yaaay for a pain in the rear...

**THEJRC** · 10-10-2009, 02:12 AM

Alrighty so my clowns are pretty much on egg schedule every 14 days with an 8 day hatch.... it happens, the corals and everything else in the tanks get happy, and it happens again.

6 days ago I plopped a nifty little homemade larval snagger (pvc and a soda bottle with a mesh hole) in... and managed to move quite a large amount of the fry to a 10 gallon rearing tank (i shoulda put more thought into this)... so now I've got babies that are starting to take Otohime b1 and are feeding well on artemia... and of course a new clutch of eggs laid this evening.

Wife got the bug... so it's time for a tank shuffle... the 10 has to go as it takes up way too much space, I'm going the way of tupperware I think for now so I can squeeze several rearing tanks in the small space I have. I'll figure it out one way or another.

But a question that I do need to answer is.... about what time / size will these little guys handle their own in a low flow tank section? Naturally I've got to figure out an easy way to screen the overflow but as far as swimming strength I dont want the little guys to get battered.

V · 10-10-2009, 03:42 AM

just make your own rectangle breeding station bud, im sure your handy enough with glass or acrylic if you got spare sheets around the place. just make it with weighted or hang on movable baffles so when the new batch comes, you just move the growing stock down the line. As long as they are in a warm spot, a simple diy updraft air pump do-hickey

thing & water is all that needed till they get bigger.

Ive never bred clowns before, will do one day though, however bred plenty of others in my time, most fry & adolescences are alot more hardy than you'd give em credit for!!!

**THEJRC** · 10-10-2009, 10:38 AM

he he I thought about that..... and I've got a few sheets of acrylic lying around but I'm fairly certain (hopeful?) that this will be only a few runs long before I can shift my focus back to the emerald crabs. having the larval snagger work was really the big breakthrough, so I figured why not give em a try. I've really got no interest in having a ton of "nemos" taking up tank space while they grow out and really dont want to go through the hassle of trying to sell / give them away on a constant basis.

It's more of a test run I suppose, but then again when I start snagging the emerald crab larvae I'll need to nursery tank those as well..... wheres that 96 tooth blade for my table saw.....

**THEJRC** · 10-12-2009, 12:58 AM

alrighty general update, down to two clown babies... hooray for me not keeping up on things.....

On a side note, I've revamped my plans and have everything laid out for batch number two!! I'm going to try a few new idears that I have regarding raising the little buggers and have even gotten as serious as to load Microsofts one note to track my notes and progress. There was a new clutch of eggs laid friday night as per usual with hatch occurring on the coming saturday night. The collector et all is ready.

For now I'm going to focus on the two remaining larvae who are currently in the middle of metamorphasis, they're doing well and I have everything in check for them. I'll keep everyone updated. Perhaps when I have a successful batch I'll document my voodoo magic... for now let it be said that I've got enteral feeding pumps and a plethora of plankton at my fingertips.

V · 10-12-2009, 06:40 AM

how many in the first batch?

let me know how you go, i may very well follow suit for comparison!

hell, why not, built a nano cause of a random chat with some dude..lol

**Ann Marie** · 10-16-2009, 07:01 PM

Hopefully, I'll get to repay you for some of the advice that you've already given me!

I had the same sort of problem. I have dwarf seahorses and received a aquapod as a gift to raise them in. Well, I knew that the overflow would suck them in so I had to come up with something to stop that from happening.

I took one of those plastic tank dividers and warmed up the cross bar (blue in the photo) on my stove top. I then put a curve into it. I cut the divider to the correct size and I glued the side rails into the tank. I then slipped the divider into place and put the newly curved cross bar into place and voilà! I've now got something so that my dwarfs don't get sucked into the overflow and a nifty little refuge area.

**CarmieJo** · 10-16-2009, 08:56 PM

Ann Marie, that is a great idea!

**THEJRC** · 10-16-2009, 10:13 PM

BRILLIANT!!!

Wifes all ready to hit petsmart tomorrow (I've got to hit home depot for some krylon as well to darken these new sterilites for our next run anyhow). So far on this batch I'm down to two.... they're developing strong bars (two bars as of today!!) and feeding super well on both brine and otohime B1. Cute little fellas. Tomorrow night is going to be especially exciting as I've improved my larval snagger a bit (I'll try and get some pics up) and learned a few tricks here and there with this first batch. To add to it we're babysitting three of the four nephews the 2nd of which is uncle Joes favorite (he's my buddy) and of course he's all over the tank. Go figure when the wife and I need someone to watch the tank we trust the 6 year old nephew more than anyone....

So Will's going to be staying the night with uncle Joe to aid in larval transfer and setup... He's excited about having a part in baby clowns and I'm stoked that I can help mold a little mind (BWAAAHAAHAAAA...) I'm going to try and log a little bit more on this batch and get somewhat serious.... but you know.. more fun ensues... here we go....

So this house that I'm rebuilding... I'm pondering... "screw it, rather than dump the cash on the inside why not gut it and use it for a research facility" to which the wife replied "it's yours, do whatcha want" hrmmm

I spent most of today in meetings pretending to be listening and thinking whilst looking at commercial larval and fish systems... I chatted with the contractor (also a good friend of mine) about some big skylights... since the roofs got to be replaced and a lot of the rafters are damaged he says it should be a "win win". I'm deftly curious what the zoning restrictions and legal issues would be... but it would be super cool to be the only guy in Colorado with "Fresh Farm Raised Shrimp" ponder that one a bit.

For tonight, it's more preparation and setup... and some cold PBR!

**CarmieJo** · 10-16-2009, 11:51 PM

That is great the your nephew is into your tank!

**THEJRC** · 10-16-2009, 11:57 PM

he loves it, they all do at one stage but he's kept his intensity... go figure he's ADD and likes to tinker... hrmm I think I know a guy like that.

Maybe if you're all lucky I'll get some shots of him running the larval snagger for the show us you thread