Breeding Journal, Species: Amphiprion clarkii var. Black

General
Species:  Amphiprion clarkii
Social Structure:  Pair
Size of Individuals:  Female 2 inches, male 1.5 inches
Age of Individuals:  ~1.5 years
Date added to Tank:  October 2013

Broodstock Tank Details
Size of Tank:  10 gallon
Substrate Details:  Fine layer of sand, not covering entire bottom
Filtration Details:  Fluval C2 hang-on-back filter
Water Changes:  Once a month or less
Water Temperature:  78F
Lighting:  Single 150W CFL in shoplight fixture 4 feet above tank
Lighting Cycle:  8 hours per day
Other Tank Inhabitants:  None

Broodstock Feeding Details
Food Types:  Mainly New Life Spectrum thera-A pellets, sometimes frozen mysis, enriched brine, cyclops, nutrimar ova, and live tigger pods.
Feeding Schedule:  Four times per day, fed automatically.         

Spawning Details
Date of First Spawn:  Februrary 24, 2014
Spawn Time of Day:  Not observed
Dates of Consecutive Spawns:  3/8/2014, 3/17/14, 3/29/14, 4/8/14, 4/28/14, 5/9/14, 5/20/14, 6/9/14
Courtship Details:  Not observed
Egg Size:  ~2 mm
Egg Color:  Orange
Egg Count:  ~75

Hatch Details
Hatch Date:  3/5/2014 (9 larvae hatched on 3/4/2014, the rest hatched on 3/5/2014 )
Hatch Time of Day:  6:00PM (1 hour after lights out)
# Days after Spawn:  8
Larvae Description:  Eyes and mouth present, dark color, no stripes, large jaw, elongated shape, gut visible               
Consecutive Hatch Dates: 3/15/14, 4/16/14, 5/28/14                 


Larval Tank Details
Temperature:  80ºF
Size of Larval Tank:  10g half filled
Substrate Details:  None
Other Tank Decor:  None
Filtration Details:  None
Lighting:  Low power but bright, under cabinet LED lighting, about 12" above tank
Lighting Cycle:  15 hrs a day
Water Changes:  Slow drip of 2 gallon per day, siphon 4 gallons every other day

Larval Feeding Details
Food Types:  Rotifers enriched with RotiGreen - Omega
Feeding Schedule:  Constant

Metamorphosis/Settlement
Date of Settlement Start:  6/9/14  
Days after Hatch: 12                           
Date of Settlement End: 6/16/14                            
Description of Fry: Shape of adult, smaller jaw, dark black with white stripes and some yellow, gut no longer visible

Grow-Out Tank Details
Temperature:  80ºF
Size of Grow-Out Tank:  40g
Substrate Details:  None
Other Tank Decor:  A few fake urchins 
Filtration Details:  Fluval C4 hang on back filter and Reef Octopus BH1000 Skimmer, all intakes protected with filter floss. 
Lighting:  Low power but bright, under cabinet LED lighting, about 12" above tank
Lighting Cycle:  15 hours a day
Water Changes:  25-50% once a month                            
Size at Transfer:  About 0.75"
Age at Transfer:  118 Days 

Grow-Out Feeding Details
Food Types:  Newly hatched baby brine shrimp at first, then weened onto 100-200um Golden Pearls and finally numerous frozen and pellet foods. 
Feeding Schedule:  4-5 times a day

Additional Information
 
(No Pictures or Videos in the Section Please)
Miscellaneous Information: 
Broodstock tank also contains a single branch of Tonga live rock and a terra cotta pot for egg laying.
This pair is captive bred.
I have confirmed that this pair is F1 and the parents of this pair are from Australia.

All of my work is done with the help of member altolamprologus (Heather Mutschler).  She shares all credit evenly with me for our accomplishments.

The male tending to his eggs the first day. Today we noticed that the few dead eggs you can see in the picture were gone. 

All of my work is done with the help of member altolamprologus (Heather Mutschler).  She shares all credit evenly with me for our accomplishments.

NICE Clarki - do you know the race / geographic provenance?  Where's the pair?

Thanks! Here's the pair with their eggs so you guys know that it's not like a hybrid pair or anything

 
I'm not sure where geographically they are from but I'm going to try to find out.

All of my work is done with the help of member altolamprologus (Heather Mutschler).  She shares all credit evenly with me for our accomplishments.

Ok Matt.  I found out, to my surprise, that the parents of this pair are from Australia and they (my pair) are F1.

All of my work is done with the help of member altolamprologus (Heather Mutschler).  She shares all credit evenly with me for our accomplishments.

They looked like the Australian Clarkii that were running around a few years ago....very nice!  Do you have anything more specific (eg. Great Barrier Reef...some other sea/reef congregation?)  Where did you get them (if you don't mind me asking)?  It's also fantastic that you know your offspring are F2!

 
I normally don't like to say where I get things (its a long story) but I want you and everyone here to have the whole story and know I am legit.  They are from Matt Carberry (remember the MBI raffle last year ) and he told me they are indeed the Australian variant but did not say anything more specific.  He said his brood stock are from a wholesaler so I don't know if anyone would know where exactly they came from.
 
