Please check out my setup

[drew4452862]

My goal is to breed ocellaris clowns. I'm trying to setup the sump and a tank for the mated pair at the moment.

So a 20g(h) overflowing to a 55g sump (completed)
- overflow will be a 3/4" DIY PVC siphon
- glass bottom, clay pot setup

Skimmer, I am not sure, looking at a 100$ Red Sea one

The 55g will hold 22lb of live rock and chaeto algee (question at the bottom)
- 5000k 16W CFL flood bulb and fixture
- Rio Plus 1100 return, no more than 2ft vertical
- 2x 200w heaters

Salt IO
RODI just bought

----

How much LR will I need for this setup? Would my bio load be too small? Is chaeto necessary in the sump? I will look this up once the RODI is shipped but why do people put seperate areas in their fuge?

How noisey can the tank environment be (light traffic, tv \ game room sometimes used)?

Not sure about the food yet, any advice on threads?

Sand for the mated pair tank?

[ernieq]

I don't think you need to be that elaborate for a pair to spawn. It certainly doesn't hurt, you could probably run several brooding tanks off that sump. A lot of breeders just use bare tanks with a pot for the fish to spawn on. I wouldn't bother with sand. My main tank is in the dinning room so there is a lot of activity around it and my pair doesn't seem to care, they are already used to it. If anything, having this kind of setup would provide plenty of water for the fry tank, you could even plumb it into the system. Chaeto wouldn't hurt in the sump.

[tommyphones]

After the eggs are laid do you need to remove the parents?

[ernieq]

In a nutshell here is what has worked for me after reading numerous threads and books.

1. Always leave eggs with parents until hatch night.
a. If the eggs were laid on a removable object like a flower pot or ceramic tile, you remove it the night of the hatch and place in a larval tank that has been prepared with water from broodtank and kept at the same temperature. Then you put an air stone with pretty good flow in order to run water current over the eggs so as to keep them clear of debris. The eggs will hatch after lights out, for me it has always been within 1 hour, but some have reported up to 5 hours. Once they hatch, you remove the flower pot/tile and lower the bubble intensity.

b. If spawned on a non-removable object, turn off all filters before lights out. Then after lights out wait about 2 hours and go look with a small flash light to see if they are swimming about. If you shine a flashlight in a corner, the fry will be attracted to it and you scoop them up, this is time consuming and you must be careful to not beat them up too much. You put the fry on a larval tank with about 2 gallons of water from the broodstock tank with the same temperature.

After the fry are in their own tank, then you put some rotifers and tint the water green. Provide light for the first 24 hours and just make sure that the water is tinted green (not too green, just enough so that it looks green) and keep the rotifer density around 10 to 15 per ml. I go to a normal day/night cycle after the first 24 hours. You keep this up for the first 5 days while daily scooping up dead larvae each day whenever you can. The light cannot be too strong. I use an old strip light from a 10 Gallon tank which I diffuse by putting 3 sheets of paper in front of it. Then I remove 1 sheet after day 3, another one after day 6 and leave the last one until after meta.

There is absolutely no filtration in the larval tank. Get an ammonia badge to keep your eye on the ammonia, if it spikes up, then use something like chloram X or Amguard or amquel to lower it. If you dose, make sure you have a good flow of air running through your system as it tends to lower oxygen levels.

After about 5 days you can do about a 20% water change using water from broodstock tank and drip the replacement water into the fry tank at a rate of about 1 drop per second. You can also increase the volume of water to about 3 gallons. Keep your rotifer count up and your water tinted green.

After 5 days some people like to use Newly hatched brine shrimp, I prefer to stay in rotifers until they enter meta at around day 8 or 9 if your water is at 80 F.

When they are in meta, I do not do any water changes, but do control the ammonia with amquel or whichever one you wish to use.

During meta I start feeding baby brine shrimp while lowering the desity of rotifers to about 1/4 of what it was before. I discontinue rotifers after meta and start mixing in Oto A with the brine shrimp.

The fry will be out of meta around days 12 to 13 some will take longer, but most will be out of meta by day 14. After meta you do a 20% water change and increase the water volume to 5 gallons and put in a seeded sponge filter (which you should seed in parent's tank/sump for at least 2 weeks beforehand).

Once you get out of meta, it's pretty clear sailing, just watch water quality and feed small amount frequently and clean up tank after feedings. Depending on your biological filtration continue to detox ammonia with amquel or chloramx and do 10 to 20% water changes daily. By day 21 or so most breeders move them to a larger grow out tank with similar water parameters in orde to make space for the next batch. But if you are not trying to raise multiple batches or don't need the room, you can keep them there for a bit longer depending on your batch size. I currently have 69 baby clowns in a 10 gallon tank, they are 39 days old and they still look small in it. But if you have like 200, it's probably a good idea to move them to something bigger. Then just feed and grow out, then you need to figure out what to do with all those clowns.

I'm sure I might have missed a detail or two. You can read some of the very good threads that various people have posted about their experiences. Everybody has something that has worked better for them. I have a thread where I chronicle my daily observations with the two batches that I'm currently raising now.

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/sh....php?t=2209136

But there are others that are very helpful as well. I suggest you read and soak up as much information as you can. The key is to be prepared. You should also know that it's not even worth raising the first few batches if the pair is just starting, the eggs will be weak and you will have poor results due to the quality of the fry. I started with batch 3, but most people recommend you wait until #5.

[drew4452862]

thanks ernieq, I'm sure I will be re-reading this post again!

[edandsandy]

Ernieq, That is an amazing write up!!!!
Not sure if missed anything