending to their nest like good parents should. They should be hatching out tomorrow night. I did do a large water change for them earlier this week and I'll be doing another today just ensure the water quality is excellent.

As far as the baby's go - they are all through Meta - I do not have any that do not have head strips. I thought for sure that I had lost Jacob but yesterday I had to take a minute to let one little bastard out that got stuck in the sponge filter tube.... could it be???

Anyhow, it's almost 9 AM and I've got a lot to do today!

hey if you run into any snags drop me a pm maybe i can talk you through it, it was a pain in the arse to plumb 6 tanks together and get the right flo, also try to get the largest diameter drain. i went with 1" and regret it. my new 40 breeder that i have divided into three has a 1.5" drain so i can push a lil more flow thru