Breeding Journal, Species: Amphiprion melanopus

General
Species:  Amphiprion melanopus
Social Structure:  Pair
Size of Individuals:  4"
Age of Individuals:  Unknown
Date added to Tank:  12/27/2011

Broodstock Tank Details
Size of Tank:  Breeding setup approx 1000L total.  Tank 380x610x390mm 67L 17.5US Gal
Substrate Details:  None
Filtration Details:  Skimmer, UV, Macro Algae, Live Rock, GFO, Carbon, ATS 
Water Changes:  100L Fortnight
Water Temperature:  27C
Lighting:  Power Compact
Lighting Cycle:  7am to 7:45pm
Other Tank Inhabitants:  None

Broodstock Feeding Details
Food Types:  Spectrum Thera A+, Spectrum Salt H20 flakes, Enriched Brine Shrimp, Marine Green, Home Made Mash (prawn, pipi clam, white bait, squid, garlic, norrie etc). Occasional live brine shrimp
Feeding Schedule:  Morning and night.  Pellets followed 10 minutes later with defrosted frozen food.

Spawning Details
Date of First Spawn:  12/18/2011 (that I am aware of), multiple previous spawns
Spawn Time of Day:  Unknown
Dates of Consecutive Spawns:  1/18/12 approx
Courtship Details:  Unknown
Egg Size:  2-3mm
Egg Color:  Initially orange, becoming darker over time, almost grey/faun, dark eyes close to hatch date with silver sheen from eyes 1-2 days prior to hatch.
Egg Count:  200+

Hatch Details
Hatch Date:  12/28/2011 (clutch that came with fish, only two fry hatched, missed remainder on 29th). 1/25/12 First nest for me
Hatch Time of Day:  30 mins post lights out (9:45pm lights out on the 28th)
# Days after Spawn:  10 days
Larvae Description:  quite alert, attracted to light. Small and silver with blue iridescent belly

Larval Tank Details
Temperature:  26
Size of Larval Tank:  50L BRT 
Substrate Details:  None
Other Tank Decor:  Heater
Filtration Details:  water change and air stone
Lighting:  Power Compact
Lighting Cycle:  24 hours for initial 4 days, 6am to 10pm there after.
Water Changes:  variable

Larval Feeding Details
Food Types:  Rotifers raised on Reed Rotifer Diet. Greenwater acheived by tinting the water with Reed Nannocholoropsis, about 2ml, and 1ml of AmGuard for ammonia control daily.
Feeding Schedule:  morning, afternoon and night

Metamorphosis/Settlement
Date of Settlement Start:  2/6/12
Days after Hatch:  13
Date of Settlement End:  2/8/12
Description of Fry:  Typical clown fish behavior as fry, once settled they are darker than most other clowns other than clarkii.  Two bands are evident on most of the fish today (2/8/12), with the head band easy to identify, the tail band is just starting to become visible (via camera, not noticed by eye).

Grow-Out Tank Details
Temperature:  26
Size of Grow-Out Tank:  610mm x 450mm x 300mm
System:  10 x  tanks plus sump to approx 1500L
Substrate Details:  None
Other Tank Decor:  Sponge Filter
Filtration Details:  Bio Ball Tower, sponge filters in each tank, skimmer and weekly water changes for the system.
Lighting:  Power Compact
Lighting Cycle:  7am to 7:45pm
Water Changes:  as required
Size at Transfer:  7-10mm
Age at Transfer:  14 days

Grow-Out Feeding Details
Food Types:  Aqua Pearls 200-300um, Aqua Pearls 300-500um, Crushed Salt H2O flakes, Crushed Spectrum Pellets then to 0.5mm spectrum pellets
Feeding Schedule:  5 times per day
Additional Information

(No Pictures or Videos in the Section Please)
Miscellaneous Information: 
Additional Spawns:
S = Date of Spawn
H = Date of Hatch

S 02/24/2012
S 04/18/2012 H 04/29/2012
S approx 05/01/2012
S 05/17/2012
S 07/03/2012
S 07/26/2012 H 08/06/2012
S 08/13/2012
S 08/28/2012
S 09/10/2012
S 02/18/2014

You will be required to provide photographic or video evidence in this thread of each event submitted for the MBI Program.
If your thread does not contain these photos the MBI Committee will not be able to approve your reports. PHOTOS AND VIDEO S MUST BE PLACED IN ADDITIONAL POSTS, NEVER IN THE FIRST POST IN A JOURNAL.

