Clown Breeding

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From what I have seen and read, clowns are one of the easier species to breed. The mechanics of it involve several tanks, a REALLY good water purification system, and the willingness to stay on the job while you are hatching the young. First feeding is very important. You will also need culture systems for algal and rotifer feeds. Decapsulated Artemia cysts are a good thing to have around as well. You have to know when to feed the young and what to feed them. They are small enough that they will only be able to feed on certain organisms of the right size. Because they are so small, their energy requirement (metabolism) is very high and feeding them at the right time is the difference between good survivability and a tank full of dead larval goo. There are some good mass culture feeds on the market.
Oh yeah. Don't forget about collecting the larvae. You can do it with an overflow or you can do it with a flashlight and a beaker. Depending on the intensity of your culture method, you may want at least two larval rearing tanks set up. Higher intensity culture means more larval rearing tanks required. You will need to maintain the temperature of the tanks within about 0.2 degrees C at 28C. Too cold and they will die...too hot and they will die. The 28C temperature is a good round number that is easily maintained. Culture of other species of fin fish tends to maintain temperature at that setting too, but I have seen LRTs at 30C as well.
The main thing you need to have when culturing any fish is a buyer for the end product. What are you planning to do with the young that you produce? Granted, the cost of raising clowns isn't that high, but why even do it if you don't have a buyer for your product? Clowns are very prolific. I read somewhere that one laboratory culturist of Premna (maroon) clowns recorded a gross survivability of >4200 juveniles. Realize that this number was attained under very tightly controlled lab conditions that require very expensive equipment to maintain. Do your homework first and see where you could sell your product. Otherwise you will have several tanks full of juvenile clowns that have to be fed to survive...and that my friend co$t$ money.
 
One of the easier fish to raise??????? Sheesh, i would hate to see what it takes to breed the harder fish hehe.

Dave
 
It might work. I don't really know. If you are referring to cyclopoid copepods, then it would likely work. I have read that some clowns can be fed decapsulated Artemia, but you have to actually get the cysts and decapsulate them yourself unless you want to pay for them already decapsulated. If you do it rightm you can actually get a culture of Artemia going that will sustain your larval first feeding requirements. Artemia culture is very tricky and requires very strict contamination controls to keep the whole culture environment from crashing.
 
I started reading up on clown culture a while back. They are supposedly pretty easy to culture. Maroon clowns are supposed to be pretty easy. I was looking into doing it myself. If I weren't considering buying a house and moving within a month, I would start a culture up right now. My friend and I have just about everything we would need and we have an unlimited source of polished seawater.
Again, in terms of simplicity of culture, clowns are supposed to be fairly easy. If you really want to try aquaculturing something difficult, try harlequin shrimp or just about any species of penaeid shrimp. Now THERE'S a challenge. Finfish on the whole are pretty easy to do. Redfish are cultured widely and very easily here on the Tx coast. Striped bass are commonly cultured too.
 
Well, I have managed to breed much chaos in my time and didn't need a book.
Think I'll stick with that. :wink:
 
As nodoubt471 said ""clownfish" by joyce wilkerson" Yes, it is a book. I picked it up about a week ago and read it through in two sittings. It has a ton of useful information. I got it for about $12.50 shipped through one of amazon.com's alternate sellers. I guarantee that it will save you time and money if you are serious about trying to breed clowns. And good luck, I'd like to try it my self when I get a little further along. 8)
 
Clownfishes is a great book.

To answer an earlier question, starting with just feeding the Larvae Cyclop-Eeze is very risky. Typically they need a live food to get their eating instincts going. After a week or so they are able to eat the freeze dried Cyclop-eeze if it's ground to a powder.

Rotifers are a good food to start with but the Rotifers must be fed a high quality algae.
 
Yep. Most species of cultured finfish feed like that for first feeding. They are attracted to the movement. That's why I said to get a rotifer culture going or an Artemia culture established. IMO, larval brine shrimp would be great. They are nutritionally acceptable. Adult Artemia brine shrimp OTOH are nutritionally empty for all intents and purposes, but they can be used to incite a feeding response.
When you start algal and rotifer cultures, make very sure that you don't let the rotifer culture contaminate the algal culture. This may sound like a no-brainer, but it is more likely than you may think. Use separate glassware, filtration, and utensils to deal with each culture. Contamination of your algal culture with a few rotifers can result in the destruction of the algal culture. Where I work, we have huge cylindrical tanks with wall lighting for algal and rotifer cultures. We also have separate equipment for both cultures. We use rotifers for larval rearing experiments with Pacific white shrimp (Litopenaeus vannamei).
Another thing that you should seriously consider is the timing of the larval hatch and collection. You have to time it right so you can collect them. Some aquaculturists use a flashlight and beaker. You can shine the light on the surface of the water and the larvae will flock to the light...it's called a phototactic response. With the larvae at the surface of the water, you can CAREFULLY skim them off in a 250 mL beaker or similar piece of glassware.
 
I just want to caution that larval Brine Shrimp (Artemia nauplii) are too large for newly hatched Clownfish. Something the size of Rotifers is required for the first several days, longer for many species of Clownfish.

OTOH, Artemia nauplii are perfect for newborn Banggai Cardinalfish.
 
I didn't realize that the Artemia naups would be too large for a first feeding. They are used regularly for many other species of fish and inverts.
Looks like you learn something new everyday after all.
 
I'm mostly familiar with the Ocellaris but other Clownfish are very similar. I feed them Rotifers for 14 days but I start mixing in the nauplii at day 7 or 8.
 
Honestly, high survivabilities like that don't really surprise me that much. I have heard of survivabilites between 80-90% with Premna and Amphiprion. IMHO, it all depends on the water quality and how well you are able to collect the newly hatched larvae. Speaking of, how do you collect them? Do you use the flashlight and beaker method or do you collect them in an overflow tank?
 
Neither. I fashioned an incubation chamber using an air pump, PVC tubing, and a plastic oil pan. I put the rock the eggs are on in the chamber a day or two before they are due to hatch.
 
Interesting set up. I asked that because the systems that I have seen for finfish culture are set up to allow the larvae (and even fertile eggs at times) to be removed from the breeding tank through an overflow/skimmer of sorts. Once the eggs are removed from the tank, they are taken to the larval rearing tanks. The LRT's are very tightly controlled in terms of WQ, temp, and lighting. As for actual tanks, these things are nothing more than a bunch of 20-gal circular tanks with a standpipe and fine mesh net in the middle. Lighting consists of an incandescent bulb and a reflector. The room temperature and humidity is very tightly controlled as well. They use powerheads to circulate the water ever so gently.
The best system like this I have seen was the one I saw at Sea Center Texas last week. They were culturing red drum, speckled trout, flounder, and even TARPON! The systems were set up such that they could control photoperiod in each tank individually so that they had a constant cycle of spawning and larvae/egg removal. One tank might be spawning while the others were in a resting phase. This sort of set up (lighting control) could very easily be duplicated for hobbyist use with small AC timers or even a computer if the hobbyist was so inclined. The shrimp culture facility where I work has much the same sort of system with open top tanks and computer controlled lighting.
 
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