I too am excited that the offspring will be F2.  When we got the fish from him back in October he notified us that we were the first to receive any Black Clarkii from his company.  Pretty neat. It's hard to see from a single iPhone pic but they are nearly perfect with no visible genetic deformities from inbreeding like many other captive bred clowns.

All of my work is done with the help of member altolamprologus (Heather Mutschler).  She shares all credit evenly with me for our accomplishments.

Just my $0.02, but I think the vast majority of deformities we see in our captive bred clownfish are NOT inbreeding related whatsoever, but are in fact rearing / environmentally related.  The generation times of many clowns are such that we simply cannot be "THAT" inbred.  Of course, look at how awesome Bali Aquarich's fish grow in natural seawater....I really think there is something to this the more and more I keep an eye on who is using natural water from the ocean or a saltwater well vs. those of us stuck on artificial salt...

I've always thought that in the back of my mind but everyone always told me it was from inbreeding.  It males sense to me given the whole misbar issue.

All of my work is done with the help of member altolamprologus (Heather Mutschler).  She shares all credit evenly with me for our accomplishments.

Misbars are rearing-related.

Yes but I've always been told it's still a water quality thing. No?

All of my work is done with the help of member altolamprologus (Heather Mutschler).  She shares all credit evenly with me for our accomplishments.

I'm exited to report that F2 has officially entered the world!  We transferred the eggs to the larval tank yesterday and today, a full 24hrs later, we turned off the lights to try to prompt a hatch and it worked.  We left the tank with the light off so they would finish hatching.  Pics tomorrow.  And I have to say, freshly hatched clown fry are sooo much bigger than yellow damsel fry!

All of my work is done with the help of member altolamprologus (Heather Mutschler).  She shares all credit evenly with me for our accomplishments.

The clowns have not finished hatching so more pics tomorrow.  If there are enough i will put one under the microscope.
 
Top down:

 
Crappy side pic but you can see them through the sea of rotifers:

All of my work is done with the help of member altolamprologus (Heather Mutschler).  She shares all credit evenly with me for our accomplishments.

4 days old (yesterday):

All of my work is done with the help of member altolamprologus (Heather Mutschler).  She shares all credit evenly with me for our accomplishments.

We have 7 babies left.  At least a few now eat live baby brine.  They are getting big and will hopefully get to meta soon.  We think we lost most of them because we were doing water changes too much plus it was the pair's first batch so the quality may have been subpar.  Many more are on the way though!

All of my work is done with the help of member altolamprologus (Heather Mutschler).  She shares all credit evenly with me for our accomplishments.

Today one of our three remaining clowns settled. The other two are smaller but hopefully aren't far behind.
 


 
 
This pair's second batch hatched on Saturday (3/15/14) and even after some deaths early on, we still have over 100 larvae. They're looking very strong and we're shooting for a much better success rate for this batch.

All of my work is done with the help of member altolamprologus (Heather Mutschler).  She shares all credit evenly with me for our accomplishments.

Moved our first settler to a baby basket in our A. ocellaris brood stock tank. It appears that a second larva has settled but we are giving him a few more days before we move him.
 
Here's a pic of the first settler in his acclimation cup:

All of my work is done with the help of member altolamprologus (Heather Mutschler).  She shares all credit evenly with me for our accomplishments.

Any updates?!

Sorry for the lack of updates.  We have been very busy lately and are in the annoying process of moving all of our brood stock to a new location.  We had a decent number settle from our last batch but we lost them all during the move.  Due to the changes in the parents' environment and routine we have very small sporadic spawns and have not been attempting to rear them.  Once they return to laying on a better schedule and with better numbers we will start working on raising them again.

All of my work is done with the help of member altolamprologus (Heather Mutschler).  She shares all credit evenly with me for our accomplishments.

You know, if anyone has any advice- we have been having issues keeping the larval tank clean when it gets to be close to settlement time.  We do a lot of water changes, but by the time they should be settling the tank has a lot of junk built up all over the place and it is hard to siphon all of it out because it all gets stirred up into the water.  Any tips on what we should do different?

All of my work is done with the help of member altolamprologus (Heather Mutschler).  She shares all credit evenly with me for our accomplishments.

Well we got the move done and came up with some easy ways to clean up the larval tank.  I give you- little black Clarkii Clowns.  This is about half of our batch as we have about 35 total.  They are 21 days old and most are 9 days post settlement (settlement occurred over the course of a week with a few stragglers dragging it out that long).
 

 
 

All of my work is done with the help of member altolamprologus (Heather Mutschler).  She shares all credit evenly with me for our accomplishments.

Oh yeah..those look fantastic!  Congrats!

 
Thank you!

All of my work is done with the help of member altolamprologus (Heather Mutschler).  She shares all credit evenly with me for our accomplishments.

Sorry for lack of updates. I have been busy.
 
98 days post settlement (in this pic).  Older as of the date of this post.

All of my work is done with the help of member altolamprologus (Heather Mutschler).  She shares all credit evenly with me for our accomplishments.

They look great!

Thanks!

All of my work is done with the help of member altolamprologus (Heather Mutschler).  She shares all credit evenly with me for our accomplishments.