Amphiprion percula Onxy Clownfish Breeding Log - continued

[mpedersen]

Let me get you all caught up or give you some background info if you're reading my Percula Breeding Log for the first time.

I don't have the time to copy over all I posted at Reef Central, and since my "departure" seems permanent, I'll just suggest getting caught up by reviewing the thread (which was the January '07 Thread Of The Month) here - http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showt ... did=934645

During my "downtime" in the back and forth with a RC mod, I kept a log of what was going on locally on my laptop. Here's that info:

1-26-07 - 9:00 pm - did another 5 gallon water change on the GBG / Perc tank this evening...50% change + a carbon change and rinsed all the mechanical sponges in the Duetto. Surprisingly, I found one baby percula DOA. Don't have a clue as to why it died.

1-28-07 - Batch VIII - 22 days old this evening, they've been sold and the breeder net is OUT of my SPS tank! 81 was the final headcount. Batch VI, 47 days old, only one showing 2nd stripes at this time. Thinking it may be a lighting or water quality issue?
Batch III - 97 days old, looking good but not nearly the black development that Batch I had at this point in time.
Batch I - 124 days old, stripes are continuing to form. Black is starting to develop on 2nd dorsal fin. "Stripey" may have the beginnings of a tailstripe?

1-29-07
Batch VI has just been put through a lot. Unplugged the heater last night and forgot to plug it back in. Didn't notice until 7:45 PM today. Water temp is 63.8F. GBG's seem unaffected, but clowns huddled in the corners (noticed it this morning but thought it was because the lights had just turned back on!). Worried I might lose it all.

1-30-07
2 more percs went out as gifts to a friend, along with 2 GBG's.
5:00 PM, got a water change (50%). Post Water change Nitrate levels at 5-10 ppm (quick dip). Still recovering temp wise...78 F or so..
10: pM - dosed with iodide, reef plus, marine max (2)

1-31-7 late in the evening after lights out hatch started.

2-1-7 - this morning (9 am) there were maybe 30-50 unhatched viable eggs.

2-2-7 - this morning (9 am) no eggs remaining.

2-5-7 - this evening I noticed the first hints of tailstripes on Batch I. 2nd light added to larval rearing tank.

2-7 - took photos, Batch I is 130 days old, see 2-7 photos for tailstripe early look. Batch III now 103 days old, and Batch VI 57 days old (several have 2nd stripes that are starting to form, but majority still does not.).

2-8-7 - Batch XI has been laid...found it at 9:30 PM this evening.

2-10-7 - dosed babies with Reef Plus and Reef Iodide.

2-12-7 - 50% water change on babies, dosed with Reef PLus & Reef Iodide.

2-15-7 - 50% water change on babies, dosed with Reef PLus & REef Iodide. Batch XI just got eyes today, so I'm guessing saturday will be the hatch date?

2-18-7 - 9 pm - Batch XI is gone, so assuming they either hatched out on the night of the 16th and or the night of the 17th. Batch VI has fair stripe development..

2-22-7 - 5 PM - Batch XII has been laid.

2-23-7 - Batch VI is 72 days old...a fair amount of 2nd stripe development (maybe 50% have 'em now)
Batch I is 145 days old - leaving tomorrow
BAtch III is 118 days old, also leaving tomorrow (except runty Jr)PIX posted on Marine Depot.com

3-1-7 - 50% water change on babies. Dosed with Reef plus and Reef Iodide.

3-2-7 - Batch XII has hatched. Started around 11:00 PM (lights out at 10:00 PM)..finished collection and everything at 12:35 AM. Not a huge collection, but a pretty full hatch (a couple stragglers on the nest) - added 1L Nannochloris to the larval tank and 5 gallons parental water.

3-3-7 - 10:30 am DOH! Killed off 95% of the larvae because I never plugged the heater back in on the larval tank! f-bomb! There are maybe 10 larvae swimming around. Lystmata larvae faired far better.

3-4-7 - 10:15 am - only found one baby clownfish, no baby shrimp. Added 1 L Nannochloropsus (#2)

3-6-7 - just an FYI, Batch VI is 83 days old now.

3-7-07 - 5:30 PM - Percs are laying Batch XIII
3-8-7 - 50% water change, dosed with Reef Plus and Reef Iodide.

I also briefly posted up some notes on Marine Depot for Batch XII, here's a link to that thread: http://forum.marinedepot.com/Topic62574-12-1.aspx

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So Batch XIII hatched out around midnight tonight (late 3-14 into 3-15). The clownfish haven't adjusted to daylight savings time yet. Anyway, I prepared the larval tank for Batch XIII by removing the 3 survivors from the heater catastrophe and placing them into a breeder net in the seahorse tank. The first two took the "net and dump" transfer just fine, the third went into shock but later recovered. Up until this point they've only gotten rotifers & phyto + Otohime A.

