Breeding Journal, Species: Amphiprion ocellaris

David Gibson

Premium Member
<u>[Breeding Journal DataSheet] </u>
[This first post should be updated regularly to include new information as events take place or changes are made to your system]​

[[<u>General </u>]]
Species: Amphiprion ocellaris
Social Structure: pair
Size of Individuals: F: 4" M: 3"
Age of Individuals: estimated 4 years old
Date added to Tank: 4/24/2009

[[<u>Broodstock Tank Details </u>]]
Size of Tank: 90g
Substrate Details: medium to fine aragonite sand bed. ~2" deep
Filtration Details: live rock, sump w/ skimmer, bio-pellet reactor
Water Changes: None since Aug 2012
Water Temperature: 80 F
Lighting: 8 bulb 54w T5 Tek light fixture
Lighting Cycle: actinics 9 hours, main lights 5 hours
Other Tank Inhabitants: sailfin tang, starry blenny, bangaii cardinalfish, coral beauty, 2x skunk cleaner shrimp

[[<u>Broodstock Feeding Details </u>]]
Food Types: Instant Ocean marine flakes, Ocean Nutrition pellets, Rods Food Original, Rods Food Pacific Plankton, Otohime pellets (C2)
Feeding Schedule: IO flakes twice a day from autofeeder. Rotate all other foods for the third and final evening feeding

[[<u>Spawning Details </u>]]
Date of First Spawn: 6/26/11
Spawn Time of Day: Evening (not observed)
Dates of Consecutive Spawns: 7/14/11, 7/27/11, 8/9/11, numerous others unrecorded, 1/8/2013
Courtship Details: Little dancing observed in 90g. Not as much cleaning behavior as in the past either.
Egg Size: 2-3mm
Egg Color: bright orange when first laid
Egg Count: ~200 eggs

[[<u>Hatch Details </u>]]
Hatch Date: 1/18/2013
Hatch Time of Day: 10:30pm CST
# Days after Spawn: 10 days
Larvae Description: small dart shaped bodies. Dark eyes and blue colored stomach, but all the rest is mostly transparent.

[[<u>Larval Tank Details </u>]]
Temperature: 80 F
Size of Larval Tank: 15 g
Substrate Details: none
Other Tank Decor: none
Filtration Details: none
Lighting: 30w cfl bulb lamp
Lighting Cycle: 16 hour cycle. On at 7am and off at 11pm.
Water Changes: none yet

[[<u>Larval Feeding Details </u>]]
Food Types: Rotifers from hatch. Otohime A started on 4dph.
Feeding Schedule: tank initially stocked with rotifers and no additional has been needed. A pinch of Otohime A, just enough to dust the surface, has been added 4-5 times per day.

[[<u>Metamorphosis/Settlement </u>]]
Date of Settlement Start: 1/25/2013
Days after Hatch: 7dph
Date of Settlement End: 1/28/2013
Description of Fry: Body shape has thickened and is most of the way towards being the shape of an adult. Orange body pigmentation has come in. Most all of the fry have developed their head stripe, and if examined closely, the second stripe can be faintly seen. Under 10x magnification, the second stripe is obvious.

<u>[[Grow-Out Tank Details ]]</u>
Temperature: 76F
Size of Grow-Out Tank: 20 gallon
Substrate Details: None
Other Tank Decor: None
Filtration Details: Hagen AquaClear 30 power filter (sponge media only), two small sponge filters (each rated up to 20g)
Lighting: Swing arm desk lamp with 30w cfl bulb.
Lighting Cycle: 16 hour cycle, on at 7am off at 11pm.
Water Changes: Siphoning the bottom (approx. .75g) every other day.
Size at Transfer: N/A - converting larval tank to grow-out
Age at Transfer: N/A - converting larval tank to grow-out

[[<u>Grow-Out Feeding Details </u>]]
Food Types: TDO C1
Feeding Schedule: Four times per day.

[[<u>Additional Information </u>]]
Miscellaneous Information:

[You will be required to provide photographic evidence in this thread of each event submitted for the MBI Program.
If your thread does not contain these photos the MBI Committee will not be able to approve your reports. ]
 
Previous breeding journal for this pair: http://www.mbisite.org/Forums/tm.aspx?high=&m=58671&mpage=1#78479

This pair has been laying for me for over a year, but due to it being in my reef tank and other commitments I have not attempted to raise any of the eggs. A couple of weeks ago, I placed a ceramic tile near the frogspawn they host. Of course, to spite me they laid a clutch of eggs in the rocks the very night I put the tile in. It took a month for them to accept the tile and on 12/27/12 they laid a fairly sizable clutch on the tile.

EDBB958A-AEB8-4BF6-87C7-75A9784B31C6-489-000000FD8D9323AA.jpg
alt="">

I ordered 1 million rotifers from Reed Mariculture, which should be delivered tomorrow (1/3/13). I'm already seeing a third of the clutch with silvery eyes, so I think it's going to be close on the rotifers. It's possible I may have some hatch out early tonight.
 
Rotifers arrived today. Getting them squared away, I realized that I have too many variables that are just barely adequate. I totally let myself think, "oh I still have ## days to get ready" and it bit me in the butt. And I let it sneak up on me and caught me not fully prepared. That's not a good place to work towards success from, so I believe I am going to let this clutch go and take the next couple of weeks to have everything better prepared for the next batch.

In that time, I'll:
- have two rotifer cultures running and hopefully densely packed
- have a better light setup. The current light is pretty old and not secured as well as I'd like. I don't want to have an electrical fire or have the light fall into the water either.
- have more salt water on hand. Doing it 5g at a time is more work than is necessary. I have a 35g storage container that I can use, just need to clean it out.
 
