EGGS!!!

[WhitePanther93]

My clowns layed some eggs!

I noticed them pecking at the rock work yesterday so I figured they might be preparing to spawn

What now? This is the first time they’ve spawend. (As far as I’ve noticed) Are the baby’s screwed? I unfortunately can’t remove the rock they’re on, as the goniopora that is above the site is very much encrusted on.nor am I exactly prepared with a tank for the babies.

 

[ISpeakForTheSeas]

What now? This is the first time they’ve spawend. (As far as I’ve noticed) Are the baby’s screwed? I unfortunately can’t remove the rock they’re on, as the goniopora that is above the site is very much encrusted on.nor am I exactly prepared with a tank for the babies.

If you want to try and raise them, then you get your hands on a larval trap, a flashlight, and some rotifers, and you set up a rotifer culture (a phyto culture to feed the rotifers is optional but recommended) and a fry (larval-rearing) tank as fast you can.

Info on the larval-rearing tank and general aquaculture advice can be found in the first quote below, the other quotes deal with Ocellaris Clowns specifically:

______________________________________________________________________________________
General Summary:

Anyway, that's my species specific advice for this, now here's my general advice.


A quick summary:

-Setup a little, simple tank.
(The larval rearing tank).

-Add the larvae.

-Add the larval food and enough phytoplankton to tint the water green.
(The phytoplankton helps dim the lighting so it's not too bright for sensitive larvae, it makes it easier for the larvae to see the feeders, and it gut-loads the feeders so they're more nutritious when eaten).

-Adjust feeding as needed as the larvae grow; you typically should start feeding regular fish food in addition to the larval food around settlement.


Now the details - sorry, it's still a bit disorderly (I'm working on it).
______________________________________________________________________________________
Larval Rearing Tank:

The larval rearing tank should be setup prior to the eggs hatching if possible, and you should be prepared to move the eggs/larvae into it. Ideally, you'd be able to move the eggs into the larval rearing tank immediately before they hatch, but - if you don't know exactly when they'll hatch or if they've already hatched - you can also collect the larvae after they hatch and move them into the larval rearing tank (sorry, I haven't written up about larval collection methods yet - I'll probably get around to it eventually).

Anyway, for a simple larval rearing tank, all you need is:

-A small tank filled with saltwater (kreisel tanks are ideal, but not necessary)

-An airline/air stone/gentle sponge filter (for flow/oxygenation)


Depending on individual circumstances, you may also need:

-A heater (or chiller, though these would rarely be needed for anything other than temperate/coldwater species; these should be sectioned off from the larvae - such as with a 40 micron or smaller mesh - to prevent injuries to the larvae and to keep the feeders where the larvae can get to them)

-Light(s)*


You don't want standard tank filters, skimmers, uncovered pumps/powerheads etc. - those are not pelagic larvae safe.

The size of the larval rearing tank may vary depending of the species you're working with, but, generally speaking, you want it to be pretty small so you can easily keep the proper densities of feeders and phytoplankton.

For an example of a simple larval rearing setup:

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*A quick note on lighting for the larval rearing tank:
Some species require lighting, others don't; running a light that's bright enough to ensure the larvae can clearly see the feeders in the tank without being overly bright is generally a safe option. A 12 light:12 dark or 14 light:10 dark lighting schedule is generally suggested; some people also run dim "night lights" in the room away from the tank for the larvae.

If you see larvae headbutting the wall of the tank, that's a sign the light is reflecting off the tank wall and attracting the larvae, causing "head-butting syndrome" where the larvae ram into the wall often until they die - if you see this, you'll need to blackout the tank, but I haven't seen this be a big issue for most people, especially not when they're using the "green-water" method and tinting the larval rearing tank's water green with phytoplankton.
______________________________________________________________________________________
Feeding:

Much like human babies need special foods, larval fish also need special foods to survive. For larval fish, those foods (which I'll refer to generally as "feeders" after this) are things like live rotifers, Artemia (Brine Shrimp), and copepods, but each species of fish has specific food needs. Most larval fish need their feeders to move in specific ways in order to entice them to eat, so live food is typically a must.

As a note, some larval fish hatch with a yolk sac that they feed off of, but the yolk usually only lasts about two days - after those two days, the larvae need feeders or they'll starve.


