Whoa how did I not respond yet, shame on me. Anyway, well that sucks. So does that mean thaaaaaaat veeery first batch didn't make it past meta? You better keep breeding these man!

No the first hatch did... that was the only success. Actually 8 O's and 1 GSM - lol

I'm realizing that I may have simply been starving the fry all along. My rotifers count is sitting somewhere around 25 per ml and it needs to be around 50 per ml. So I'm reducing the salinity as per Hyperboys suggestion and reducing the amount I'm pulling in the evening to allow more build up.

This last hatch came Friday night, the water parameters are perfect - no trace of ammonia. About 24 hours after hatch they started dropping in numbers and this morning it's down to about 10 of them. I'mm wondering with all the water changes that I'm doing if I didn't cut down the numbers too much.

Oh good! I just wanted to make sure haha!

Well that is weird. Have you noticed an improvement over all of the hatches? I mean has one lasted longer than the previous ones?

It's hit and miss righht now... but i've tried so many different things - some go longer then others. But in correcting one thing you thropw something else out of whack. Like the rots thing... I got so focused on the ammonia and that I threw off my numbers.

im a little bit confused so your saying that your rotifers arent multiplying enough to keep the fry alive... so it may not have been the slight changes in ammonia and stuff

Ahh that is a bummer man. If it isn't one thing, it's another. Good luck, you better keep breeding them lol!

I'm not at the density I thought I was. So it's possible they aren't getting enough to eat.




This is getting frustrating. My pairs put out faithfully so I got to keep at it.

Alright guys need some help. The wifes making me condense tanks in the house so i was wondering if i could use a 55 long and put dividers in it to create 5 breedin tanks and plump each compartment into a 20 sump underneith. Anybody know what kind of paint id have to use o paint he dividers thats safe for the clowns?

You could use krylon fusion to paint dividers - it is reef safe. However if I was to go that route I would just buy black acrylic to make the sections. That way you only paint the outside back of the tank and the sides (if you want) - But inside the tank the black acrylic would be your best bet. I'm not sure about the length of the 55 but 5 sections might be tight.

What size tanks are your broadstocks? How do you attach acrylic to glass? Im trying to go the cheapest route possible because their already sucking my pockets down haha. I am in the process of designing the plumbing for a sump im going to make as well so any ideas would be helpful.

My broodstock tanks are large - 20H each - I could partition them in half though and keep 6 pairs in 3 tanks.

I made a false wall in a 40bdr with acrylic and I used regular tank silicone to hold it in place. No problems.

So are ten gallon tanks to small for breedin pairs. I have five pairs. Three are in breeding tanks of twenty twenty and ten gallons and onlong occupy their pot and maby 4 inches around it. The female perc in my ten gallon doesnt even leave the pot for food any more a month ago she was a monster at feeding times and now just grabs bits as it floats in front or into the clay pot.

Im thinking about sectioning off my two twenty gallon highs (about 12"x 16 x12 after spitting) tomorrow and then pluming all three tanks into a sump for the bottom. Any thoughts or advise?

I think tens would be fine... I started out with 20's and was told they where too big.

I'm all for plumbing together but what scares me is if a fish get's sick then you are risking all the fish that are plumbed into that system. I had a pair that did fine for over a month in quarentine and another 3 - 4 weeks after moving them they developed ich.

Had they been in a system with my breeding pairs I would of been in a world of hurt.

Yea that makes sense. Well i just took a 30 long and Split into three tens and I drilled the bottom of the first partition and top of the second. i have the intake for the filter on the right and then the outlet on the left. So that the water goes in on the right, dumps into the left then moves under the first wall into the middle compartment and then over the second back into the thrid. Im tearing down my ten and twenty tanks to add this to make room for a clarkii breeding tank

so wahts going on mike? anything good?

Nope .... nothing new... have new rotifer food on the way, letting a few hatches go in the mean time. Should have the new stuff here on Wednesday. OC pair decided to lay on the glass for the last clutch and ate them the next day. Guess they decided it wasn't a good idea after all.

So I guess I'm not the only one with hungry lil buggers

There once was a guy that was quite active on this forum who swore up and down that the best food for your broodstock was fish roe. Then he would ##### that his clowns would eat their own eggs.
I know an unexpierenced male has a lot to do with it, but I always thought that was funny.

Those bastards lol.

I recently had an apolcalypse in my brodstock system. I lost my snow pair my black and white pair and my orange pair.
Horrible last couple days that will set my goal of breeding clowns back quite a bit

I moved some nems around and one kind of encroached on their space. It looked like they had plenty of room but they still opted to lay on the glass next to another nem that was deflated at the time. Of course it puffed back up and the pair ate the eggs soon after.




Seriously? That is comedy. Gee I wonder what went wrong?




Holy crap - what happened?

Yeah, not the brightest light in the room.

I split a 30 tank into thrids and researxhed safe aquarium paint for the partitions and everything said 100% latex so i did it and apparently not. Skimmers been filled with black scum.