After letting the last clutch go, my clowns obligingly laid on the tile again on 1/8. Eggs are much darker now and I expect to start seeing silver eyes in the next day or two. Likely they will hatch Thursday evening.

AB9472CA-80B7-4987-BF72-0B1C90C17091-1468-000002500849D38E.jpg
alt="">

I've got the larval tank ready and the rotifer culture is on a low boil. Ready to rock.
 
I was significantly more prepared this time. I took a picture of the egg tile before placing it in the larval tank, over an airstone, on 1/17:
B7A16B46-2E6B-4557-BC02-48921A3DFF9C-3550-000004950078C390.jpg
alt="">

Blowing up the image, I counted 588 eggs.

I think the flash put them off that night though. I only had two hatch. I put the tile back in my reef tank the morning of 1/18. That night, lights went out at 10pm. I transferred the tile back to the larval tank and turned all the lights out in the room. At 10:30, I checked back and a significant number had already hatched. I finally checked the tile at 11:30pm and there were no eggs left unhatched.

Here's a picture of them on day 1 (1dph):
9C562661-A239-45A1-ADFB-DB621F699F37-3550-00000495081FB559.jpg
alt="">

Every dark speck there is a larval clownfish. As of right now, they are getting better at hunting the Rotifers, and I can see silver bellies all around.
 
Before adding additional greenwater tonight, I checked the bottom of the larval tank for any casualties. I did find (and removed with a pipette) 14 dead.

I checked a few under the microscope (10x magnification) and it didn't look like they had big silver bellies. Their stomachs appeared dark, but not big. My guess is that they weren't very successful at learning to hunt rotifers.
 
Well, things have slowed down a little bit, so I thought it was time to update.

I continued to have die off, from 2dph (days post hatch) to 4dph. Looking at them under the scope, I didn't see any obvious causes, but I did notice that they didn't have full bellies. When the eggs were first laid, I noticed that they were a paler color than this pair normally has. That, plus the fact that I couldn't really see yolk sacs when they hatched, I believe that my losses have been due to starvation.

Researching, it seems this happens typically due to diet of the parents or if they lay a much bigger clutch than normal. If I had more experience and was aware of it before hand, I could have kept the light over the larval tank on 24 hours a day to give them a chance to eat more. I'm not going to stress too much about it though. I think I lost somewhere in the neighborhood of 175-200 fry, but since yesterday afternoon no further deaths have occurred.

The fry now have big eyes, and large silver bellies from gorging on rotifers. I think I've overstocked the tank with rotifers because their density hasn't been dropping much, if at all.
E0A585E5-0C63-4527-A770-3B2949FC38D1-4381-0000054B1684A62B.jpg
alt="">

Starting at 4dph, yesterday, I've started to introduce them to Otohime A a couple of times per day. Just a very small sprinkle on the surface of the water. I have seen a couple of the fry bobbing at the surface, eating it, already.

Metamorphosis is coming up fast, maybe even Friday. With the weak start for the fry, I am expecting to have some more losses, but I hope to have the majority of them make it through. We'll have to see.
 
Really cool! Those big silver bellies are an excellent sign they are definately catching plenty of rotifers. Good luck with meta.
 
Looks like signs of meta have started. I'm seeing more fry curving their bodies when turning and maneuvering. I'm seeing darker pigmentation across all of them. And, as of this morning, I have seen a handful with evidence of their first stripe coming in. Couldn't get a decent picture, but I'll try again this evening.
 
Great News David! It is always fun once you hit this (Meta) stage to see the colors start coming out. Great Job!!! [smilie=clapping.gif]
 
Got some better pictures tonight. They have darkened up a lot, and you can see the head stripe coming in pretty clearly on several fish in the second one.
97485F1A-5BBF-4058-A19B-442EC73F63DB-5131-000005BCC15B6406.jpg
alt="">
D8E250BD-10EC-4ADC-96A0-D4E406DFD367-5131-000005BCB73A5F4A.jpg
alt="">
 
Time to update the MBI site as well and what size is your brood/growout tank? Love the little stripes [smilie=smile.gif]
 
This is really cool, I wish I could setup a tank to do this in. But, the wife wont let me setup a second tank :( I plan on trying to raise banggai cardinalfish within my sump. Just not sure how well it will work out. But I have an area set aside for them in the sump with very little flow and think I may have a chance at a few surviving. Will have to start one of these logs when I am ready.
 
Lance - my hatch reports was already filed, but hasn't been approved yet. Haven't filed a settlement report yet. The broodstock these ones are from are in my 90g reef tank. My other broodstock pair are in a 10g, but haven't started laying for me yet.

Burbarry - The only extra tank I have set up is the 15g larval tank and a 5g bucket in my office for rotifers. It doesn't really take up that much space unless your first tank is considered "too much space" to begin with. :) I'm pretty sure Drew raised his baby banggai in his sump, so that will probably work out fine as long as you can keep them from flowing into the next chamber.
 
It looks like my fry have pretty much all finished settlement now! There are maybe less than a dozen that don't have head stripes. The rest have all started to thicken their bodies and I can see them swimming with the alternating pectoral fin wiggle that their parents do.
B7D828CA-3088-424E-B6D6-73EB9527A105-5916-000006C5DB70CA08.jpg
alt="">

I've done a quick vacuuming of the crud on the bottom of the tank (mostly algae and a bacterial sludge) and didn't find any losses from meta. I'm pretty happy about that.
 
Got a picture of one of the fry. I see now why so many other people anesthetize or "sacrifice" the fish to take a picture. Little sucker was active.

20130128_0001_zps5d39b7b8.png
alt="">
Picture taken with an Aven 26700-300 zipscope.
 
Really great job of posting progress and very helpful to other people who are attempting to raise clownfish too! Thank you for sharing!
 
Top