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possible clownfish eggs - next steps?


Blenard the Blenny

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Blenard the Blenny

Good morning all, the other day I noticed my 2 clownfish being overly aggressive to our chocolate chip starfish and a snail (and my feeding hand), turns out it looks like 1 clownfish is guarding  a small clutch of tiny black / brown eggs, and the other seems like it would rather watch tv.

 

I'm both excited and nervous. I have a few questions that hopefully someone might be able to point me in the right direction. I would like to see these little guys open up and live, thrive etc.

 

Quick stats:

 

Nanocube 24G DX AIO

2x clownfish

1x chocolate chip starfish

2x money cowrie

1x small trochus snail

1x large trochus snail

 

 

Quick questions:

 

1) With our tank having just 2 clowns and the rest are snails, would the spawn be possible food for them or no? Might be a silly question but i really don't know!

2) Should i be killing the pumps at night before i go to bed? Will they at some point "break off" the rock and start floating around as eggs? Or do they spawn and then float around? I'm looking at maybe picking up a larval trap online, if that might help

3) Whats with the dark eggs color? It looks like the top of the egg has a darker brown spot, and the rest of the egg is a bit lighter.

 

I'm sorry i don't have pictures available currently, something i'm working on, but due to the location of where the eggs are, and the coraline algae on the glass, it's hard to snap a picture.

 

Thanks all!

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It's a big topic and the short answer is: if you want the fry to have a chance of surviving, you need to get together some materials and develop a method before they hatch.

The usual would be to collect the fry as soon as they hatch (usually 8-10 days after spawning, probably in the hour or two after lights out), transfer them to a low flow aquarium, and then feeding them live foods for the first 15-30 days of their lives, doing large daily water changes in the tank with little else in terms of filtration and extremely low flow.  Now there are variations on this, but it is going to be tough to raise fry in display, the only real chance you have is in some sort of breeder box so that the flow getting to them is extremely low and the larger animals are kept away, and then continue with live foods.  They can eat a bunch of different things, and in time can be fed very small pellet or other foods, but people usually start with artemia nauplii and/or rotifers and take it from there.  It is important to mention that survival rate for fry in the wild is very low, and even with experience and best practice you can't expect all of the eggs to make it, but they will likely keep spawning in the tank, so you will have multiple attempts if you're willing to try.

There is tons of information on clownfish spawning, raising fry, getting live foods, setting up fry tanks, etc. around, so I'd encourage you to take a look at what people with experience are saying and see if you are able/willing to try and raise them.

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IMO, you need to setup live cultures first.  You'll need to culture phytoplankton in order to culture rotifers (it takes a high density of rotifers to raise the larvae).  Once these cultures are viable, you can consider trying to save a clutch.  As DaJMasta pointed out, you should have plenty attempts at it.

 

Don't even attempt to save this batch.  Just let the clownfish eat the larvae.  I know it's weird after how diligently they care for their eggs, but once they hatch, they are on their own.  If you are really interested in trying to raise a batch of clownfish, I strongly recommend buying the Kindle ebook, Clownfishes by Joyce D Wilkerson.  It's only $9 and will explain everything in detail.  Plus it's a pretty good read.

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Blenard the Blenny

this is all fantastic and helpful information.  doesn't look like it'll be new additions for us then, as we aren't properly setup.

interesting that we will have many other attempts though, perhaps in the future we'll attempt to raise them.

Thanks all.

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