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Re:Losing Clownfish larvae After first 8 hours after hatch
Saturday, February 18, 2012 8:28 PM
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Andy, Kathy, We keep our BRT's on a separate recirculating system of their own. Even once i pull a batch of fish to go to growout, we leave the water circulating in the BRT so as to keep water volume added to the system. I only shut it down on the evening i'm going to pull a pot and place in it. In the past i did as i described above. And then recently i started trying to sterilize the brood stock water once it was siphoned into the BRT, then made sure it was fully decholorinated w/ Chlor-Am X and heavy aeration. For me at least i have had worse production than when i wasn't sterilizing. I am going to try on the next batch to just clean the brt, spihon it clean and use just the water from the larval system. No taking water from the Brood stock system. We shall see how it works. Still seems strange though that all of this seems to only be affecting the Darwins and not the orange ocellaris.
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Re:Losing Clownfish larvae After first 8 hours after hatch
Tuesday, February 21, 2012 11:20 PM
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I know there was a question a little while back about how much rotigreen to add to the larval water. When I first move the eggs over to the larval tank I move 5g of broodstock water over. After the hatch I will sieve the rotifers (sorry I'm not to technical on the qty of rotifers, depends on hatch size and rotifer culture density but I wing it pretty good.) I got a plastic dropper and add 1.5ml of rotigreen omega to the rotifers and larva for the greenwater. This amount gets added twice a day. Usually on the morning of day three I start to drip in 1g of new salt water twice a day that drips in over a few hours. Once the tank has reached close to the 10g range of water I up the rotigreen to 2ml twice a day.
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Re:Losing Clownfish larvae After first 8 hours after hatch
Thursday, February 23, 2012 7:55 PM
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So to report back. Here is where i stand. Hatched another batch of Ocellaris "darwin" 2 days ago. Larvae looked great when i greened the water and added rotifers. By evening they were dead. I was so ready to just throw in the towel. Sooo...what do we do when we hit a brick wall? We try and move forward. So i contacted MP (nice to have him on speed dial...lol) And had an hour long conversation about some of the issues i've been having. The consensus for us was it was most likely Vibrio, or a strong bacterial infection going on. Probably due to several fators. 1. use of NHBBS on a few hatches in the beginning. 2. Starting to add larval system water too early. Not leaving the system isolated long enough. 3. Creating poor water quality issues on the larval system by keeping babies in larval tubs too long until moving to grow out. I was averaging 30-40 days. Matt recommends getting them out at one week post Meta. Approx. 20 days. 4. Never having torn down or cleaned the system since it was started in August last year, and basically overloading the system with juveniles and the feeding of them. It was probably very polluted water. Seeing as how it is a central filtration system and on two BRT's and approx. 32 gallons. It should probably be broken down and restarted every few months to keep the system "clean". So where do we go from here. I'm currently sanitizing the whole system w/ bleach. Tomorrow it will get torn down, scrubbed, left to dry out and then new saltwater added w/ a little broodstock water to get the cycle going again. on 2/29/12 i have another nest to pull of "darwin" ocellaris. I am going to use larval tank water only and no filling with broodstock tank water as i have normally done in the past. If i am still having problems it was recommended to sterilize the eggs before hatching. We shall see how it goes.
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Re:Losing Clownfish larvae After first 8 hours after hatch
Thursday, February 23, 2012 7:59 PM
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Good to hear you're making progress. 
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Re:Losing Clownfish larvae After first 8 hours after hatch
Friday, February 24, 2012 8:39 PM
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Sorry for the delay in getting back it has been a crazy week. Mixing in new saltwater with the brood stock water seemed to help. The next morning I had around 75 or so still alive. And now about 12 days in I have about 50 through metamorphosis. The onyx laid eggs again and they should hatch early next week. I plan to try and hatch them in 100% fresh saltwater (24 hours old and heated to temp) and see if I see a better improvement in the over night casualties. Here is a video 2 hours after hatch to see how much rotigreen I added. I ended up after taking the video adding a couple of more drops to make it just a touch darker. http://youtu.be/pncHD80thfY
<message edited by Fishtal on Friday, February 24, 2012 9:10 PM>
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Re:Losing Clownfish larvae After first 8 hours after hatch
Saturday, February 25, 2012 8:58 AM
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Looks great! Glad you are having success!
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Re:Losing Clownfish larvae After first 8 hours after hatch
Saturday, February 25, 2012 10:13 AM
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Glad to see you're seeing success. I know I'm a little late to the thread but, I've had my greatest success by using NO broodstock water at all. I hatch the eggs in aged clean saltwater (1.020). My thoughts were that having this lower salinity will help with the oxygen availablity in the very warm water (82 F) that I like to raise the larvae. I haven't gathered eggs in about a year but when I was, I was getting good survival rates and one of my batches of Percs ended up with over 500 fish post meta.
