Help with baby clowns

Hi, I was directed to this forum by a LFS (coral reef aquariums) because they said there are some people who have breed clown fish on here in the past.

My 2 yellow striped Maroons spawned about a month ago, so I immediately started looking into how to make it work. I bought a separate smaller tank(5gal) and put some air stones and a heater in it with the rock with the eggs on it. After they hatched I started feeding them rotifers as described by almost every website out there on clown fish breeding. Most of the fry died off over a couple of days and I was left with about 5 ry. Then as they started going through metamorphosis I lost another 3 :( Now I have 2 baby clowns with stripes and I'm still feeding them rotifers and baby brine shrimp.

I was hoping someone might know if there is another food that I might feed them or a technique to get them to switch to ground flake? I don't know If I should move them to the main tank(120g) in a breeder box, or should leave them in the half full 5g tank? When presented with flake they don't seem interested. Any help would be appreciated!

Thanks!

I had success by adding rotifers and ground flake at the same time. I also found ground flake to be tough to get just right; most of the time, the flake just sank to the bottom. Otohime (by Reed Nutrition) is a popular larval feed.

Are you using a greenwater technique?

Instead of using a 5G, I suggest that you use a 10G half filled with water to start. Each day, add more water from your parent's tank to the larval tank. The daily additions will dilute any pollution.

Personally, I suggest you do whatever Iggy says. I have a pair of his clowns babies, and they are Beautiful! They are very curious and love exploring my 90 gal reef! Whatever Iggy does, works.

I have been trying to feed them baby brine shrimp but they don't seem all that interested. They do still like to eat the rotifers though. I guess I will have to order another rotifer feed bottle to keep the culture going until they switch to other food. :-/

I had a hard time with the baby brine shrimp and after asking other breeders I think they are unnecessary especially if you aren't enriching them. I would use rotifers at least until after meta if possible.

First, congrats for getting the spawn and taking the time to learn how to raise the fry. :)

I agree with Iggy about the baby brine. I don't use them for my clowns (I do feed them to my Banggai juveniles though.) I skip the brine and go right to Otohime A. I usually start trying the Oto A around the 4th or 5th day, depending on how fast they are growing.

The key is to not overfeed at this point. Just add a tiny bit at first. Most won't take it on the first try and you don't want to risk lowering your water quality.

After a few days most of the fry should accept it. It's important to keep up with the rotifers until they are all weened onto the dry foods. As they get a little bigger I start testing them with frozen Cyclopeeze, great coloration, and larger dry foods.

Good luck! :)