Clownfish breeding setup
 

Just set this up recently. Here are a few pictures of my 3 oldest batches of juvi's in my system. Comments welcome! I est. I have between 300 to 400 on the system and another 200+ just hatched larve. Enjoy!


http://i375.photobucket.com/albums/o...hesonsetup.jpg
http://i375.photobucket.com/albums/o...newparents.jpg
http://i375.photobucket.com/albums/o...asof101409.jpg

That is awesome.
It looks really good.
I wiould love to do that but I can't give up my shop room : )
I think I'll stick to the Banggai, I can grow them out in the tank in a net.

Nice setup. What size are those tanks?

Looks great! More pictures!

What's your filtration system like for those tanks?

Wow looks good.Are all of thoes fish from 1 pair?

Yes, All from 1 pair of clowns out of my display 46 bow. They host a ceramic skull I had made with anthelia grown on it. I have 3 pairs of adult clowns, all of them are former breeders with only 1 active right now. Each pair hosts a big patch of anthelia.

For the filtration/Sump, If you look at the full picture, you can kind of see it below the setup. It is a 55G tank drilled on the left end for the external return pump. It is chambered off with a big middle section filled with about 90lbs of live rock. Half of which is tuffa rock and the other figi rock from another tank I took down. The tuffa should help with keeping the Ph in line. For extra filtration, between the last section in the sump, I have Marineland Size C filters sandwiched together in the bubble trap. The skimmer is a coralife supper skimmer 220


The tanks are 10G tanks I got from petsmart and petco. I will be going with the ones from petsmart as they are 1/2 inch shorter in width then the others brands.

Also, many thanks to those who have gone this path before me, I would know nothing if it were not for the threads by FB, Gotfrogs and Rkelman!!

Your tanks look very clean! The only thing I suggest is to paint 3 sides of the tank black. You want the fry to focus on eating food not checking out the neighbors.

Your setup looks great. Great plumbing job. Very clean. Thanks for sharing. You'll need some lids soon.. Once they get bigger you'll start finding them on the floor.

Thanks for the comments. Thank you for the suggestion about painting, because they are alreayd hooked up, I think I may just put something between the tanks so they can not see each other. Maybe a thin piece of cardboard?


Funny you should say that about the tops, I just made a few more from scrap acrylic I had laying around. The only tank without one are the youngest babies on the system. I do have 2 tanks I cracked that I plan to use to make the rest of the tops out of. My wife does stained glass and is going to cut them to size for me!

Good news!... Just checked in on my new set of perc's and found a nice size clutch! Wow!!! this set only took 9 days to get going again! I never expected a clutch this soon. I will most likely let this clutch go as when they restart laying egg's there is normally a high mortality rate with the fry as they get used to getting their boogie on again..

Also my set of O's have started to do more intense wiggleing at each other. Will need to get a tile or pot or something for them to feel more at home. The only thing in with them now is a big ball of cheato and a small patch of anthelia.

Here is a picture of the new percs egg's!
http://i375.photobucket.com/albums/o...wpercseggs.jpg

awesome. Congrats!

You got them to host Xenia? I might try that.

I have 3 pairs of adult clowns( 2 sets of currently breeding True percs and 1 set of O's that are not breeding) that have formally been breeders and they all host Anthelia, its similar to Xenia. Its long and flowing and provides plenty of shelter. I also have a single O clown in a 16G bow front and he also hosts a patch of anthelia. They seem to really like it and are almost always in it.

Just need to get a set of Black and white O's to put a variety to my offerings.

My breeding pair of B&W's used to be hosted by Xenia until I got my Blue Haddoni. It was pretty cool. They would disappear in the Xenia.

I see you are from Colonie. Where did you get your shop lights? I went around looking for some recently and could not find them at Lowes or HD.

I got them from Home Depot. They are the only place I have been able to find the T5 Shop lights. They are decently priced. They have single bulb units and double bulb units. Kind of wish I went with the single bulb units to cut down on algae cleaning.