The tank was drained and seived for it's rotifer / copepod population. I added 1L of Nannochloropsis, and following the collection of the hatch, first added 5 gallons of broodstock water and then gently introduced the larval clownfish (and shrimps). Here's the last post on the Marine Depot Thread, which will sum up the rest of the story:

Well, I figured out what I was "doing wrong" with my larval snagger...stepped up the flow one notch and used the full headlamp strenght beam...appears that I snagged virtually ALL the clownfish larvae this evening, along with 500-1000 larval Cleaner Shrimp again!

The coolest part that I got to witness the cleaner shrimp release the larvae....she stood in the beam of light on a coral, reared up her tail, and started violently shaking her swimmerets. A MASS of tiny transluscent larvae EXPLODED and all instantly traveled up the beam to the intake of the larval snagger...we're talking like a matter of 1 or 2 seconds. I WISH I had video rolling!

So it looks like the Cleaner Shrimp are on the same schedule as the Peculas! Thankfully I remembered to plug in the heater this time...we'll see what kind of casualties there are in the morning! Gonna dose with Marine Max and Reef Plus just in case...

-----

I started up a thread regarding the possibily of co-culturing the shrimp and clownfish together, but for the record, the fish are the priority!

http://www.marinebreeder.org/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=208

----

That's the update for now!

Matt

[mpedersen]

3-15-7, 1:45 PM - This afternoon I siphoned out about 120 clownfish larvae that didn't make it, and added 1L Nannochloris. There seems to be at least as many (if not more) clownfish larvae still alive at this point. Plenty of larval Lystmata running around too...

Matt

[KathyL]

did you lose that many on day 1 last time? I wonder why....perhaps the snagger?

Back to the larval snagger...
Is the flow too strong? Have you ever tried it with the light the way you had it last night, and the pump at its usual setting?

I am a little surprised that increasing the light intensity helped. My biggest collection happened when the light was almost out due to a dead battery.

If indeed the flow was too strong, and you think that you need that high a flow to collect so many larvae, perhaps you need a bigger box to allow more dissipation of the flow inside the box, or leave them in there for a shorter period of time.

[Dman]

I found each pair of mine are different, I have blacks that will not hatch if there's so much as a single tiny light on anywhere in the basement that they can "see" Means the heater goes back in 1hr after lights out and I have a pari of Percs that will hatch out 45 minutes after lights out even if the lights haven't gone out, per se.

[mpedersen]

did you lose that many on day 1 last time? I wonder why....perhaps the snagger?

Back to the larval snagger...
Is the flow too strong? Have you ever tried it with the light the way you had it last night, and the pump at its usual setting?

I think that I have a loss of about 50% every time I collect fish with the snagger and I'm frankly not sure why. They're all swimming up and about, and when placed into the larval tank which basically is 80-90% broodstock water, in mear minutes many of them are on the bottom. So it's obviously transfer related, but beyond that I'm not sure. I've definitely seen this happen before. It seems like after 24 hours on my more successful batches (VI and VIII) things went smoothly with very few additional losses.

I am a little surprised that increasing the light intensity helped. My biggest collection happened when the light was almost out due to a dead battery.

It definitely helped, but maybe my little headlamp is weaker than some of those "penlights" that folks use. In any event, I found NO stragglers in the tank for a change, so I'm sure that increasing the light helped.

If indeed the flow was too strong, and you think that you need that high a flow to collect so many larvae, perhaps you need a bigger box to allow more dissipation of the flow inside the box, or leave them in there for a shorter period of time.

I've thought about this, basically I have a HUGE screen in place, and based on my observations of the larvae while IN the running snagger, I don't think I had "too much flow" - i.e. there were NO clownfish stuck to the screen at any given place. I DO wonder if perhaps the overall volume could be made larger, as it seems that while the flow isn't strong enough to trap the larvae, the flow IS strong enough to make it a "bumpy ride" while in the collection chamber...HMM. Any weaker flow through the 1" U tube and many larvae are able to avoid the intake multiple times before finally getting sucked in...

Matt

[mpedersen]

Well, it's now 3-17 and the number of baby clownfish has further dropped...it looked like maybe 100 viable yesterday when I added in T-Iso, and now this morning it looks like less than 50. Food levels are fine, so I have to wonder if the co-culturing of L. amboinensis zoae in the same tank is what's causing the problem. I've also been doing things perhaps a little bit differently..haven been adding Otohime A from the get go, as well as added in some BBS yesterday and today, more for the shrimp larvae than the clownfish (but if they were trying to feed on them, I could see them causing problems with the larvae and thus ending up in fatalities).