This pair was purchased with a batch of eggs.  On relocating the eggs and pair, a large number of the eggs were consumed.

The previous eggs, were mostly consumed, with two hatching and then me missing the remainder of the nest.
I collected both of them, but they lasted less than 24 hours.
 
The pair have laid another nest 4 days ago (18th Jan 2012 +- 1 day), Ill take some photos of the pair and the eggs tomorrow.

Parents

 
Eggs

Some of these eggs (5%) are silver today, so hopefully they will hatch tomorrow night or the following.
 

Look at all those little eyes. How cute!

http://www.fishtalpropagations.com/#!home/mainPage
"Making captive breeding easier."

I like the little guy out on his own on the right.

We have the start of a hatch.
About 1/2 of the nest has hatched tonight, at least 100.
All of the photos are of the same individual

1h post hatch

 
Showing the range of colours on the fry 

 
Tail development

 
This hatch was not overly attracted to light.  I ended up having to siphon them out of the breeder tank to collect them rather than them being collected in the fry catcher.

Collected about 30 from second hatch, I was tardy and forgot to turn off the pump, so the rest went for a ride down the return.
 
Total collected over two nights, about 130.

All fish have now settled

 
Sorry for the poor quality image, I was having trouble with focus and this ended up being the best shot.
 
In total I transferred about 80 to grow out.

Second go at photos of these guys.  This time a larger group.  Result, just as bad pictures.
Not sure what Im doing wrong, but I cannot get good shots of these guys.
 

 

 

 

 
 

Finally I got a couple of better shots
 

 

Awesome!

http://www.fishtalpropagations.com/#!home/mainPage
"Making captive breeding easier."

sweet!

How are you taking those photos?  This feels like my birthday gift to myself.. haha

 
I use a digital SLR, macro lens and extension tubes for some shots plus a ring light/flash (not shown in picture).


In this case (last pictures), the fish were in a small tank I had made for just this purpose.  Its opticlear glass (low iron) and about 10cm square and 15cm tall.
This works well when the fish are a little bigger (see the latest shots in my other threads for clowns settlement).
 
The earlier shots use extension rings for the fry plus a ring light/flash.
I put the subject on a piece of clear glass, a piece of plastic over a dark background for fish or shrimp fry.
Once they get bigger I use a small white bowl. 
 
Then I get snap happy, take a lot of shots, generally the larger the subject the easier, however these guys were a real challenge.

Holy cra... cow! That is some serious equipment!

http://www.fishtalpropagations.com/#!home/mainPage
"Making captive breeding easier."

I've also now got a bigger better macro lens that is About double the length of that one.

No comment...

http://www.fishtalpropagations.com/#!home/mainPage
"Making captive breeding easier."

Thanks for the insight!  Do you find the specimens you photograph develop normally?  I tend not to use a flash around any of my newly hatched fry.  At least not for the first week.

I try to keep their time out of water to a minimum, where I have them out as fry.
I have lost a couple when I have been a bit tardy with getting shots or by dropping them when transferring .
 
I dont use a flash generally, the ring flash/light I have is a LED one and it is always on so there is nothing to startle the fry.

New hatch tonight, it was massive, 1 Fry .
 
This seems to be a regular occurrence with this pair.  Each hatch so far there has been 1 or 2 fry the night before the main hatch.
 
Has anyone else had this happen?

I noticed a couple of the fish in grow out from the first batch of these are starting to look more and more like mini versions of the adult.  They are getting noticeably taller and now look more cinnamon shaped.
 