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Re:Losing Clownfish larvae After first 8 hours after hatch
Saturday, March 10, 2012 9:23 AM
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Ok, so now i'm banging my head against the wall. 3 batches and still no change. Everytime they hatch they all dies within hours the following day. PH 8.2, Temp 81 deg. F , SG 1.021, plenty of rotifers and 4 ml of Roti green omega added to color up the water. And same amount of Chlor Am X. So i'm wondering about the chlor am x. If it is being prepared too strong could that be the reason for the deaths? What is the amount of scoops needed for 2 ltr. of water? Which is the amount i generally make up at a time. Really banging my head against the wall now. Raised 7 batches of ocellaris and darwins and now i can't get a single fish to live more than a few hours after hatching out. Really starting to think it is the Chlor Am X. Wondering if i'm over dosing the tank somehow.
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Re:Losing Clownfish larvae After first 8 hours after hatch
Saturday, March 10, 2012 9:53 AM
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From what Gresham says, you can OD with ClorAmX but it's really hard to do it. I mix 16 teaspoons per liter of water and that works pretty well for me at a 1:1 ratio with the phyto in the copepod and larval tanks and 2:1 with phyto in the O. marina buckets. Gresham does say that's not the preferred mix any longer but I don't know what is, and that mix has always worked for me. Did you cycle the system after the bleaching? What are you feeding the parents (did we talk about that yet)? Can you put anything else in the water in that system and have it live? For example, copepods for a few days or so. Something delicate that could show us if there's a contaminant in that water.
--Andy, the bucket man. "Not to know the mandolin is to argue oneself unknown...." --Clara Lanza, 1886
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Re:Losing Clownfish larvae After first 8 hours after hatch
Sunday, March 11, 2012 3:58 AM
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Rotifers in GW seem to be just fine. Food is not an issue. Amphipods die in a short time though. Usually get a couple of them as hitchhikers on the pot when i transfer. Yes i've bleached, yes i've used new SW that is aged and i get a great hatch out. Really starting to think that my over zealousness w/ the mixing of the chlor Am X solution and dosing amount may be the issue. It is really the only one variable that i have changed. I had healthy, strong swimming larvae yesterday morning. And after greening up the water (just enough that i can't see the heater) , adding rotifers, and Chlor Am X i have dead larvae by 11 AM. I wish there was a more precise measurement for mixing up and dosing the Chlor AM X.
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Re:Losing Clownfish larvae After first 8 hours after hatch
Sunday, March 11, 2012 8:03 AM
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Hi Mike, I think the 8.2 is a high pH for a larval tank. At that pH, ammonia is a lot more toxic than at 7.8 or lower. If you lowered your pH, (lime juice or vinegar works great, drop wise), you would not need chloramX at all, as long as your water is dechlorinated. One thing you could try is to get the pH to 7.5, and skip the chloramX entirely.
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Re:Losing Clownfish larvae After first 8 hours after hatch
Sunday, March 11, 2012 10:38 AM
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I _really_ wonder what is causing the amphipods to die or if you are just seeing molts. You could also try delaying adding the greenwater. (I didn't really use it for my clowns, but they were in a brt and eating copepods and never seemed to need it.) Add everything else except the greenwater and leave it for a day to see what happens. Basically, the idea is to change one variable at a time where you can in order to see what has any effect.
--Andy, the bucket man. "Not to know the mandolin is to argue oneself unknown...." --Clara Lanza, 1886
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Re:Losing Clownfish larvae After first 8 hours after hatch
Sunday, March 11, 2012 10:46 AM
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Just a thought but have you tried allowing allowing a batch to hatch and not add anything for a day or two. That would rule out your additives. Going back to my very first batch I didn't use a greenwater method. I removed and added a small amount of rotifers every few hours or as often as I could. Once I started using RG+ for greenwater, my experience was also that I didn't have to address ammonia until about day 3. I vacuumed the bottom daily and just dripped in new saltwater.
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Re:Losing Clownfish larvae After first 8 hours after hatch
Sunday, March 11, 2012 11:32 AM
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Thnx for the advise guys. Got a Darwin nest coming up soon. The thing thats confusing me is we had such success right out the gate last summer and fall. And now i seem to have hit a brick wall. I will try to not do the GW for at 24 hours and see how it goes. Kathy, the PH is what the fresh aged SW mix comes too. I understand the though of lowering the PH, but to me 8.2 or there abouts is "normal" for SW. And it was my understanding that was why we used the Chlor AM X was to neutralize the ammonia. I will report what i find. I thought the GW was necessary though to keep the larvae feeding in the water column and off the BRT walls. And to keep the rotifers enriched.