Oh well. Looks like they're getting Tetraselmis in the tank today!

FWIW,

MP

[mpedersen]

Well, some updates are in order. Yesterday afternoon (3-20-07) we saw the laying of Batch XIV! Unfortunately the larval tanks are full and I won't be here when they hatch, so batch XIV will basically become fish food!

Batch XIII is down to maybe 10-20 fish...clearly something went awry in the rearing to this point. They'll probably get moved out to a breeder net that's currently housing the 3 survivors of Batch XII. It also appears that ALL the Lystmata amboinensis larvae are gone.

It's probably time to give the tank a good once over, maybe even sterilize?

Matt

[Dman]

Two quick things come to mind after havnig a couple of hatches with mass deaths in the snagger.
1. The size of the snagger itself, we've increades the size of the snagger container as I feel that there may not have been enough room for all the larvae.
2. Temperature to O2 levels. When we shut the tank down to set up the snagger a heater is placed in the tank to discourage dropping temps. In the tanks/smaggers with the larger attrition rates the temperatures became slightly more elevated possibly reducing the O2 saturation. Couple that with a too small snagger and a couple of hundred larvae and you have widespread drownings. That's my theory, and we'll see how the larger snaggers playout over the next week or two.
D

[mpedersen]

Interesting thoughts on O2 levels vs. temperature...I do have an airstone running in the tank while the main pumps are off, but it is night so yes, O2 could be lower.

So The Perc Pair has all but killed their former loving host, a frogspawn - http://www.marinebreeder.org/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=312

For the last 2-3 days it's been sitting on the bottom, all attempts to place it back for the pair have ended up with Mama moving it. Only one head out of 5 remains alive...I think I'll just be taking it out, breaking off the one good head, and moving on with life and hostless-clownfish.

I had come to the conclusion that this host issue might be a sign of pending breeding problems, but as of 4:00 PM on April 11, 2007, the pair started laying Batch XV! They've moved the location of the nest by about 1-2"...I'll try to get a picture tomorrow

One other note, the last 6 non-culls and non-runts from Batch VI will be rounding the corner on 120 days of age and boy are they big and MEAN! I had to take the smallest and set it in a breeder net or it would've been dead by morning. I have 7 more, of which 3 are culls that need to be destroyed and 4 are runts that are otherwise OK, they are in a breeder net in the "SPS" tank and since being isolated out have really improved in growth and color.

Batches XII and XIII? Well, if I can, tomorrow, they'll be going to another entity for growout so I can free up that breeder net....there are BREEDER NETS EVERYWHERE lately!

Matt

[mpedersen]

Well, this evening I was busy prepping for Onyx batch XV which has turned out pretty much to be a waste of time. Hatching started at 10:15 PM, 15 minutes after lights out, concurrent with yet another Lystmata amboinensis larval release. I end up with THOUSANDS of baby Cleaner Shrimp and a mear handful of clownfish larvae. I *think* the shrimp larvae are a little more than problematic for the clownfish larvae...

Basically, I bleached the larval tank, cleaned it out, and let it air dry (after a full dechlor and chlorine test) on Tuesday. I pour in parental water, then gently add in the contents of the larval snagger and well, 95% of the percula larvae are either dead or swirling about as if they swam into glass or something. I have only 5 larvae currently up at the surface looking for food, and even those 5 don't look good.

To compound the problems, the hatch appears to have been only a PARTIAL...with at least 1/2, maybe even 2/3 of the eggs still unhatched at this point in time (2 hours after lights out). I set the snagger back up to let it run more this evening, just to see, but I honestly don't know what's next.

Since the pair has killed their Frogspawn coral and willingly shifted their nest position following that murderous rampage, I figure I may be able to try to implement a removeable / substitute spawning substrate yet again, but I have to figure out how to secure it so Mama accepts it vs. trying to push it away (she can move a Frogspawn coral with 5 heads clear across the tank....)

VERY frustrated at this point...breeding has gone from great to entirely problematic around here...not even the clownfish are breeding easily!!!

Matt

[mpedersen]

So far maybe 30-40 larvae survived this time around in Batch XV. I resurrected the one remaining live head on the parent's frogspawn coral and placed it in the sand down in front of the tank....guess where the clownfish are hanging out now?!?!

ARG!

