Clownfish breeding

rcmike · Feb 28, 2017

Hey everyone. As many of you know I started breeding clownfish last year and was doing very well until I went on vacation and had the system with my fry and some older pairs I intended to breed crash, killing all of them. In the past month the ocellaris started breeding again as well as my frostbite pair. I have a couple of batches from the ocellaris and one 6 day old batch from the frostbite. The frostbites aren't old enough to develop color yet but I can't wait to see what they are going to look like. Also, I'm hopefully going to pick up a breeding pair of midnight lightning clowns on Saturday so hopefully they will start breeding for me soon. I've gathered up quite a collection in the last few months. Right now I have the regular ocellaris, frostbites, black snowflake, 3 pairs of lightning maroons, and my son bought a pair of snow onyx to breed himself. The cool thing is that he is very interested in breeding clowns. I hope we continue to have good luck with them.

schooleyosis · Mar 1, 2017

That's awesome Mike. Thanks for the update.

rcmike · Mar 1, 2017

Whenever the frostbites babies start to develop colors I'll post some pictures. From what I have read, I could get some frostbites, Wyoming whites, DaVinci, etc.

rcmike · Mar 4, 2017

Well, the guy that was selling the midnight lightnings messaged me last night and told me the male jumped and he found him dead on the floor. I decided I didn't want to drive all the way to Huntsville to get a single female. I was mainly wanting them since they were already breeding. Kind of a bummer.

The frostbites are starting to develop some color. Hopefully I will remember to bring the camera downstairs so I can take some pictures tomorrow.

rcmike · Mar 5, 2017

Here are a few pictures of the fry from the frostbites. They are still pretty tiny and hard to focus on.

rcmike · Mar 5, 2017

Also, the new fry rack is filling up fast! Just finished it a couple of weeks ago.

pickupman66 · Mar 20, 2017

MIke, that is AWESOME. I am going to build a fry rack similar to yours but for just two 10G tanks. How are you capturing the Fry on hatch night? I was going to attempt to pull the flower pot that mine are laid on and keep it submerged and move it to one of the 10g tanks that was freshly filled from my DT. Below the two 10g tanks, I was going to keep my buckets for Rotifers. Id love to chat with you sometime soon about your setup.

rcmike · Mar 23, 2017

Sorry it took me so long. I'm in Florida right now. I take out the pots on hatch night and put them in the fry tanks. You don't have to worry about them being underwater as long as they don't fry out. Well talk soon about it. Btw, I'm planning to bring back a really nice pair from a breeder down here. I'll post pictures later.

John Gemmel · Mar 23, 2017

Awesom job looks good! following wanna setup one in near future. Do you keep the clowns in a tank to themselves with just flower pot?

Also I have a single lightning maroon if your interested

Reefrookie220 · Mar 23, 2017

Ok @rcmike when they are ready I'll buy a pair of frostbite, if your selling that is, super cool to see it done and I'd love to support your project by purchasing fish!

rcmike · Mar 23, 2017

Actually the ones I have breeding are in my reef tank and a frag tank, both with anemones also. My newer pairs are in 10 gal. ranks by themselves. I have recently switched to tiles instead of pots since it is supposedly a little easier to get even aeriation over them.

I already have 3 lightning maroon pairs so I'm all set on those. Thanks though.

rcmike · Mar 23, 2017

Reefrookie220 said:
Ok @rcmike when they are ready I'll buy a pair of frostbite, if your selling that is, super cool to see it done and I'd love to support your project by purchasing fish!

Yes, I'll be selling them. I'm not sure exactly what they will look like yet. They are a little small to tell.

Reefrookie220 · Mar 23, 2017

My cycle starts this weekend, finishingup a lanthum chloride bath on my rocks, so I'm a week or two out ! I'll check back here for updates.

John Gemmel · Mar 23, 2017

Do you buy them as pairs to breed or do you pair them up?
I was afraid of buying two lightning from the same clutch wanna to get another one from a different breeder or isbthat to hard to pair up?
Thanks

John Gemmel · Mar 23, 2017

Did you help the clowns host the anemone

Bama-Reefer · Mar 23, 2017

rcmike · Mar 27, 2017

Sorry for the late update. I've been pretty busy since we got back on Friday. Here is the pair we went to pick up. The male is from Doni Snowcasso parents and the female is a Cquest Onyx Picasso. This is the breeders video he sent me.

While we were there we picked up this other pair which they are calling Snowbites. The parents are a Frostbite and Extreme Snow Onyx.
We also picked up a Bashsea skimmer and he threw in a Cquest Onyx pair for my son.

Here is an updated video of our Frostbite babies. They are developing some interesting patterns.

rcmike · Mar 27, 2017

John Gemmel said:
Do you buy them as pairs to breed or do you pair them up?
I was afraid of buying two lightning from the same clutch wanna to get another one from a different breeder or isbthat to hard to pair up?
Thanks

Some of them I bought as pairs and some I paired up. Maroons are pretty hard to pair. The best way is to start with a very large female and a small male. Maroons have been known to kill each other. I had one of my lightnings kill the other a few months ago.