Send in the Clowns - Clown Fish Breeding

[Eduardo]

Very cool. Great job on the pics and updates.

[Azzkr]

Great pictures must be very hard to get pics of those tiny fish. You must of had to take a insane amount of pics to get those few good ones. Keep up the good work.

[Ross]

Thanks everyone.

The depth of field (area in focus) with a macro lens is small to begin with, add in the erratic movements of the fish and yeah, it took "a few shots" to get them in focus.
At times there was a bit of the "spray and pray" approach to getting them but this proved less effective than sitting idly by patiently waiting.

I like how the rotifers are captured along with the fry. The fry are smaller than a grain of rice and the rotifers are just dust compared to them.

[LoJack]

Those photos are unbelievably good considering the size of the fry. I remember trying to shoot my Paretroplus Menarambo fry and they were impossible and they were much bigger than this.

Incredible shots and please continue to update the thread ... I'd love to try this in the future ... and you appear to be having great success thus far.

Keep up the good work!

[Ross]

Originally Posted by LoJack

Those photos are unbelievably good considering the size of the fry....
...Incredible shots and please continue to update the thread ... I'd love to try this in the future ... and you appear to be having great success thus far.

Keep up the good work!

Thanks!

I'll keep this thread going for better or worse.
Hopefully for better.

I'm going to try for another round of photos this weekend.

[Kryptic4L]

Originally Posted by Ross

Thanks!

I'll keep this thread going for better or worse.
Hopefully for better.

I'm going to try for another round of photos this weekend.

Ya stop slacking dude. Get on it.

[Ross]

Without further ado. I present a clown that has survived the metamorphosis from a larvae into a fish.
Note the first white stripe behind his eyes and the slight orange color.




All but that one are still larvae. Slightly larger, but defiantly faster and hungrier.




There have been about 6-10 die in the last few days.
My guess is that they just couldn't survive the changes.
My phyto is being used up at an alarming rate and as a result the rotifers are not as gut loaded as they could be.

My brine shrimp are not hatching anywhere near 90-100%. As a result it is difficult to collect them without getting eggs/empty eggs in the mix.
I think that the cooler basement that I have them in is the main contributing factor to this. The next batch will be upstairs where it's warmer.

[kien]

very cool! Also, that sounds like a lot of work Still cool though!

[Ross]

I'm a few days behind in posting...
This entry is based on Oct. 14, 2013.

Its been another week of watching the clowns larvae slowly turn into clown fish.
Some are still very much larval in appearance.
Most are getting there middle stripe.
Not a fast process, but they are progressing.

In my last post, I started feeding baby brine shrimp (BBS).
The extreme difficulty in separating the live shrimp from the egg casings and the unhatched eggs is very apparent in this next photo.
Some of the fish are smart enough to reject the eggs in their shells. Some others not so much.
They have been chowing down on the stray eggs that have made it into the tank.
This is not good.
I imagine that these fish are destine to die as a result of an obstruction of their intestines.

[Ross]

Post for Tuesday Oct. 15, 2013

I have been observing the babies rather closely after photographing them last night.
The bloated stomachs of some are diminishing in size. Hopefully this is due to to them digesting or at least expelling the unhatched eggs. I witnessed one fry squeeze one out.
It didn't look all that friendly of a process.
Dart and stop.
Wiggle, dart, wiggle, stop.
Drop an egg and victory lap.

Come to think of it my parents dog would do the same thing when he ate too many dog biscuits.


The last few nights I have been feeding powdered flake in addition to the rotifers. They are starting to accept flake more and more. Still not as much as the rotifers that they go spastic for, but its a start.

There have only been a few more die offs. Mostly tiny larvae that haven't morphed yet.

I had the guys at Concept make up a simple 15 gallon tank to move the current batch into in the next week or so.
It's a good thing that I did because, my mated pair laid more eggs last night.
So I have about 8 days to get it all set up.