Colour has also improved with the brown now being softer and less abrupt (almost shaded) on the sides of the fish and a quite bright yellow/orange stripe across the top of the fish.  A small white dot is present (part of a tail band?) towards the tail.
 
Ill try and get some photos of these guys tomorrow or the next night, its amazing how much change has occurred in only a few days.

all fry have now hatched.  Close to 250 would be my best guess.

These guys are really stunning to look at, the colour is a bit off in these shots.  The orange is a very brilliant orange more like the colour of the fishes tail in the second shot, across all of the orange in the fish.
 
These guys range from 15mm to 20mm now.


 

Big failure today. I managed to kill an entire tank of grow out fish.

The entire batch of these guys didn't make it plus a large nest of Perc's. About 200 fish in total.

I somehow managed to turn off the pump and remove the air line for the tank and then leave it hat way for 24 hours.

Sucks to hear you lost the batch, but you'll get another chance at it yet!

Great news, I just found one of these guys in the other side of the grow out tank.
Some how he either jumped or got moved by accident.
 
It doesn't make up for the stupid mistake, but at least I can grow this one up and have something to show for all of the effort.
 
I have a feeling he is about to become the most photographed of all my fish.

This is the loan survivor from my air line error.  Growing well compared to A.percula, a bit slow compaired to A.frenatus.  Was at 60 days post settlement today.
 

 

 

Great looking fish.  Just so you know - You're not the only "idiot" to turn off a pump and forget to turn it back on, in turn killing some fish. My dumb mistake was about 100 fish.

-Adam

I really like this little guy, it would be great if the white shape on his dorsal fins remained, but I'm not expecting it to.

He is a bit of a loaner in with all of the percs and tends to swim between both groups in the tank. At times he mingles with them (night in a ball).

I think he is a bit sick on me catching him for photos. Though he tends to be a bit resigned to being caught these days and often just swims into the net or near it.

Once he is in the small tank I use for photos, he is quite calm and the light doesnt seem to bother him.

Between him and my three little occy's I have some favorites for all the little ones.

Im pretty sure the white spot on its fins will fade away. Some of my cinnamons had the extra lines and marks for a short time and others have held on to them for six months now. 

Hey Capt! Congrats on these. I like your photo setup. I used to do about the same, but I'm now to the point that I hand-hold all my fishy macro shots. Especially with a ring flash out at the end, it's really easy to over-ride the what the Canon lighting meter wants with manual setup. Let me know if you are interested in hearing the story.

--Andy, the bucket man.
"Not to know the mandolin is to argue oneself unknown...." --Clara Lanza, 1886

I'm defiantly interested, lighting is one of my biggest struggles. Any hints would be appreciated

Sounds good. Sorry if I get long-winded but I think getting the concepts helps. (BTW, I don't use a ring flash. I use Canon's double headed flash mounted on the end of the lens, but the principles are the same.)
 
First of all, I spent a lot of time trying to figure out the motivations of the guys who wrote the code for the internal light meter. If you consider normal low-light photography (remember that they have normal point-and-click shooters in mind), what really looks amateurish? One of the worst is to see a picture of someone where the flash overwhelms the natural light and the background turns all black. Plus, if the flash is consistently putting out a ton of output the battery life is going to be next-to-(nothing) and if people are constantly changing batteries then they are going to go on Facebook and complain about short battery life. So, my theory is that the software guys wrote the code for the light meter to be inherently conservative, favoring just using the flash as a fill-light as much as possible and trying to get as many flashes per battery as possible. Does that make sense?
 
The problem is that, when you start taking macro photos, these aren't the best parameters for the light meter. First, any light at all is precious so you want the flash to give it all it has every shot and damn the battery life. Second, when your subject is that close to the flash then any flash at all--even low power--is going to overwhelm the natural light and blacken the background.
 
Personally, I'm okay with blackening out the background for most shots, especially when that choice makes my life so much easier. You have to make that choice for yourself but I'd bet that, given your avatar photo, that you'd often agree with me.
 
