CaptCrash Breeding - Harlequin Shrimp Fry, Blue Tang Eggs

[CaptCrash]

I have been running a breeding setup for about about a year now. This started off as a partitioned 7 foot long tank and is now 8 x 55L tanks (15US Gal) with the 7 foot tank as a common sump.
So far the breeding of fish has been non existent. I also have Peppermint shrimp, Redline Cleaner shrimp and Blood shrimp this has been more fruitful so far.

I have 8 pairs of clowns of various species a pair of orchid dottie backs.
For the last few months I have had very regular spawning s in my reef tank and eggs from my Blue Tang pair and from a Blue Green Chromis pair.
I have not collected either of these as I wanted to try with clowns and the Tang's and Chromis are not exactly starter breeding species.

My clowns however have been fairly unhelpful in the process so far and have not laid eggs, or in the case of my reef tank have, but have then eaten them within 24 hours or so.
In the last week, I now have eggs from the two separate pairs, both Ocellaris Clownfish and Cinnamon Clowns. I also had about 12-15 eggs from the Orchid Dottie Backs but these have disappeared.

The clown eggs are 4 and 5 days old and seem to be doing well.
The Ocellaris eggs have changed from bright orange balls to darker coloured oval shaped balls, with what appears to be eyes forming the end not attached to the glass.
the Tomato clowns are a day or so behind in development.

I am probably going to let both of these clutches of eggs go as I am going to be away for a few days when they hatch. If not I will test out the collection process with some lavae snaggers.

I have an Algae Cupboard that I have built using 2L soda bottles for breeding Rotifers and Brine Shrimp. I have a selection of Reeds algae products to grow these with. So Im going to start getting these both up to speed, so that I can look to rear the larvae on the next batch.

At this stage, I don't have a separate system for growing the lavae, I'm looking to use black round tubs that I have purchased for the task. These will be plumbed to a seperate system just for Larvae.

Lighting will be provided by LED lighting with a dimmer control. I will control this from my aquarium controller that manages both my reef and my breeding setup.

Once I have some news on how I'm going Ill share some more.

At this stage, I'm at least starting to have some results with the fish which is great.

edit: it's Cinnamon Clownfish that have laid not Tomato clowns.

[CaptCrash]

Whilst cleaning the breeding tanks today I discovered that my Clarki's Clownfish have also laid a nest of eggs.

I am supper happy with this as it appears that these are only a few days old, so hopefully I'll be back to try raising these ones.

I estimate about 600-700 eggs across the three nests, so hopefully I can make some headway with this lot.

[Darr1n]

Congrats. Certainly need time and patience waiting but once they start spawning it should be pretty regular.

Good Luck!

[damer]

well done, sounds great. all happening at once which is usually the way.

if you get stuck there are plenty of poeple here that have raised clowns, with several topics, or have a look at "mofib" or "MBI- marine breeding initiative"

compared to ocellairs, the melanopus babies will eat you out of rotifers, make sure you have lots.

got any photos? we love photos

[CaptCrash]

If they are still eggs, I'll take some photos when I get back from a couple of days away.

Today the ocellairs eggs have lengthened quite a bit and are looking good. The clarki's are also looking to be good.
The cinnamon eggs appear to have been thinned quite a bit in the last 24 hours and are elongated as well. There were quite a few that where white/grey last night and today they are gone.

I have done a lot of reading at mofib but have not looked at mbi. The more reading the better, I'll check it out. Thanks.

[damer]

the white/grey would more than likely be unfertilised and the male has removed them.

[Ben Paul]

Should not be called start of the pain
Should be called start of the gain
Sounds like a good start
As spoken about elsewhere try and get some footage or pics of the tang spawn
This would be amazing
Good luck

[CaptCrash]

Had the first clown hatch last night (just one) the rest of the nest looks to hatch tonight.

Also had 2 x peppermint and 1 x cleaner shrimp (not sure if it was red line cleaner or blood shrimp)

Estimate a few hundred pepermints and about 100 cleaner shrimp.

[CaptCrash]

Last night I had one full hatch, one 90% hatch and one 5% hatch.
The remainder should go tonight.

Overall probably 300-400 fry across the three species. However this morning I have a very high death rate.
Im expecting 100% by the end of the day.

On a brighter note, the shrimp are going well and and look to be active and moving well.

I have included some images.
In the fish pictures you can see some rotifers for scale (green out of focus blobs).
The quality of most of the pictures is not great as at this scale focus is very difficult.



Various Pictures in my album http://www.masa.asn.au/phpBB3/gallery/album.php?album_id=495

[Ben Paul]

Nice pics
Good luck

[clowns4me]

Any pics of your other pairs ?
Also your setup

[Darr1n]

Great pics.

Overall probably 300-400 fry across the three species. However this morning I have a very high death rate.
Im expecting 100% by the end of the day.