Anyway, for a feeder to be useful in the rearing of larval fish, they need to:

-Be the right size for the fish to eat

-Be enticing to the fish

-Meet the larvae's nutritional needs at the time they're offered to them

-Be offered in the right quantity and density (for example, when rearing Ocellaris Clownfish using rotifers, the ideal density of rotifers for rearing the larvae is ~10 rotifers per mL, but you can't just put the larvae in a 1 mL tube and expect it to have enough food to eat; you need a reasonable density in a reasonably sized tank - also, some species [such as some cuttlefish, which are actually invertebrates rather than fish] may not eat if the feeder density is too high; so too low of quantity/density, and the fish starve, but also too high of density and they may starve)


In addition to these requirements, you (the aquarist attempting to rear the larvae) must be able to supply enough of the required feeders consistently throughout the duration for which they may be needed - this typically means that you will need to be culturing the feeders (and the phytoplankton needed to culture them) yourself to ensure that you always have enough of them on hand.

A lot of people run into feeder issues their first few times breeding, so having a backup plan in place to ensure that you can quickly obtain more of the right feeders (or their needed phytoplankton) quickly in an emergency is also a good idea.

Typically, feeders are best when gut-loaded (i.e. fed something - typically phytoplankton - immediately before they're offered to/eaten by the larvae) - the green-water rearing method (i.e. where the water in the larval rearing tank is tinted green with phytoplankton) is generally a useful, easy way to gut-load the feeders.

Now, to discuss more about the points above.


The right size feeders:
-Larval fish can typically only eat feeders that are approximately 20% of the size of their gape; this means that the smaller the larval fish are, the smaller their feeders need to be. To say it another way, if the feeder is too big, the fish can't eat it.

-Some feeders are the right size at specific life stages, but not at others, so you may frequently need to sieve the feeders to ensure you're offering the fish the right size of feeders.


An example to help explain sieving:

Adult Parvocalanus crassirostris copepods get up to 400 microns, whereas stage 1 Parvocalanus nauplii are about 40 microns. This means that the Parvocalanus nauplii should be ~1/10 the size of the adult pods - the stage 1 nauplii are a good size for a lot of small fish larvae, but the adults are too big.

So, to make sure you're only offering the stage 1 nauplii, you could take a 45 micron sieve and pour the Parvocalanus culture into it - the stage 1 nauplii at 40 microns are small enough that they would fall through the sieve's 45 micron holes, but the other stages (including the adults) would be too large to fall through. This lets you collect only the stage 1 nauplii to offer to the larval fish.

Similarly, as the larval fish grow, they can begin eating larger feeders (say, 120 microns, for example), so you can use larger sieves (say 130 microns, for example) to ensure that you keep offering only the feeders which are small enough for the fish to eat (the sieve's size is the maximum size the feeders could be when you offer them to the fish).

Now, while I used copepods for the example above, sieving is useful/needed for things like Artemia nauplii [A.K.A. Baby Brine Shrimp/BBS] as well, since adult brine shrimp are much larger than baby brine shrimp. Again, it's all about controlling what size of feeder you are offering to the larvae.

Typically, when the larvae are ready to settle they're also ready to start being weaned onto "normal" aquarium feeds like frozen foods and pellets, but these also need to be offered in appropriate sizes (Otohime and TDO Chroma Boost pellets, for examples, are available in a wide range of sizes, including sizes that are appropriate for most newly settled fish).


Larval nutritional needs and changes (Bottlenecks):

As mentioned, larval fish have special food needs. Some species need rotifers, others copepods, others Artemia, etc.

For some species, though, those needs change at different points of their larval development. This means that a feeder (such as rotifers) that meets their nutritional needs at one point in their development (such as immediately after hatching) may not meet their nutritional needs at another (such as 15 days after hatching). So, you may need to switch what is being fed (such as switching from rotifers to Artemia nauplii) to the fish at or slightly before that point in order to meet their new/changing nutritional needs.

We refer to these points as "bottlenecks," as the number of larvae that survive beyond these points without a change of feeders is typically very low or zero.

We typically find out about these bottlenecks by - unfortunately - watching them happen. This can be incredibly disheartening, but the good news is that once we have identified a bottleneck (days 2 and 3 post hatch are common bottleneck days, and there's often another bottleneck after about 2-3 weeks), we know to adjust something (typically the feeding) to account for it with the next batch and try to get larvae surviving through it.

Remember, every attempt gets us one step closer to successfully rearing the species - don't give up!
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Settlement:

Some species need sand, rock, dark areas, specific colors, specific chemical cues, or other oddly specific things to settle on/in (from what I've seen, inverts are usually a lot more picky with this), so it may help to have a ledge or cave (PVC should be fine for this, if it's even needed, which I honestly kind of doubt) and a little sand in the larval rearing tank just in case the fish need it.
______________________________________________________________________________________
Final notes:

Since marine aquaculture is still a developing field, any information you can gather is helpful for both you and others.

