clown eggs not hatching

[gmneil]

let me start by saying I am not a newbee when it come to breeding clown fish I have about 7 years experience in doing this, at one point it was one of my jobs.

with that out of the way I'm interested in everyone's experiences on what they have done to successfully help the rate of eggs that hatch.

currently I have a system of close to 50 parent tanks, out of the 50 tanks at any given time 30 of the pairs are laying. the eggs tend to hatch between 8-10 days and are not consistent as of yet.

my current issue is sometimes the eggs don't hatch at all , sometimes they hatch right on time, and sometimes they partially hatch over a course of a couple days. however every time some of the eggs tend to fungus and turn white even on good hatches that seems to happen.

the parents diet used to be pe mysis during the week and spectrum pellets on the weekends. I have heard that pe mysis my make the egg shells harder and thus the lack of hatching, so about 2 weeks ago I switched to a variety of different pellets and stopped the pe mysis.

parent tanks are 78-80 and I match the rearing tank with parent tank water and same temp as they were in. all clowns lay on tiles, the air flow over the tiles is good no issues there.

anyone have any tips or tricks that they know may help the success rate of the clowns to actually hatch?

the ones that hatch I have great success with its just the lack of the hatch I am working on now

[wantsalotta]

How is the hatch if left in the broodstock tank?

[chitown tom]

My only advise would be to add some frozen food to the mix.

I use LRS fertility frenzy once a day on my pairs. I have found that not only are the eggs of good quality but the size of the clutches grew too! Way more eggs!

And the Mysis is defiantly correct, it will cause harder egg shells which leads to more work for the fry to break out of. I never feed laying pairs Mysis.

The other thought I would have is why are they not consistent? I have found that once they lay I can set my watch to the next time they lay.

I use an apex and everything is automated. Temperature never fluctuates, lights are on/off at the exact same time, ect.

[gmneil]

@ wantsalotta its hard to tell because if they don't hatch then the parents would pick them off the tile anyways, I don't get to them till later in the night as I work full time and just do the clowns on the side after.


@chitown tom I wonder if having all the breeding pairs in the same water may throw them off some times they don't lay at all sometimes they lay every couple weeks, one pair even laid a new batch of eggs right next to a batch that hadn't hatched yet and wasn't supposed to until the next day lol..

I think maybe all the hormones in the water may effect it, but I also think those same hormones are what help the pairs to want to lay as well

[maxheadroom]

You can give the eggs a methylene blue dip.