INTRO TO CLOWNFISH
by Michelle Tsai
Breeding clownfish can be extremely fun, but also tiring! It’s like having newborns, but hundreds of them (if you know what I mean, moms and dads). The important thing to understand is that different breeders have different strategies of breeding clownfish, and depending on the type of clownfish, the methods would somewhat vary. For example, Perculas grow slower than Ocellaris, so their feeding schedules are different. In this article, I will share my experience of successfully breeding Ocellaris Clownfish.
GETTING STARTED
Materials:
- ½ gal, 2 gal, 5 gal, 10 gal tanks
- Air pump w/ tubing and air stone
- A tubing valve to adjust the bubbles
- Small 25W heater
- Thermometer
- Ammonia Alert Badge
- PH Alert Badge
- Siphon made from rigid and flexible
- Pipette
- Coffee filters or rotifer strainer
- A dense rotifer culture
- Baby brine shrimp
- Marine flake food
- Selcon
- Salinity: 1.020
- Temperature: 84 degrees
- Everything else same as main tank
LAYING EGGS
The eggs are usually laid about two hours before lights out. You will see the parents busily cleaning their home to prepare the eggs.
Here are some videos of them cleaning
In this video, if you look closely, you can see a tube hanging off the female’s belly
In this video, you can see the female rubbing her belly against the pot to lay eggs
Eggs are laid. The male takes care of them.
Once the eggs are laid, they will be orange and then they turn black. The eggs will begin developing silver eyes at about day 6~8, that’s when they’re ready to hatch within a day or two.
CAPTURING FRY
First time
If this is the first batch of eggs, you’re probably not sure when exactly they will hatch. This is what you can do.
Eggs with silver eyes. Either hatching that same night or the following night.
Let’s say, on day 6, you see the eggs with silver eyes, then you’ll need to get a flashlight and wait by the tank after lights out for about an hour or so. Make sure all the pumps are off. Shine the flashlight at the eggs. If you see fry hatching (look all around the tank), quickly remove the egg mass from the tank and put it in the nursery that you set up for the fry. From this point on, every batch will most likely hatch on day 6, you won’t have to play the waiting game anymore. If after waiting about two hours or so, you don’t see them hatching, then turn the powerhead back on and go to sleep. Repeat the steps the following night.
If the egg mass is laid on something that you can’t remove, what you’d have to do is turn off all the pumps, wait for the eggs to hatch, and scoop up the fry with a cup and transfer them into the nursery.
Then, after all the eggs hatched, do the following method:
Terracotta Pot or Tile Method
I find that the best way to hatch the clownfish fry is to put a terracotta pot near anemone hosting the clownfish pair so that they will lay their eggs in the pot. I’ve seen people use tile and plastic, but the pot works better for me because the parent pair usually prefer to lay their eggs in a cave. By doing so, you can remove the pot the night of hatching and put it in the fry tank instead of trying to find them in the main tank after the lights go out.
On the night of hatching, after lights go out, remove the pot from the main tank and place it in the nursery. The pot has a small hole underneath. Put the tubing through the hole from the bottom, and attach the airstone from the inside of the pot. Do this very gently in the nursery tank, don’t crush the eggs. Place the airstone near the egg mass so that the bubbles keep the eggs moving. Turn the bubbles to about medium strong, not too strong or it’ll blast the eggs off and kill the fry. Cover the tank completely so no light penetrates through. You can actually set up the tank in a room or bathroom without windows and just close the door.
Wait about an hour and you can check on them. If not all the eggs hatched, wait another hour or so.
SET UP TANKS
Hatchery Tank Set Up
Some time before the eggs hatch, you want to set up the hatchery and/or the nursery so that the temperature is the same as the main tank.
Once the eggs hatch, you can either continue to raise the fry in the hatching tank, or transfer them to a nursery tank using a cup.
Note: I don’t recommend using a standard 10 gallon tank for raising fry, mainly because of its shape. It’s hard to disperse the heat (from the heater) evenly throughout the tank using a bubbler. I recommend a 1~5 gallon tall tank depending on the egg mass size. The smaller the water volume, the more work it is for you to maintain water quality (a lot of water changes throughout the day). But the bigger the water volume, the harder it is to keep rotifer density high enough for the fry.
Nursery Tank Environment
Stage: Day 1 ~ 2 weeks.
Tank Size: 1-gallon container.
What To Add: A heater set for 84 degrees, a thermometer, a bubbler with airstone going at a couple bubbles per second, and an ammonia alert badge. It’s important to place the tubing underneath the heater so that the bubbles can disperse the heat.