With that in mind:

-Watch for developmental bottlenecks and issues with your rearing methods - some species may require fine-tuning things like the lighting, flow, broodstock (parental) diet, etc. Fine-tune your larval rearing process, and if you can't get past a certain bottleneck, you may need to start looking at things other than the larval foods.

-Observe and note information about the larvae (things like how big the eggs are, how big the larvae are, when the larvae settle, when coloration comes in, etc.) and the larval behaviors (stuff like if they are attracted to light, how they react to light, if they are attracted to certain colors, what feeders they eat and what what sizes of feeders they eat at what days post hatch, what kind of substrate they prefer to settle on, are they cannibalistic, etc.).

Any information you get can bring us closer to success.


Finally, this last link gives a bunch of info on rearing difficult species and some ideas about trying to troubleshoot problems with the rearing:

Has anyone successfully raised Sunshine Chromis from fry?

Hey all, So I have a breeding pair of sunshine chromis in my reef tank. They have laid 3 batches of eggs that I’ve seen so far, and by the third day, all the eggs are gone (I’m guessing the snails knock them off or my purple tang eats them). I managed to collect and hatch a handful from the...

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If you have any questions, please ask - I'll help when I can.

I hope this helps - good luck, and keep us updated!

The clownfish specific stuff:

For the larvae (the baby fish), the go-to feed from the day they hatch through ~day 7 post hatch is the rotifer Brachionus plicatilis, typically enriched with a Nannochloropsis sp. such as N. oculata. However, I have seen an experiment done where researchers compared the growth and survival of ocellaris larvae using N. oculata and Isochrysis galbana with nauplii/early copepodites of the copepod Acartia southwelli as one feed treatment and N. oculata and I. galbana with B. plicatilis as another - the larvae fed A. southwelli grew faster and had a higher survival rate than those fed B. plicatilis. In both treatments, the water in the larval rearing tanks was tinted with a 1:1 mix of N. oculata and Isochrysis galbana at 1×10^4 cells/ml-1.

At least here in the U.S. Acartia tonsa is much more readily available than A. southwelli; I would guess (but I don't know for certain) that A. tonsa nauplii/early copepodites could be used as a substitute for A. southwelli.

I suspect that having the 1:1 blend of phytoplankton species would be beneficial for the copepods and clown larvae, but I may be wrong.

Regardless, at least for ocellaris clowns, I would suggest using A. southwelli (or A. tonsa) as the first feed for the larvae, preferably with both N. oculata and I. galbana being used to enrich the copepods and to tint the larval rearing water.

After the first feed, I have seen small pellet feeds introduced as early as day 3 post hatch (see the TDO Chromaboost table below), but more typically (at least in laboratory/research settings) I have seen enriched Artemia nauplii (Baby Brine Shrimp) introduced as a feed anywhere from 6 to 9 days post hatch for larvae. By day 10, the laboratory-setting larvae are feeding strictly on enriched Artemia nauplii. From there, some labs introduce new foods (like pellets or boiled mussel meat) anywhere from day 15 to day 30 - unfortunately, I don't know when the best time would be to introduce a new feed, but I would likely suggest introducing a small enough (in microns) version of the broodstock feed to help the larvae get the best coloration and nutrition possible, and to help them adjust to your feed/a non-live aquarium feed (this way they can transition smoothly either to being your next generation broodstock fish, or to being added to someone's aquarium).

I've seen both 12:12 (12 hours light:12 hours dark) and 14:10 photoperiods used with the broodstock, and I've seen both 14:10 and 24:0 photoperiods used with the larvae (the 24:0 was used for the first 20 days post hatch; the study that used this noted that they used it for better larval growth and survival - the larval rearing tank used in this study also had black sheets covering the sides of the larval rearing tanks to prevent reflecting light, and used the green-tinted water, which dulls the visible light further; so the light was constantly there, but it wouldn't have been overwhelmingly bright).

As a quick note with the temperature and ocellaris larvae - I've seen studies where they've been reared at 26C, 28C, and 31C; the larvae reared at 31C grew faster than the others, but they had some fairly noticeable differential gene expression - I don't know if the differences were good or bad, but temperature is something to keep in mind for both the broodstock and larvae (26-28C seems to be considered the ideal at this point for both).

To list some sources I've pulled from:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/353232451_Breeding_larval_rearing_and_growth_of_black_Amphiprion_ocellaris_Cuvier_1830_under_captivity https://anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/dvdy.46 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/jez.b.23028 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969723009129

Some related threads you may find useful:

How I successfully raised baby clownfish

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[Glenner’sreef]

Those don’t look like clownfish eggs. Clownfish lay individual eggs side by side, not in what appears to be a sack.

