All Clownfish ALIVE!

Unbelievably, all of the clownfish survived the trauma of the severe temp drop. My wife called and went to the basement to check if any of the babies had made it. She says, "There are like 50 fish swimming around. What died?" There were no fish on the bottom and they were all orange again and swimming. She gave them a little extra food and they were eating like crazy!!!

Incidentally, I have switched form live baby brine shrimp to the Ocean Nutrition Instant Baby Brine Shrimp. It is a small jar of baby brine in a fluid. The babies love it and they are really starting to grow!

I am also crushing the New Life Spectrum Grow food and putting it in there. Some of them eat it, but they are not fans. I have to start weaning them off the brine.

Woo hoo!!!!! Disaster Averted!!!!

Bad News on my baby clownfish

Bad news.

I think I may have lost all 50 of my remaining babies (which were approaching 1 month old). My heater died last night and when I went to feed them this morning most were immobile on the bottom of the tank. 2 or 3 were swimming barely. And their color went from bright orange to a pale pink. Tank temp was around 70.

I got a new heater in there and fed them, but I think all is lost on this batch.

Will post an update tonight when I get home and check on them....

Lost a lot of baby clowns last night

Well, I hit a wall with my baby clowns last night. Two factors led to the downturn.

1. Both of my brine shrimp cultures crashed the other night, so I was not able to feed them baby brine shrimp at all since Monday morning. I fed them rotifers and crushed flake food Monday night, and twice yesterday.
2. The salinity was rather high in the tank so as part of my almost daily water change I added a lot of fresh RO/DI water. I wonder if the salinity change was too much for them.

Regardless, I lost about 10 babies. The brine shrimp were ready this morning so I fed them a lot to help them catch up. Their color was not good.The bright orange was now pale. I am hoping I still have some babies when I return home this evening.

In addition, the new batch of fry should be born this evening, but I am not prepared for them and so I will let them go.

And finally, it is entirely possible that my bangaii cardinal fish are also breeding. More on that later

Some updated pictures of the reef tank

I managed to snap a few decent pictures of the tank last night.  I really like the way the tank is progressing, considering I almost lost everything 8 weeks ago!

These are all taken after the metal hailde lights were off, so its just actinics (8x39w T5 - 420/460 nm from UVL Lighting)

 

 

You can see the rest here:

My Reef Tank

Another batch of eggs!

Just wanted to post a quick update. First, mommy and daddy clownfish have laid andother clutch. I thought they were on a 20 day schedule. That was the time between the first and second batch. But, apparently not. Because on Thursday I noticed another clutch already there and they were not orange. So they may have been there for a few days.... Arghhh, I had there schedule all laid out in an Excel file and now its ruined.... LOL

And, the baby clowns have almost all passed metamorphosis stage! I lost one in meta. They are looking very cute now and I will try to get pictures tonight.