[capitalb]

This is just my opinion but Joyce's book clownfishes was not very helpful in my quest for succesfully breeding clownfish.When I read the part about electrical tape around the light on the heater because the babies are attracted to the light and they were frying themselves??? She determined this because she found all the dead babies on the bottom directly below the heater. Doing the first water change on the third day made no sense to me. By this time the parameters have changed too much causing stress on the larvae. Her sucess rates according to her pie chart was 18%. I enjoyed the pictures but the information, well, it was of no help to me. With out tape on the heater and the light burning bright, water change on the first day, and 1 drop of ultimate, I found 0 babies under the heater ever!!! There are 2 very important things to do to be succesful.

[capitalb]

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[Reef-Daddy]

I think I'm in trouble. A few days ago I noticed my Percs acting a little strange behind the carpet anemone , and then noticed small gell tubes (amber colored) attached to the LR and using a flashlight, I saw shiny dots looking back at me. Trouble is I don't know when day eight is in order to start looking for the hatching. So its up after dark every night to wait for the show or no-show. Never thought I'd see this with all the other fish in the tank. I guess I'll try and move them to a 20 gal by using a flashlight and draw the larvae to the surface.

[capitalb]

When you see a silvery appearance on the eggs you're 2 or 3 days from the hatch. You'll need a 10 gal.(not 20) tank with all sides blacked out, a good culture of rotifers, a heater, an airstone and a light. The larvae will start to hatch out at about a half hour to an hour after lights out. You can then syphon them with airline tubing from the DT to the larval tank. Don't have the larval tank too much lower than the DT because you want to syphon them out gently. After you do this it is time to feed them. They need to eat right away and rotifers are the only first food for them if you want any success at all. The rotifers contain the necessary digestive enzymes that the larvae lack. E-mail me for some other tips when you get to this point. Good luck.

Bob

[eldalote2]

how exciting! i can see another project in the making Bob!