Hi all! I have been keeping reef systems for about 15 years, and freshwater forever before that.
I have mated pair of ocellaris clowns in a 125 reef that gave been laying eggs forever. We have had the clowns for about 15 years. My 8 year old daughter and I decided to try and raise the eggs. We did lots of reading and searching online to understand the basics.
We have (4) 2 liter bottles of phyto going as well as two 5 gallon culture buckets of rotifers. We have the hatcheries for baby brine when appropriate.
The clowns are in a reef tank, so not easy to remove the eggs. We use a larvae snagger to catch the babies once they hatch. It works very well and we catch 75%+ of the larvae when we use it. It consists of a PVC tube lowered down to the eggs, an air stone to induce flow and suck in the larvae and a bottle to catch the little guys.
The clowns laid two batches of eggs that we collected. Half the eggs hatched on night 6 and the other half hatched on day 8. Is it odd that the eggs skipped a day? The ones caught on day 6 are tiny. We missed the day 8 ones of the first batch, but did get them on the second batch. They are MUCH larger. However the next morning every one of the day 8 larvae are dead and all the day 6 ones are still alive. They are still tiny, but alive.
The first batch lived about 2 weeks with steady looses along the way. So far the second batch, of day 6 eggs, are still mostly alive. They are really too small for me to even get a count on.
I used main tank water to set up a 5 gallon aquarium for the larvae. I have a heater and air stone in the tank. A small clip on 25w light up about 2 feet and I slowly move it down, making sure the larvae are not staying at the tank bottom. I do half gallon water changes every day, replacing it with brood stock tank water. Every other day, I am siphoning detritus off the tank bottom. Otherwise I use an air stone as a filter and sighon water through it for water changes. The tank is full of rotifers and I keep the water slightly green with phyto.
Hopefully the second batch of eggs continue to thrive and actually grow! They are 1 week old today. I would say they are 2-3 mm in length. New eggs were laid yesterday afternoon. I won't be able to collect the day 6 hatcg, but will the day 8 hatch.