So this is my ultimate goal in this hobby.
I would love to hear any advice or full details about doing so
Best advice I can give is to keep it simple. Changing techniques too frequently just because one batch didnt turn out will cause you a lot of grief.. Maybe poppa was having a bad day...
You will need to culture your own rotifers (IMO) but not phytoplankton. I use commercial phyto with good results. (successful with 8 species).
Good luck
At one point, I actually thought my percula pair was going to start breeding...My female is an onyx and the male is an ORA black and white. They are a beautiful pair that I ended up pairing myself because my male’s original girlfriend was abusive to him 24/7. She was an ORA black and white too. I bought them as a pair while I was setting up my 125gallon because my maroon that I had for 5 years was becoming a menace, and I WAS NOT going to put him in my new tank to he could reek havoc in there too. Anyhow, took the female perc back, and there was a GORGEOUS lonely onyx perc in one of the tanks and she was bigger than my little black and white. So I ditched the abusive one, and brought home my onyx...I have ALWAYS wanted an onyx so now I was just crossing my fingers that my male wouldn’t be completely territorial about his anemone that he was now able to rest in peace without being beat up all the time.
I put the beauty in, and it was love at first site for my little male. He immediately swam toward her and started doing his little “jitter bug” thing and chattering his mouth so she could see and hear that he was being submissive and he wanted her to stay with him. She was reluctant at first; because she was in such a large tank, and he didn’t ever stray far from his anemone. But she showed no fear and he was DETERMINED to have her. So every time she would start to swim away, he would swim after her and gently lead her back to the anemone. She didn’t know what to do with the anemone, but I watched him teach her how to “brush”...It was adorable. I woke up the next morning and the lights were off, and there they were... A happy couple in their enormous anemone!
I placed a dead clam shell at the base of the anemone as a place to lay their eggs if they ever wanted to breed. After a couple months, they began cleaning the clam shell, and the rock that the anemone was on. The female became VERY fat, as if overnight, and the male was doing his “jitter bug”. I looked up percula breeding online, since I knew nothing about how to raise fry if that did breed, and it said that when they are ready, the female becomes very fat, and the male has a small white tube that comes out right behind his second stripe (yes boys...it IS what your dirty minds are thinking. Lol)...I looked closely at my male, and I saw the tube. I was SOOOOOOO excited!!! I’m not sure what the heck happened, but that night, instead of doing the breeding on the clam shell or the rock, it looked like they were trying to do it in their anemone! After that, I haven’t seen the female get fat suddenly, and they continue to do all the little things, like “house keeping” and such to make me think that they are at least PLANNING to breed...But no luck yet.
They would make BEAUTIFUL babies, but they say you can’t force a clown to host an anemone...It took my ORA clowns that had never even SEEN one, only one night to host my green BT...They also say that you can’t force clowns to pair...That ALSO only took me one night...Maybe those were my two lucky occurrences, and I’m stuck with the “you can’t force them to breed”. My father’s clarkii clowns took about 8-10 years before they started breeding. Now every couple weeks they breed. The eggs are always viable, but he has a 300 gallon tank that has been up and running for about 15 years. It is primarily stocked with tangs, and other more aggressive, and now after so many years, VERY large reef fish, so the eggs get to the point where you can see little eyes and stuff, and then they are nowhere to be seen...It’s most likely that the other fish snacked on them.
Anyhow, sorry for my long story, but that’s my experience so far with breeding clowns after about 20 years in the hobby. So good luck to everyone trying their hand at this, and congrads to everyone who is successful! It’s REALLY time consuming, and difficult to perfect all the steps well enough to actually get any babies to grow past the “metamorphosis phase”. Hope you get to take this on, Russ! Wish me luck too! Here are a couple links I read when I THOUGHT I was about to have little baby Nemos! Lol! They are REALLY specific and take you step by step, week by week on what will happen, and what to do. So for anyone else on here who is interested in breeding and raising clowns, check out these sites. They are VERY informative and they also have some pretty cool videos! Happy reefing! -Ash
ADDENDUM TO MY ORIGINAL POST:
Heya Russ, and everyone else, if you don't want to read my whole story up there, just go to the links. They are REALLY great. I know my rambles can get long and I wouldn't blame you for losing interest very quickly. lol! But DEFINITLY go to those sites if you want to do this. Also, here is a link for live rotifer kits, since this is what the fry should be eating until they are big enough for live brine...I imagine it's more difficult to keep rotifers alive than the actual babies, but I know that the baby clowns won't eat anything but live ones. I will post a second link on a step by step of how to keep rotifers alive, healthy, and reproductive...They both came from the breedclownfish.com site, so you will be able to find this info there too.
http://www.reed-store.com/shop.cfm/Rotifer-Products/Rotifers-Live-and-Concentrate/
Rotifers are very simple IMO, especially if you start with a good live culture. The key is to harvest 1/3 every day.
http://www.marinebreeder.org/phpbb/ is a good site with lots of info, but sometimes a few of the members get carried away with "the things that must be.." IMO and that sometimes scares people away from attempting..
i seen a piece of ceramic tile used i was told they like a flat surface to attach there eggs
I actually got a tile from someone one time and stuff was growing crazy on it!
