clown fish larva

[sick lid]

Does anybody have personal experience in feeding and caring for clown fish larva to get them past the first week. thx

[Raf]

sorta,

you need rotifers.

If you wish to culture rotifers, you need greenwater.

You may get by on bottled rotifers from the LFS, but not sure if there will be enough to feed the clownfish littles for several days until they are able to take larger foods.

Some have been able to raise them on pulverized flake.....I have found this very difficult at best.

[SW_freak]

I would pick up "Clownfish" bu Joyce D. Wilkerson. I explain throughly how to breed and raise clownfish larvae.

[Xtasia]

Don't feel bad.. there is a certain "D day" that you will suffer most of your mortalities. For Angels it was Day 9, I seem to remember Clowns being much later on. (like day 41 or something)

Good luck

[Xtasia]

Week 1 tips...

Don't have them in your main tank. If they are laid in the main tank, remove the eggs to another tank. Some people encourage the use of PVC or Clay pots for laying... Dad does a good job fanning.

Best to use a small, but not too small tank. Small enough so it's easy for the babies to find the food (high food density), big enough so that you have the benefit of water volume to increase water quality.

Change the water daily. Water parameters should be exactly the same.. TEMP, PH, Salinity at minimum. I take water from the main tank. You have to be particularly anal about this. They will die if you mess up.

Only use a sponge filter. The other filters will suck them up.

use Barebottom, It's easier to clean.

Suck the detritus out, Suck out any dead babies. use a turkey baster, or air line tubing. Don't suck up the children.

If the current in the tank is too high, they babies will use all their effort trying to swim. Try to keep it lower. (no power heads! Just sponge filter is ok)

Feed Rotifersfirst. Feed a few times a day, sporadically. In a pinch you can use ground up frozen BBS (buy it from a store, Hikari makes some), then eventually BBS.

Umm yeah.. Good luck :)

[Xtasia]

by ground up frozen BBS, I mean.. you wash your hands really well, and you take one of the capsules out, scrape the cube gentle with the blade of a knife until "snow" comes off.. collect that in a shooter glass and add some tank water to it.. feed it to the children with an eye dropper or Pipette.

All incidences of Children or Babies in the previous 3 posts = Clownfish fry.

thanks.

[demon666]

what is BBS?

[SW_freak]

Baby Brine Shrimp.

[sick lid]

Thanks all for the input.

[demon666]

oh ok thankyou