 

[ISpeakForTheSeas]

Those don’t look like clownfish eggs. Clownfish lay individual eggs side by side, not in what appears to be a sack.

I assumed they were talking about the orangish layer visible on the rock under and to the right of the white "sack" there (though now I'm curious if we can get a pic of the white "sack" under white lighting).

 

[Glenner’sreef]

I assumed they were talking about the orangish layer visible on the rock under and to the right of the white "sack" there (though now I'm curious if we can get a pic of the white "sack" under white lighting).

Hmmm? Don’t see it?

 

[ISpeakForTheSeas]

 

[Glenner’sreef]

My bad, I thought bottom middle, cottage cheese thing?

 

[ISpeakForTheSeas]

My bad, I thought bottom middle, cottage cheese thing?

Yeah, there are a few things in the pic I'm not sure about (I'm guessing they'd be readily identifiable under white light though).

 

[Glenner’sreef]

Yeah, there are a few things in the pic I'm not sure about (I'm guessing they'd be readily identifiable under white light though).

Agreed.

 

[WhitePanther93]

@ISpeakForTheSeas @Glenner’sreef
Better pic:

Pretty sure the white thing that everyone was talking about is some sort of sponge.

Also should be worried about that cowrie snail munching on the eggs?

 

[ISpeakForTheSeas]

Pretty sure the white thing that everyone was talking about is some sort of sponge.

Also should be worried about that cowrie snail munching on the eggs?

Yeah, either sponge or colonial tunicate.

I doubt it, but possibly - the Gold Ring Cowrie there (Monetaria annulus) is reportedly an herbivore that feeds on seagrass and algae, so it's unlikely to go after the eggs, but let us know if it does.

 

[Glenner’sreef]

@ISpeakForTheSeas @Glenner’sreef
Better pic:

Pretty sure the white thing that everyone was talking about is some sort of sponge.

Also should be worried about that cowrie snail munching on the eggs?

Bam! Clownfish eggs!!! Lol congrats!

 

[Uncle99]

Clowns will protect and fan those till hatch.
Then they will be lunch.

 

[Glenner’sreef]

Clowns will protect and fan those till hatch.
Then they will be lunch.

Nothing says lunch, like eating your own offspring! Unbelievable

 

[WhitePanther93]

Nothing says lunch, like eating your own offspring! Unbelievable

I’m gonna try a larval trap
A quick google search says that clowns will hatch at night as a defense mechanism. So I might have a chance.

 

[Uncle99]

I’m gonna try a larval trap
A quick google search says that clowns will hatch at night as a defense mechanism. So I might have a chance.

You will need a consistent supply of Rotifers enriched with Phyto and Selcon or they will die same day.

 

[WhitePanther93]

Larval trap is in place,and the eggs are still there.

You will need a consistent supply of Rotifers enriched with Phyto and Selcon or they will die same day.

Do they have to be live? I picked up a bottle of rotifers from my lfs. I was gonna get some live ones from reef nutrition but I was worried it wouldn’t ship on time. The bottle is also reef nutrition but it was refrigerated when I got it.

 

[Uncle99]

Larval trap is in place,and the eggs are still there.

Do they have to be live? I picked up a bottle of rotifers from my lfs. I was gonna get some live ones from reef nutrition but I was worried it wouldn’t ship on time. The bottle is also reef nutrition but it was refrigerated when I got it.

I’ve only done live food.
I’m not sure they would hunt something not moving, but maybe.

 

[ISpeakForTheSeas]

Larval trap is in place,and the eggs are still there.

Do they have to be live? I picked up a bottle of rotifers from my lfs. I was gonna get some live ones from reef nutrition but I was worried it wouldn’t ship on time. The bottle is also reef nutrition but it was refrigerated when I got it.

I've heard of people feeding prepared food only (like TDO) from hatching on, but I've heard they have over 90% mortality rates that way. For most fish, live food is necessary because it's the movement that gets the fish feeding.

 

[D-Nak]

You'll need live rotifers for best results. The larvae may eat the dead rotifers but it's not ideal. What you want are live rotifers for two reasons: 1) they've recently eaten phyto which is what provides nutrition for the larvae, and 2) the larvae are attracted to the movement of live rotifers (as @ISpeakForTheSeas pointed out). When you order from Reed, make sure to order RGComplete -- it's the easiest to use for beginners. You'll also want a sieve so that you can harvest the rotifers.

Something to mention is that you may end up with a lot of deformed babies, often with pinched heads and flat faces. It's oftentimes associated with poor water quality or poor nutrition, and also them bumping into the tank walls.