baby Nemo's

Yesterday while cleaning my reef tank, I noticed a brown carpet of eggs under a rock from my clown fish. What are the chances that they will survive or how can I make them survive. Any suggestions on how to help this little guys. Also how long will they take to hatch?

Thanks, Oscar....

 

I wouldn't worry about his batch of eggs. Try to setup a rearing tank for the next batch. They take eight days to hatch if i'm not mistaken. Then you will need to put them in your rearing tank and feed them cultured rotifers to get them growing. Go to www.livebrineshrimp.com. I think they sell rotifers. Check them out. You can try to save this batch of eggs, but it will have to put everything together quick. I think you will need to be there when the babies hatch to save them from their tankmates. I'm not sure if you can put the eggs in a rearing tank and let them hatch their. Anyone else got any opinions on this matter?

 

I apologize in advanced for the long post, i've just been reading alot on this subject and am quite excited about it.

The complication I see is that it is a reef tank and not a clown mating tank, hence the possible existance of other fish that might be waiting to eat the hatching larvae if not the eggs themselves.  

If this is not the case and the clowns are the only fish in the aquarium, then we can move on worry free.  You can wait for the eggs to hatch then at night, shine a flashlight at one corner of the tank, the baby larvae are attracted to the light and would group together  there.  Then you can use a siphon to vacuum them out of that aquarium in to the rearing tank.

By the time the eggs have hatched you need to have LIVE rotifers ready for them to eat.  If the rotifers you provide are dead they will not eat them, the rotifers need to be alive and moving so that the larvae see them as food and eat them.  Rotifers are cultured fairly easy at home with the setup of a small culture station.  You will need to culture phytoplankton to feed the rotifers as well.  You want to grow Nannochloropsis oculata, it is the best single type of phytoplankton available.  

Note the following: the survival rate and health of your hatchlings depends on  the quality of food (rotifer) that you feed them.  The quality of the rotifers, or the nutritional value, depends on what phytoplankton you feed them.  Its the food chain in action here.

Back to the process...

For the healthiest larvae, you would need to combine phytoplankton when feeding your rotifers. Here's the deal, Nannochloropsis oculata has the most fatty acids (what helps your larvae turn to big strong fish) of all the commonly used phytoplankton,  while Tetraselmis sp. produces an immune system boost like that of an anti-biotic against certain types of diseases and infections, this increases the survival rate of your larvae. Now you can't feed the rotifers the Tetraselmis sp alone because it has insufficient fatty acids to keep the larvae alive. So you combine it with the Nannochloropsis oculata .

Here's the other issue, the average Clownfish spawn has around 250 eggs, during a clown's peak spawning age, the number of eggs can vary from 500-600 eggs a spawn, that my friends is alot of fish. The filtration system needed has to be flexible enough to be able to handle such an incredible biomass.

The process is a complicated one, however, it is very worth it, and extremely possible. I'm sorry if I bore you.

Here is the best link I can provide for more detail on this topic:

http://advancedaquarist.com/index/TBN.shtml

 

That's interesting David.

We sure have a lot of breeders around here! [smiley=thumbs_up.gif]

If you do a search there are quite a few pics as well.

 

Sounds like david has done his homework.

 

;D

 

David, you da man!