Oh man... that sux. I have a hard time painting stuff that goes in the tank. I've heard of guys using Krylon fusion without any problems though.

Something that big though - like partitions, I probably would of just gone with the balck acrylic and saved the hassle.


I got my rotifer grow plus in from Reeds the other day. Split it between 14 bottles this time and froze 13 of them - I want to make sure I'm keeping my feed fresh.

Something dawned on me the other day that someone else I knew using the nanno 3600 feed was having some of the same issues I was having - I'm curious if that might of been the culprit in some of my missfires. Anyhow, got a clutch of GSM's that should be hatching tonight - The rots have only been on the new feed a day but hopefully it makes a difference.

TIP TIP TIP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The way I do it.

I think you will see the difference very quickly. I noticed it in a few days. It was like almost instantly. The way I do it is keep a 5 gallon bucket 1/4 full. I add 3 mls to a dosing syringe and draw it upto 10mls then add 2.5mls of the dilution twice daily. I have 2 buckets and that works perfectly. If a friend comes and watches the tank it make it easy for him to. I also don't have to add the amquel or prime just do the water changes weekly. You are good to go just syphon the bottom of the buckets.

That sounds good... I also need to get my rots buckets up off the floor to make syphoning easier. I suppose if I syphoned off the bottom every night it would make it a lot easier to keep clean.

I just got into breeding a month or so ago. i was into frags and corals and all that fun stuff but i sold it all to try breeding, so far i havent had any pairs that begun to lay again. i bought 2 laying pairs of occ and rodx onyx. i also bought a pair of false percs that i think laid before, and my best pair i got is a pair of Latz. Ithe female is almost 2" so hopefully i can work them to lay for me one day cause i know they are horrible breeders.
i have a custom 48" tank that is divided into 4 sections for clowns to live in. im trying to pick up a snow pair and aussie bw pair to round the tank out.

do you guys use RO/DI or just use amquel to clean the tap water? i talked to a few and they use the amquel route cause they go thru too much water.

i want to get my roti and cultures going soon and buy them.. is there a good write up or anyone willing to let me know how they setup and grow their roti and cultures? like what to use and when to take some out to start another bucket. im kinda foggy on this step.

WoW - sounds like you dove right in with some nice broodstock.

As for my water - I use Ro/Di but my main water supply is a well so I don't really trust it. TDS wise it reads very low but I haven't had it tested so I have no idea what remains. Maby some of these other guys will chime it.

We talk a lot about rots here - I actually killed my first bunch buy over feeding them.

So as far as the rots:

Room Temp
SW - 1.017 - 1.019 seems to work best
Quality Feed - Phyto - Try Reeds Mariculture - I just started mine on the Rotigrow plus.
2 x daily feedings - feed enough each time to keep the water tinted to the next feeding.
If you siphon from the bottom of the bucket you can probably get away with weekly bucket changes. Otherwise at least 2 x per week.
Do not harvest first 3 days - then harvest every night and replace with fresh SW.
I hit each bucket with 12 drops of prime daily as well.

Storing your food it's best to keep enough out for a week or two and freeze the rest. I just split a litre of feed into 14 8 oz bottles with just a couple of oz's in each. That way the stuff never gets old in the fridge.

Think about back ups. - You can restart rots from a dirty bucket - I keep 2 gallons of rotifers in the refrigerater - 1 bottle rotated out every week. Just in case.

I've kept mine going for 7 months now.

i kinda jumped into head on and all the breeding pairs kinda fell in my lap by chance and i couldnt pass them up cause i have found it is very hard to find someone selling breeding pairs anywhere.
i wanted a pair of simple occ to practice for my snowcassos when they start laying in 6 - 12 months from now. the occ pair is a huge pair and the guy i got them from most of you might know his name, but i promised the guy i wouldnt say his name. he said this pair would lay up to 1000 eggs constantly and he has 14 pairs now with 9 laying. hehe

so so much for the simple occ pair to practice with. now i got 3 laying pairs and gotta learn fast cause i want to raise some onyx and occ and false percs.
i see you thread here as an inspiration to me and a very helpful guide. you might see it as 20+ failures, but as Thomas Edison once said, " i have not failed, I just found 10,000 ways in which it will not work"

i cant wait to get my new tank to place my 4 pairs in there. its coming from Cali and it took the guy 3 days to make it. he is kinda slow, but well worth the wait. i got it made from the guy (advanced acrylic) on ebay selling all those mini frag tanks, and custom nano's.

i did have another question. i was reading Doni thread over at RS, and she started to use an ozone system to polish the water then moved onto a UV system. Do you or anyone else use a UV to sterilize the water? i heard good and bad ideas on it and i am leaning towards using a UV to keep the algea and other stuff down. i also thought i read somewhere that the UV isnt powerful enough to kill the rots, is this true or am i mistaken? i would only use the UV on the growout tanks and the broodstock system.
any ideas?

I haven't got into UV systems and couldn't tell you one way or another at this point. Maybe Hyperboy or rrgc50 will chime in on that one.