I did add another set of my clowns onto my system. They seem to be doing good. My Temps went from 82 in my setup to 80 with this tanks addition. I mostly have the heat at 82 to get the Adult clowns I have on the system to breed. Once I get another home for my Adults,
i will keep this at 78-80. I have been working on a small 30 gallon breeder with a 30 gallon sump as a broodstock setup. I have it divided into three sections with individuals drains into the sump. I am using a design I was originally going to do a small clownfish growout system with. I am filling it with water today and doing a third leak test before adding salt and substrate.

Now the bad......... I hatched a set of clowns a few days ago. I bought a brandnew heater to use for this set of fry. About an hour after putting the new heater in the fry tank, I started smelling a plastic burning smell in the house. I am searching everywhere and finally discovered it to be my new heater. Water very hot. I got to it in time to see the end of the heater blowoff in the water. Horrible plastic burning smell in the tank. Thought the fry may survive, but they all were dead by the next morning. So that was my Friday the 13'th thing. I should have realized something would go wrong when the lady at the store empathized the part about keeping my reciept in case the heater had an issue.. First exploding heater I bought. The other bad part is the tank I used for this set of fry will not be able to be used again. No matter how many times I wash it out, I can still smell the burnt plastic smell in it. Last thing I want to do is poisen more of my fry.

Also the heater in my second youngest Fry tank died as well. Didnt notice this until yesterday morning. Water down to 70 and they were swimming funny. Fixed that with another new heater and they seem to doing ok. I think they should make it..

New pictures of the setup and one of my new broodstock setup. Somewhat small but will hold the pairs I need it to hold. Also can be dubed as a small growout system for those of you that dont want to setup something bug and expensive. Most of it was pretty cheap as I got excellent deals on used things over the last few months that I had been collecting.
http://i375.photobucket.com/albums/o.../1115setup.jpg
http://i375.photobucket.com/albums/o...roodstock1.jpg

Also let me know if you ever need rotifers. I currently have just about 40 gallons culturing in my basement. 1 20 gallon container and 4 5 gallon ones. Going to be takeing down some of my 5 gallons shortly as this hatch has perished..... So far my luck has been I either have really good survival rates or near total losses....

looks fantastic john.

Mind if i ask what type of heaters are being used?

Also - do you notice if the length of lighting impacts whether they have a clutch or not?

I havnt noticed any difference in there routine depending on the lighting schedule. I would have noticed a difference as I hatch in the display tank and then siphon them off. When it is hatch day, I leave the lights on overnight so I can dark the tank out/hatch the next morning after I get the kids off to school. It turns out the light are on for a long time this day, so I turn them off for 24 hours or so after they hatch. I try to help control algae buildup this way. After this I go back to somewhat of a normal lighting schedule. Somewhat as I never get back to the same exact time for lights on and off...

Cool. I might need some as mine have failed I think. Trying to get them to come back. Was co-culturing with some tigerpods. Still have pods but cannot see any rots. I will PM u if I don't see anything tomorrow.

Just pm me if you do. Going to be dumping about 7 gallons tomorrow as I refresh my 20 gallon and do some maintience on my 5 gallon ones. I guess eventually, I could maybe put some of this on E-bay and make some money back off of them!

Sorry phil missed the question on the heater type. Right now I am using a 200W and a 150 watt heaters made by elite. These seem to be working pretty good for me. And they were on sale at a local fish store near me.

On the broodstock setup, I have a 200W fluval heater and a 150W elite heater. I also have a few backup heaters in the 150W and 200W range just incase of a heater issue. I will be putting these in each of the sumps on a lower temp turn on range just incase of one of my working heaters fail. This way, I have a backup. I may also get a controller with a warning signal when the temp gets too low.

Recent pics with the system running.... I am doing things a little different with the broodstock system, going to make them into minireefs. They each have sand and live rock. Soon to have some anthelia in there once the cycle finishes. I have ammonia already so should be short since I used cycled and well matured live rock. Sand is old dead live sand. So we shall see!

http://i375.photobucket.com/albums/o...aro/brood1.jpg
http://i375.photobucket.com/albums/o...aro/brood2.jpg

Honestly if your willing to invest the time and money a Ranco (or similar) temp controller should be a MUST! For the effort these guys take, I wouldn't short-cut my flawless Ebo-Jager heaters (older models ~8 years old) with Ranco controllers any day.:thumbsup:

Just my opinion on ~$120-150 worth of security that cannot be measured as you have already experienced.