Do not let this be discouraging. I went through 9 spawns from a dottyback pair and never got any more than maybe 10% fertile eggs which never hatched . Then I lost the pair to a closed loop pump in their temporary home .

Anyway, good thing is once they start spawning they should keep it going pretty regularly.

[damer]

fantastic photos

.

However this morning I have a very high death rate.
Im expecting 100% by the end of the day.

thats a lot, especially for those "hardy" species.

how are you transferring them? into what type of container? what flow? heater?

[CaptCrash]

As of today, I'm down to 30-40 from the original hatchlings so not quite the 100% I feared.
I think the process I went through with them was to long. There were hatches in three tanks at the same time.
I used a fry collector in each tank, but left the caught fry in them until I had collected them all (about 5 hours in total).

Last night the remainder of the eggs hatch.

Of these they all still look good today.
I changed the way I collected them a bit. Basically I harassed the fry less by emptying the catcher more often. Fry caught manually were put in a bucket not in the fry catcher. I also didn't try to collect 100% of the hatch.


My process last night was as follows

Fry catcher in breeding tank, with air uplift
Use a torch to attract fry
Collect stray fry in a 250ml container transfer to bucket
Empty fry catcher every 15 mins or so (if it looked like it had a reasonable catch)
Once done with catching them (don't try to get every last one)
Siphon out excess water and transfer to lava bucket (10l black bucket with heater, rots and green water)

Lights out to final container was less than 2 hours.

Overall this looks to have worked better.

In the lava buckets I have two air stones, a heater and an ammonia alert badge. That's it.
The heater has its light covered over so it does not attract the fry.

[damer]

you want the air uplift to be just enough so that they cant swim out, it takes a bit of mucking around. a real strong flow can damage them, they are fairly fragile. ive had them in the "snagger" for about an hour with no issues. the best catcher i have used is the one sold by a guy on MOFIB, "chad....something." they work really well and he will post them over. id say your deaths are related to the capture so tweak it a bit until you have it right.

two airstones may be a bit much initially. make sure the light on the heater is covered and only use a 25w one.

[CaptCrash]

I'm using the snagger from chad, they do seem to work well, it's just the tuning that I think was the problem on night 1.

And me being a bit clumsy in terms of handling.

I'll see how I go next time.

[damer]

how are they going?

[CaptCrash]

I still have four buckets on the go with fish divided between them.

They all seem to have fat bellies. I'm going to start doing water change, so far I have only replaced evap.

I'll update with any changes.

[CaptCrash]

Well tonight has been a big failure with most of the fry.

Im down to about 10 fry left.
My own stupidity, I had consolidated the fry into two buckets, then promptly dropped one onto the other when cleaning up.
To be fair I have lost quite a few in the last 48 hours, but it was still a bit of a disaster.

On the positive side, I have three more nests. Same pairs as previous, with one nest 4 days old, one 3 days old and one today.
So it looks like ill get another chance sooner rather than later.

[CaptCrash]

As spoken about elsewhere try and get some footage or pics of the tang spawn
This would be amazing
Good luck

I have some footage of the Tangs at work so to speak.

Im in the process of editing it to something that can be put on YouTube or similar. Ill try to get this done over the weekend.

[CaptCrash]

Another blue tang spawn tonight. No video, but I did manage to collect about 23 eggs.

The eggs are a fraction of a mm (0.2 -0.4mm) in diameter

The first two pictures are of the eggs approx 30 minutes post spawn.





The following pictures are approx 90 minutes post spawn




I have the eggs in a container with about 4L of tank water.

Initially the eggs were all separate, however with no current, they have grouped together.
If I squirt air at the eggs they separate and then come back to the group over time.
I have been able to repeat this several times.

[CaptCrash]

Some other fry pictures from the last few weeks

Peppermint Shrimp


Eggs from Orchid Dottyback


clarkii clownfish fry


ocellaris fry

[damer]

fantastic photos.

how is the raising of the clowns going?

[Dan]

very interesting images, well done

[parrdog]

Great stuff, good luck with all the littlies .

Jamie.

[Ben Paul]

Those pics are excellent
How are you collecting the eggs
Well done

[CaptCrash]

Those pics are excellent
How are you collecting the eggs
Well done

It depends on the species

For the clowns, I use a fry catcher and let them hatch in the breeder tank.
For the peppermint shrimp, its a fry catcher again.
Orchid dottybacks, I have taken the eggs out with a plastic spoon.
Blue Tangs, plonked a large tupperware container into the tank and took out 4L of water whilst competing with every other fish in the tank.

[CaptCrash]

Latest update on Blue Tang fry, the eggs are defiantly fertile.

You Tube video of fry in egg. Note: Its an iPhone video of my camera screen, so the quality is not great.

http://youtu.be/A8qAj_49Ntg

[Darr1n]

Fantastic work!

Great pictures too.

[Lore]

Awesome pics! Nice work