Oh yeah... one more thing on the rots..

You probably know - but keep an airline going with them. Just enough to move the water - you don't want it foaming at the top but enough to mix things up. I clean the lines whenever I change the buckets, they can get pretty nasty as well.

Man what a read!!!!!

I just found this and did all 49 pages without getting out of the chair lol... Kuddos on sticking with it im usaually a pretty patient guy but I think this coulda drove me to drinking.

Im pretty new to SW so I cant even fathom all the things u must be doin and time you must be spending on this project and im pulling for you! I feel like I need a pair of your fish arfter reading this! no tank is complete without a pickel. I would love to be put on a waiting list for a pair of the Snowflake/whatever partner you find. ill even dedicate my 28 just to them

Another supporter here that will be following along. I have no advice to give but ill cheer for ya

Brian

Right on Brian...

I'm not going to start any lists until I actually have something viable.

In the mean time though - welcome along for the ride.

I am looking forward to sharing notes on the GSM hatches.

do you use a smaller roti size for the gsm? my lfs has a huge pairin 1 of his tanks and is eventually dig them out for me and i know they lay smaller sized eggs and i was wondering what size you are using to feed them.

No, they're eating L-strain rots. They stay on rots for about a week, whereas the percs and ocellaris I raise only stay on rots for 3-4days.

Deffinately seeing a difference in my rot count on the new feed. First I can see the difference when I look at them in a vial - it's deffinately more dense. 2nd - on the microscope slide in a drop of water I would typically have to hunt a bit to find a rot or two. Now I just leave the slide centered and 4 or 5 will swin into view on their own.

Another practice I'm starting since I've been concerned about keeping the rotigrow plus fresh is not letting the bottle leave my hand.

Before I would get distracted - Yes I have a short attention span. I would go to feed the rots, set down the bottle to do something else and before I know it the feed has been sitting out for an hour, sometimes longer. The new rule is the feed never leaves my hand. I go from the fridge to feed and straight back to the fridge before doing anything else.

Another observation is that compared to the nanno 3600 this stuff seems thiner - or cleaner - the feeding dropper stays cleaner and doesn't get gunked up like it did with the 3600. Also, it seems like it takes more feed to sustain the rotifers between feedings. This could be a result of my increased population count.

I joined MBI or the Marine Breeding Initiative today.

It's actually pretty cool - lot of documentation though.

The purpose of the site is to encourage hobbyists such as us to get involved in the captive breeding of marine life. I found some of the major players in breeding listed on the site and thought the logs and details posted could be very helpful.

I think after my first post they asked if N-R would be interested in becoming a portal. I don't know what all that entails but I'll pass the info along.

Well thats some great documentation there and just proves living by experience.

I on the other hand cant help but get discouraged every time i see new people pop up sayin they just got into breeding and already have laying females and just makes me wonder what i could possibly be doing wrong. Any thoughts?

Sometimes it's pure luck.

I was reading some of the set ups and I kept seeing stuff like 75 gallon tank - they aren't even trying. They happen to trip on a pair that are just ready or they inadvertently created the correct conditions.

Man my lfs just got 8 pairs of extreme snows and i have my eye on a female im going to pair with a black male and omg shes the most gorgeous snow iv ever seen. I wont be able to get her till wednesday so hopefully she still be there and ill take a flick. Iv never seen sooo much blue on a snow as this ol girl and she has black insife the blue as well

it took my first pair 1.5 yrs to spaun and the rest were about 2 years. my platiniums are 1.5 years old and have not started breeding yet. i think the thing we must not forget is when they are ready they are ready. just have to be patient. also buying larger fish helps but i enjoy watching them mature.

Haha i hear ya. I just read you guys threads every day and wish i was learning this and going through my own ordeal haha someday i hope tho. My perc that i bought back in march is my biggest clown at 3.5 inches. I got her for 15 bc the lfs didnt like the color and man is she beautiful now. The black inbetween her head and middle bar is almost all the way in. I was lucky they sold her soo cheap and now shes becoming a beautiful onyx with the right diet. Iv had her paired with a black occ since i got her and theyve been cleaning the pot furiously since may but no eggs yet

Awesome thread, Mr. Pickles.

Do I know you?

I think its the bnw. I have a ora picasso paired with a bnw and she cleans lik no other and all he does is hide in the corner. Seriously I would be down there chillin in the pot. I've actually seen the female grab the male by his fins and drag him to the pot but once she let go he just boogies right outta there.

sounds like 1 aggressive female! if my wife dragged me into the bedroom i would be intimidated too!
the male is a little shy..but she will beat that out of him shortly i guess. hehe

i also just going the MBI site, thx for the link. what a treasure trove of info!

Awesome!!! I spent a few days just reading on the MBI site - lots of great breeding stuff. Not to mention that when you post you get the attention of some of the most successful breeders.

Cool site. Found a easy cure for bristle worm stings.soak ur hands in vinegar.