Given that I'm fine with the black background, the only problem that I still face is to figure out a way to get around the auto settings for the flash. You pretty much have to go to full manual settings to get this to work, but even on full manual the Canon software still tries to be as conservative as possible and the light meter information inside the view finder is based on using the flash solely as a fill light.
 
What I've found is that when I ignore the light meter settings completely and just set the manual controls (f stop, exposure, and ISO) to settings that shouldn't work (fast exposure, high f stop, and low ISO) because the image should be incredibly under-exposed, the camera seems to go into last-resort mode and tries like hell to salvage your image by giving you a full-power shot from the flash. Success!
 
At that point, you have to keep checking the image preview on the LCD to see if you are getting images that are exposed enough to use. But most of the time I find that the images are entirely adequate and sometimes I even have to make the exposure much faster to avoid over-exposure.
 
And what does that all mean for me? Honestly, it means that I've almost completely given up using a tripod for macrophotography because I can often get fast enough exposures that I don't need it, even with the razor thin depth-of-field at high magnification. I normally handhold my shots even at magnifications of 4x-5x life size.
 
(BTW, I learned much of this technique from the insect guys over at the Fred Miranda forums. Highly worth checking out if you have the time. Bugs are hard to shoot, so their techniques are quite interesting.)
 
So, for example, this was shot hand-held, and shows a wrasse embryo on left, probably a copepod naup (the fuzzy bit) in center, and adult copepod on right. That's all one shot, not a montage. I'm not sure about the magnification any longer, but maybe 3x-4x lifesize.
 

--Andy, the bucket man.
"Not to know the mandolin is to argue oneself unknown...." --Clara Lanza, 1886

Thanks for the info.

I much prefer and explanation as it lets me determine how I could adapt the process when things don't match.

This is a great example of it. I'm using a ring light, (its says ring flash on the box) but it does not flash, it's constantly on.

Its interesting that you are able to get this good of a result without a tripod, that seems to be something worth trying, I'll just need some more light to do it.

A question, with your flash, can you set the high output intensity on the flash body? With my regular flash I have the option of TTL, low or high power. My understanding is that this lets you manually control the flash to be high output rather than letting the camera do it with the TTL setting. In this mode I thought that you would be able to use a more automatic setting like aperture priority for example. I haven't tried this as my flash is useless for macro, so my comments may be a waste of time.

I think that an always-on light will cause you problems because the shortness of a traditional flash often helps to freeze the action. (It sounds to me like you have a light that's intended to be used with microscopes, not cameras.) Often the duration of the flash is shorter than the shutter speed itself (shutters are pretty slow, honestly). So I'm not sure that this technique will help you out. But you can even try this out with the built in flash. You just need to make something that'll let you direct the light of the flash out past the lens and onto the subject (since often the lens will cast a shadow onto the subject because the lens is so long and the subject is so close). White index cards are pretty good for this. But that's just an option.
 
I can control a whole lot of stuff on my flash body, but I haven't really messed with it too much (other than when trying to synch it much faster than normal so I could try to take pictures of water droplets). The technique I described works so well that I haven't tried too much.
 

 
It's not more light you need, honestly. As I said, even low-powered flashes can overwhelm macro subjects because you are so very close. Essentially, that's what I have: two low-powered flashes. You just need what light you have to be where you need it most and have it synched right.

--Andy, the bucket man.
"Not to know the mandolin is to argue oneself unknown...." --Clara Lanza, 1886

I meant, that with the flash on the body or add on flash, they cast a massive shadow so I was thinking more about getting an extension cable for the flash so it can be positioned separately.  That way the flash will provide more light for a short period of time without the shadow.  Then I can try what you are talking about
 
I didnt really explain what I was thinking about very well.
 
 
 

Not at all. I just wanted to make sure that we were still on the same page. I'm happy you're going to try this out. I really like looking at the pictures you take and I'd be really happy if this meant you could take them more easily, since it would mean that I'd hopefully get to see more of them.

--Andy, the bucket man.
"Not to know the mandolin is to argue oneself unknown...." --Clara Lanza, 1886

ha ha, dont wory, Im not likely to stop spamming the forum with my pics any time soon.