Matt

[mpedersen]

So batch XV is once agian down to a handful; I'm convinced this may have something to do with all the Shrimp Larvae (it seems every batch where I've had a shrimp hatch during a clownfish hatch, I get both in the snagger, and rearing goes horribly awry). That's the news. I may once again try to get the parents to spawn on removeable substrate OR remove the cleaner shrimp from the parent's tank.....

HMM.

Matt

[NemoFan]

just wanted to add... I have heard of a similar situation recently. After taking a good look at the larvae, the clown larvae had been trying to eat the shrimp larvae. They were big enough to get their mouths around them, but not big enough to swallow, and they ended up choking and dying off. Just something to think about. Good luck!

[mpedersen]

Well, the official headcount on Batch XV is 2 (two) and we're 7 days in...meta is around the corner on the 2 lone survivors...

Matt

[mpedersen]

Well, it's 4-29-07, and Batch XVI has been laid. - things got kicked off around 5:30 PM this evening. I had placed a large piece of slate in the tank, covering their previous spawning site as best as I could, but it didn't deter them from spawning on the same piece of live rock they've used in the prior 15 spawns. Oh well - at least I get yet another shot at raising a GOOD SOLID BATCH of clowns!

Matt

[mpedersen]

4-30-07 and the two survivors of Batch XV are now in a breeder net with the survivors of Batch XII and XIII. I sincerely doubt they will last long.

So, all told, Batch VI is still around...6 left in the bottom larval tank, another 6 that are culls and runts in a breeder net. And then there's a handful of babies from the aforementioned batches.

I have a lot on my plate over the next few days, a new batch of Bangaii eggs is in the male's mouth, so I'm either moving the male bangaii into the now empty larval tank, or stripping his eggs and tumbling them in the empty larval tank. Looks like I have some choices to make...

Matt

[mpedersen]

5-6-07, 10:15 PM - Batch XVI is hatching.

I'm doing manual scoop transfers. The 10 gallon was bleached, drained and dechlored, filled with 1/2 gallon from the broodstock tank, and is now slowly receiving babies from the hatch. I've gotten 50 or so thus far - the night is YOUNG!


BTW, so far there has been NO SHRIMP HATCH!!!

Matt

[mpedersen]

So far MANUAL collection has been a TOTAL BOMB. I'm still only around mabye 60, and yet 95% of the nest has hatched (I would estimate 300-500 clowns hatched).

@#$@#$!#@$@#$!@#$!!#$E

Matt

[mpedersen]

Well, I gave up. There were maybe 50 eggs left on the rock unhatched. I'm battered and beaten.

The babies I DID manage to collect are in the 10 gallon tank, currently receiving a slow trickle of 1 L Freshly Harvested Nannochloropsus. There is also approximately 2 gallons of broodstock water and maybe 1 or 1.5 gallons of new clean water. Lights have been out, no rotifers going in until tomorrow AM when I turn on the lights.

I REALLY, REALLY just want to get them OFF their existing spawning substrate and onto something else. Artificial hatching seems like it would be such a cakewalk vs. trying to collect the babies from the tank. Manual collection is a waste of time and effort. My current snagger seems to work well, but may be too small. So I ALSO need to devote time to a larger snagger perhaps.

#@$%@#$%@#$%@$@#$@#!

Matt

[KathyL]

Well here's a radical idea:

Free up a 10 gallon, and move your breeding pair to it with a removable nest rock or tile and a well seasoned large sponge filter. Wait until they spawn on something--could take 3 months, but you're not making a lot of progress with the current setup. The day of hatch, remove the parents to their original nanocube, the eggs to a bucket with tank water, and clean, sterilize the 10 gallon before reintroducing the nest with air bubbling over it.

Let it hatch, and you are on your way.

I don't expect you will do this, but I thought I would throw out this idea just for grins.

K

[Dman]

Bigger snaggers are the way to go, we recently duobled the capacity of ours. Made a world of difference in overnight survival rates.

[mpedersen]

Looks like Bigger Snagger will have to be in the works, although I had very minimal losses overnight on Batch XVI. They got Rotifers and Otohime A throughout the day today, and this evening got 1L of T-Iso (to balance out those HUFAs). Things are looking good so far...

Matt

[KathyL]

probably too soon for OtoA. Do you see them eating it? If they don't it will rot in your tank.....I usually start OtoA around day 4 if they've been eating rots well and are big.

[mpedersen]

Hmm..maybe if they don't eat it, all the benthic pods I introduce with my L-Strain rots will??

Actually, it seems SO CLOSE to rotifers in size, I dont' see how they couldn't at least try it. I'm not trying to do a shrimpless rearing, but I think it's possible.

Matt

[KathyL]

Good luck with that....