Hey I thought I set this up so I would get an email notification of posts, oh well I'll figure it out. Anyways, my Tomato clowns are laying eggs every other Thursday and then 10 days later on Saturday night the eggs hatch. The first egg clutch that hatched and I tried to raise I had zero survivors past 12 hours. The second clutch which I am raising now currently has 30 larvae that are 9 days old and going through meta stage. I fed live rotifers and now live newly hatched brine shrimp. I transferred over 100 larvae to the rearing tank the first night and most of my losses were dead on the bottom the next morning. I have since learned from studying "Clownfishes" by Joyce Wilkerson that losses during the first 48 hours are mainly from transfer. There were so many larvae in the main tank that I used a regular siphon hose to fill the 10 gallon rearing tank and suck up a lot of the fry, I then used an airline to siphon up the remaining fry. I believe the larvae may have been damaged by the siphoning. Next time I will just scoop the larvae out with a bowl as recommended in the book and see how that goes.
Clownfish have to have feel secure (no other fish bothering them), well fed, and have very stable water quality with the temperature stable at around 80f. My tank is a 55 with DSB, lots of live rock, the mated pair of Tomato Clownfish, a scooter blenny, haitian pink tip anemone ( not usual host for tomatoes but they took to it after few months), some snails and hermits. Water perameters: SG- 1.025, ph- 8.2-8.4, temp- constant 79.5f, 0 nitrate, 0-.5 phosphate, calcium- 400ppm, alk- 3.5-4 meq/l. I have had these fish for 2 years since I started this tank. I have been trying to get my water chemistry right the whole time and when I got it where it is now the clownfish started laying eggs. Good luck.
Rick