Lighting: I cover the container with a black trash bag. You can paint it black instead. Try to keep the nursery as dark as possible — ambient lighting will be sufficient. If the fry are diving to the bottom of the tank or if they’re spinning in circles, there is too much light.
Water Change: I do about 30~50% water change daily using water from the main tank (it’s better to do multiple 10% changes throughout the day). I took an 8” hard tubing and connect it to a piece of soft tubing so that it’s easier to use the hard tubing part to vacuum the bottom of the nursery tank when doing water changes.
Stage: 3 weeks ~ 2 months.
Tank Size: 2.5-gallon container.
What To Add: Same as above, and if you want, a couple fake anemones. These are actually rubber hair balls purchased from Walmart. I filled in the insides with small rubble so they won’t float. You’ll have to wash them once a week.
Head Count: At this point I have about 150~200 fry.
Lighting: Normal.
Water Change: Every other day. I started noticing slime build up on the walls and bottom of the tank (this is when I wash out the tank weekly). I simply set up another nursery and transfer the larvae over, then I can clean out the first nursery and get it ready for the next cleaning day a week later.
Stage: 2 months+.
Tank Size: 5~10 gallon tank. Just upgrade tank size as they get bigger.
What To Add: Just a regular set up with a HOB filter would be fine.
Water Change: Our tank at this stage is connected to the main tank, and we don’t have to worry about temperature, aeration, or cleaning.
FEEDING
Upon Hatching:
The first stage of feeding is rotifers. When feeding rotifers, you want to use a strainer to sift out the rotifers, but not the water. If you don’t have a rotifer strainer you can use a coffee filter. Try not to get any rotifer water into the already-small-and-easy-to-dirty nursery tank.
For the first week, you’ll need to feed at least 5 times a day. As far as how much rotifers to add, that’s trial and error and experience. You’ll want about 100 rotifers per inch square, so that the larvae can run into rotifers without having to swim much. Also, keep the nursery tank water a translucent green (add phytoplankton) so that the rotifers will have food to eat as well, but check to make sure ammonia level doesn’t spike.
Week 2:
After the first week, when you start seeing the first white stripe on the larvae, you can start adding powdered flake and brine nauplii to their diet. To make the baby brine more nutritional, soak them in Selcon. Selcon contains fatty acids for the larvae. Continue to feed rotifers as well for a more nutritional diet.
Week 4:
You’ll see all three white stripes developed. At this point you can introduce Cyclop-eeze, a very nutritional food source, to their diet.
Week 8 and on:
They’ll pig anything…
IMPORTANT THINGS
I have found that some of these factors contribute greatly to the survival rate of the fry, ranked in order from highest priority:
Food
Clownfish fry would survive best when fed good amount of rotifers from the beginning. I have guided many people on breeding clownfish, but the majority failed due to poor food source. Many people just could not keep a good dense rotifer culture to keep the fry fed, and by the end of week 1, they all dropped like flies. If you don’t have a good dense rotifer culture, you won’t be able to raise a good batch of clowns. Read my article on how to raise rotifers here.
Lighting
Actually by lighting, I mean the amount of light on the tank. When these fish are born, they can barely see. But most of the time, any light on top of the tank would send them diving to the bottom or spin in circles trying to hide from the lights. When you see this, just prop the lights higher until they can swim freely. I just use ambient lighting from other tanks. Another VERY important thing is: make sure to wrap the tank in black plastic or paint the fry tank black so that light doesn’t penetrate through. You can also add live phytoplanktonplankton into the tank to help the fry see better, AND the phytoplanktonplankton can be food to keep the rotifers in the fry tank fed as well.
Water Quality
Of course, water quality. Yes, you have to do water changes daily in the beginning. Don’t you change your kids’ diapers multiple times a day? I do about 30~50% water change in my fry tank since it is very small. I just used main tank water, it’s more convenient, but I do add some RO water each time to lower the salinity to 1.020. When you do a water change, you should use an airline with hard tubing attached to one end to vacuum the bottom of the nursery tank.
Temperature
I keep the temperature of the fry tank above 80 at all times. Actually I keep it at 84~85 because I’ve noticed a big difference in the speed of growth when the temperature is higher. It also makes a difference in the time it takes for them to develop their stripes.
Follow the Instructions!
I’ve seen so many people fail just because they don’t follow the instructions! I would tell them to feed rotifers and they would try only baby brine to see if it works… or they would try to raise them in their sump. If we could raise clownfish fry in our sumps, everybody’s tanks would have clownfish popping up here and there.
LAST NOTE
Well. Good luck to you alll, and I hope you will have a successful experience after reading this. Make sure you check out the other articles on this website!
