In preparation for the next batch of eggs hatching, on Wednesday evening, I transferred the first batch of clowns over to a new 24" x 12" x 12" (15 gallon) tank from Concept.
Apparently they also make small tanks, not just 16' display tanks.
I tossed in a sponge filter/air stone that has been seeding in my sump for a month, matched the temp and salinity as close as possible to the 5 gallon fry tank the day prior.
30-40 fry have survived my blundering's and are now rather fast swimming little guys when they want to be.
Counting will have to be done via a photo to really have any accuracy.
Based on the first batch taking 9 days to hatch, the current batch should have hatched last night and it did to some degree, but we will get to that in a bit.
My DIY LED lights usually dim from 8:30 to lights out at 10:30. I reprogrammed the apex so that lights out would be at 9:00 so that I'm not up till 1:00 fishing.
The return pump and wp-40 also would shut off at this time. My basement, where the tank is located, was completely black and they were left to hatch in peace.
Around 11:00 I snuck down to peak in on them fully expecting there to be 150+ fry darting around picking off rotifers that I dumped into the display earlier.
Well there were a few free swimming fry. By a few I mean 3... ...yes, 3...
As my wife and I were shining a flash light into the tank several more started to emerge from the cluster of eggs. Typically after the male fanned hard at them to dislodge them.
We siphoned up about 25 fry before declaring it too late to be doing this.
More than 3/4 of the eggs were still stuck to their rock when we headed off to bed at 1:00.
I restored all the default settings in the apex and went to bed.
Shockingly, this morning, the remainder of the eggs were still firmly attached to the live rock, So I'll be vacuuming up more fry tonight from the looks of it.