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Re:Losing Clownfish larvae After first 8 hours after hatch
Sunday, March 11, 2012 12:31 PM
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You will need to adjust the lighting. I used a cover with a small hole in it to provide dim lighting. You will want to add small quantities of rots and just do it more frequently. I would scoop them from my culture, rinse with some saltwater and dump them in. I adde whenever the density visually looked low. I imagine they were eating some empties but I didn't notice any ill effects. This way would probably not work for difficult species but I think clowns have enough from for error that it works out ok.
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Re:Losing Clownfish larvae After first 8 hours after hatch
Sunday, March 11, 2012 3:02 PM
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 Originally Posted by TheCoralShoppe
... Kathy, the PH is what the fresh aged SW mix comes too. I understand the though of lowering the PH, but to me 8.2 or there abouts is "normal" for SW. And it was my understanding that was why we used the Chlor AM X was to neutralize the ammonia….
Do you have ammonia straight away? If not, and I doubt that you do, why are you adding ChloramX to the tank? Particularly if you are not sure of the amount to add to be effective? Normal seawater is 35ppt salinity and pH in the 8s, but we don't have to be strict in that for raising larvae, and in my opinion and that of others, it is better if we adjust it somewhat. May I suggest that larvae don't need normal conditions, and may be better off with conditions that would definately not be suitable for a reef tank. Saltwater fish seem to be fine at lower salinities, and even perhaps better. It is easier for them to regulate their own water content and excretion. There is also a good reason to lower the pH: to decrease the toxicity of ammonia. Here I am suggesting that it would be better to make ammonia less toxic this way, than it would be to add chloramX prophylactically. There are some, Joyce Wilkerson, for one, who don't think that chloramX or any ammonia neutralizing chemical should be added to a larval tank (though I do not hold to her hypothesis completely). ChloramX may not be necessary, given good pH control and sufficient siphoning of detritus and conduction of water changes. Your suggestion, that you are unsure if the ChloramX may be a problem, is what is driving my suggestion to avoid it, and lower the pH. I do hope you will reconsider lowering pH. Mostly I hope that you find an answer, not necessarily mine, that solves the problem, and brings you success.
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Re:Losing Clownfish larvae After first 8 hours after hatch
Monday, March 12, 2012 3:51 AM
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The PH in that small volume of water will naturally tend to go down. I am of the theory that i do not tinker with PH unless i have to. The reason i use Chlor Am X was that everything i read said that was the standard. Use at a 1:1 ratio with your GW additions. Also it was my understanding that with the dosing of rotifers and them establishing themselves that they cause an exponential increase in the ammonia and that we added Chlor Am X to help combat that effect. My plan at this point is to not add any ammonia detoxifier on the next batch and see where we are from there. I will monitor ammonia and PH carefully. Also the BRT's are on a central filtration system , so after the first 24 hrs after hatch i usually start a slow drip off the system until the BRT finally fills all the way up and becomes a recirculating system. Usually takes until day 6 or 7 before it gets to the stand pipe.
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Re:Losing Clownfish larvae After first 8 hours after hatch
Monday, March 12, 2012 7:26 AM
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Yes, but we _know_ that something is going wrong in your system somewhere. Don't be too quick to dismiss what Kathy is saying. She's raised an awful lot of very pretty clownfish. And it gives you a place to start in order to check theories. Question: Is this larval rearing container the same as was used with the fish you've successfully reared? Or is it just the system that is the same with this container being used for just the larvae that had problems?
--Andy, the bucket man. "Not to know the mandolin is to argue oneself unknown...." --Clara Lanza, 1886
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Re:Losing Clownfish larvae After first 8 hours after hatch
Monday, March 12, 2012 7:40 AM
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" Amphipods die in a short time though" Kind of a dead horse issue, but are you sure you BRT's aren't leaching stuff into the water? I've bleached buckets out for a week, rinsed, filled them, hatched occies and had them die within 48 hours. Left BRT's in a pool for days on end and the same thing has happened. It wasn't until I used acid to clean them and then fill with regular water for two weeks did the issue stop.
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Re:Losing Clownfish larvae After first 8 hours after hatch
Monday, March 12, 2012 9:06 AM
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Arc may also have a good idea here. My local friend tried to raise clownfish in new plastic barrels, and they all died. He could raise them in glass aquariums thru metamorphosis, then transfer them to the barrels and finish raising them just fine. Probably something in the barrel was toxic to the tiny larvae, and that didn't matter to the larger juveniles.
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