URGENT: NEMO and FINN are having babies! what to do?

[jeremyan7]

Hi all, so 5 days ago I noticed that my 2 clown fish (tank raised percula ocilaris) were behaving differently  upon close inspection they cleared a patch of palys and laid about 300 eggs.  I have verified the eggs are fertilized and growing.  This all happened after an accidental over feeding (about a whole ounce of pellets) and subsequent daily cleaning and water changes.

 

I have NO IDEA what to do.  I have an Innovative Marine 14g tank with those 2 fish plus 2 damsels.  There is 1 blood shrimp and a few hermits and snails.  Tank is heavily populated with polyp type corals and a few SPS.

I don't really have the opportunity or room for another tank.  What should / can I do here?  

I feel like A) someone will eat all the babies, B) they will go straight into the filter.

Thoughts?

[Clown79]

If you wanted to save the fry, it has to be done in a separate system.

Otherwise they just become food.

 

There is a very particular process to raise fry. @Seabass has posted a few threads on the process.

 

[jeremyan7]

How pissed will Nemo and Finn be?  (I thought they were brothers from the same batch.  (they in fact may have been) lol)..  

I suppose the fry will become food...  sad.

 

[RedCrow]

Parental care of clownfish only last until hatching. Once they had hatch the parents are done. Eggs hatch at night; The parents themselves will eat any larvae that are still in the tank. Unless you’re prepared to spend hundreds (possibly thousands) of dollars and start several mire tanks and live food cultures, just let them go. 

[Tamberav]

3 hours ago, jeremyan7 said:

How pissed will Nemo and Finn be?  (I thought they were brothers from the same batch.  (they in fact may have been) lol)..  

I suppose the fry will become food...  sad.

 

lol they won't be pissed...they are fish and not humans... they will probably eat the fry themselves even 😛

 

They are free snack food... just like how many fry end up in the ocean too... snackers...

 

[jeremyan7]

Ok folks. So ..  here is an update..  after 11 days of maturation, the Fry in eggs looked as if they were ready to hatch..  then Nemo and Finn ate them all over about a day.  they ate them before they hatched.  Then......

Get this..  2 more times..  they laid 200-300 more eggs..  this is now the 3rd round in as many months..   

What's with that.  they keep laying fertilized eggs and waiting for them to grow a bit then eating them all.....

 

????

 

[Tired]

Clowns will do that sometimes, yeah. I don't recall why, but I'm sure you can find some information on it. 

 

They probably WERE brothers from the same batch. When there's no female clownfish present, the largest male will become one. They're sequential hermaphrodites, which means they start out as one sex and can or will become the other sex. Also, the vast majority of animals will gladly inbreed- they don't have any barriers against it. Since, if the only available mate is closely related, it's better for the species for those few animals to have inbred offspring, than for them to have no offspring.

[RedCrow]

46 minutes ago, jeremyan7 said:

Ok folks. So ..  here is an update..  after 11 days of maturation, the Fry in eggs looked as if they were ready to hatch..  then Nemo and Finn ate them all over about a day.  they ate them before they hatched.  Then......

Get this..  2 more times..  they laid 200-300 more eggs..  this is now the 3rd round in as many months..   

What's with that.  they keep laying fertilized eggs and waiting for them to grow a bit then eating them all.....

 

????

 

Typical incubation time for clownfish is 7-9 days, depending on a number of factors including temperature and water chemistry. At 11 days, I’d suspect the larvae were unable to break through the eggs, and they died (egg over-hardness can happen for a number of reasons, water quality being the largest player). Because the eggs were dead, the parents ate them to clear the nest for their next spawn. Clownfish spawning is tied to the lunar cycle; they spawn twice per cycle. In aquaria where the lunar cycle isn’t visible to them, it ends up being right around every two weeks. If you keep the fish healthy, happy, and fed, they’ll continue to spawn about every two weeks for the next ten years or so. Good luck and have fun!