dieing clownfish fry (1 Viewer)

[Jaypilot]

I already posted this on RC so if you read or replied to it their please disregard but I'm just looking for as much advice as possible.

I am pretty new at breeding clowns. I have two breeding pair that I have tried to raise three batches of their eggs. I am getting 500-700 eggs per clutch (ocellaris and tomato pairs) with almost 100% hatch rate. On hatch night around 12:00am I would look into the tank with a small pen light and there would be 100s of baby fry. However by the time I get up in the AM there would only be about 50 left. Of those 50 I am able to keep about 40 to the one month point. Of those 40 so far I have zero misbars.

Because I have no misbars and I am able to get a large number of eggs to the one month point I believe my water quality is good. My question is though what is the normal cause for fry not making it past the first 12 hours.

Is it possible the diet that I'm feeding the parents and maybe the eggs are harder to break through? I have heard of people having good luck on just NLS which is pretty much all that I feed. Sometime I will treat them with mysis but thats pretty much it.

Any advice would help. Momma is holding a bunch of eggs as I type this (ocellaris momma) and I would like to try your advice this next time around.

 

[tektite]

Are you moving the fry to their own larval tank as soon as they hatch?

 

[Jaypilot]

no I move them the night before they hatch in their flower pot.

 

[tektite]

Exactly how is the larval tank set up? What tank is being used, what equipment?

 

[Jaypilot]

Tectite, Thanks for your help.

Its a 10g tank filled with about 1.5g of brood stock water and about 1g of fresh RO water. The night of the hatch I have the pot in one corner of the tank with an airline inside of the pot (I normally have VERY few eggs with fungas if any). On the other side of the tank I have a heater (about 80 degrees, same as brood stock tank) along with an air stone under the heater. On top of the tank I have a piece of glass along with some paper towels and no light the first tight. For the next few nights I add a night light to the top of the paper towels.

Do you think it may be the air stone under the heater that is catching and killing the fry?? if so what do you think I should do?

 

[tektite]

When they're newly hatched they're extremely fragile. If there's too much flow that would easily kill them. It should just be an airline slowly bubbling. Are the sides of the tank blacked out? They should have steady light for the first few days, constant medium level so they can see and eat. When they get a few days old you can start giving them a few hours of darkness, then increase that as they get older until they're on a normal day/night cycle.

What's the salinity in the larval tank?

 

[Jaypilot]

1.018,and yes the sides are blackened. So your saying don't use the air stone, just the airline with a slow flow. As far as the hatch night itself, the lights are all turned off correct?

 

[tektite]

Yes, just the airline. Adding rotifers, tinting the water green, and keeping light on right after hatching is good (just make sure the light isn't too bright as the fry are very photosensitive.

 

[Jaypilot]

Thanks, I am doing the rest of that as well. I guess next time I will just try to use less air with out an air stone. As far as air inside of the pot. I have it turned up pretty good as well. My first batch I had just a slow trickle of air inside of the pot and I had a lot of fungas the next day. Now that I have the air turned up pretty good inside of the pot I don't see that anymore.

I'm pretty happy with my progress so far I was just wanting to improve the survival rate a little more. As of now I have gone from 1 surviver up to 40 in just one month worth of clutches.