Barelycuda

Very nice progression. I think bubbles needs a new friend!!! Give me a call & you can come pic one out of my fisrt batch of clowns. There are some that are ready now. We'll work out the details later. Cuda

I have tried to take a few pics of the firesfish babies but they are still too small to get the camera to focus on. They were hatched on 7/21/07 so they are approx 20 days old now. I have 3 day old ocellaris fry that are larger. As soon as I can get a pic I will get it posted. Cuda

If garrett does not take it I may be interested. Cuda

Thanks for the feedback. Yes I have one batch of approx 20 firefish. Pat @ fanta-seas had a customer that had firefish babies & didn't know what to do with them so I took them in to try to raise them. they are about 16 days old now & are barely the same size as a 1-2 day old ocellaris baby. The first 5 or 6 days you hardly couldn't even see them. Now they are a little bigger & easier to see. Definately different than raising clowns. I'll try to get some pics up of them. I have moved the first 3 batches of clowns over to the system now so I'll try to get pics of them up also. Cuda

I am interested in the maroon clowns also. Would like to see if I could get them to start breeding. Would be a nice alternative to the ocellaris clown babies I have now. Cuda

After a couple of tanks were drilled out we could start drilling the top for the drain holes. I found a cool drain system on another site that is referred to as an open drain. I like the idea so it was modified to my situation. By having the open drain a tank can simply be removed from the system by turning off the supply & lifting it out so that it can be cleaned. The normal installation leaves a pipe sticking up but since I have a finished countertop I decided to use some pvc box adapters to finish the counter off a little. Here is a shot of the drains dumping into the counter drain. Next was to start laying out & building the supply mainfold. Since I can lift the tank off the drain for cleaning I needed to be able to remove the plumbing over the tank so I built these standpipes. The union was installed between the 45 & 90 to remove the pipe over the tank so it could be lifted off & cleaned. I ran out of 1/2" pvc so I stopped the stanpipes at 6. All the ball valves are installed so I can start filling tanks. Finally some water!!! After I got some water running we started moving the tanks back to the family room. Momma wanted her kitchen counters back.(whistle) Now that all the tanks are moved back I can start to transfer the fish to the new tanks over the next couple of days. Then once the existing fish are moved over I'll drill the other tanks & get them plumbed into the system also. The next time you see this all of the tanks should be online the new system. Cuda

OK the last few nights have been filled with plumbing but tonight I fired the system up & started running water through the first two tanks. Here's what's been happening. First we started by drilling out some 10g tanks for the drains.

Hey Ryan, Do you still have these? Cuda

I would be interested in some of the rock after dsoz is finished with it. I need some for my sumps. Cuda

I would throw this out to any teacher affiliated with this club that if they wanted a pair of ocellaris clowns that were for a classroom tank that I would donate a pair. Most of the clowns from my first batch were misbars. The second batch looks much better but there are a few misbars there also. I am finding out that the misbars are associated with water quality during metamorphasis. I don't mind them much as they all have character but are not as desireable. Cuda

If this progresses farther I would be willing to donate the nemo's & some local mentoring for the instructors & kids. I don't have a lot of equipment to help out with but I do have about 400 ocellaris clowns right now with more coming every 14 days. Cuda

I have some tank raised ocellaris that are about ready to go. I know that you are a teacher & I think it is really cool what you are doing so I am willing to donate a pair of them to you if you don't mind misbars. They are from my first batch raised. There is a pic of some of them in this thread. http://www.pnwmas.org/forums/showthread.php?t=4828 Let me know if you're interested. Cuda

Looks great. I like the 4 sided viewing. Cuda

What a beautiful start. Can't wait to see this evolve. Nice work, Cuda

I am currently raising ocellaris clowns. They are supposed to be the hardiest & easiest to raise so I thought I would try them first. I have access to true percs & gold banded maroons also whenever I'd like to try raising them. From what I have read the true percs can take twice as long to grow out so I am not in a real big hurry to try them. The gold banded maroons have huge clutches of eggs & I don't have the rotifer cultures right now to support a batch that large. I also have a pair of pink skunk clowns now that I am hoping will spawn some day as I would like to raise some of those also. The PNWMAS meeting is scheduled here at my home in October so the system should be up & full of fish by then. Cuda

From a few people I have talked to they say at around 1" long. I have some that are 1" ish now with the majority being between 3/4"-1" in lenght so i would say anytime between now & the next few weeks.

That photo is about a month old. The fish in it were the first batch of clowns that I had hatched & most are misbars. The second batch looks much better. The wife kind of likes the misbars, she thinks it gives them some character.

It has taken a lot of begging to put this system in the house. (clap) If we had a basement I would have loved to put it there. It would have been a lot less expensive to create. I have been doing a lot of research on breeding systems & most all of them use a central sump. I am just hoping mine will be big enough to handle the bioload. It should be ok with a skimmer, live rock, ect. During the first few weeks the larval tanks will not run through the main system. They will get just an airstone for the first 2 weeks then a sponge filter for another week or two. Once the juvenilles are on dry food then they will be added to the system water. Then all the fish are on the same food & water just of a different size.

Thanks. It has definately been an adventure with a ton of learning. Today we are laying out the plumbing & picking up a few more tanks. I just had a huge batch of ocellaris hatch on wednesday night so they are on day three now. I have taken a bunch of photo's so far so i will start a thread on the progress of this batch. The largest batch that has hatched so far has been approx 100. The current batch is around 200 so it will be exciting. I also have a batch of approx 70 that is on day 11 now that is going through metamorphasis now. The bodies are changing shape & some are showing the first band on their head. Cuda

Thanks, I inserted the photo's from photobucket. I just thought I'd start a thread in case anyone else was wondering how to inset photo's also. Cuda

Ok, 180bob sent me a pm on this & I think he has steered me in the right direction. When inserting a photo that you want to be full size instead of a thumbnail you click on the little icon that looks like a mountain that says Insert Image. By inserting the image instead of attaching files with the manage attachment option the image will be full sized. The photo below is the same one as above except it was inserted into the text box instead of being attached. Much nicer. Thanks again Bob.

HELP. Ok i am being intellectually challenged tonight. I cannot insert photo's to the full size to be seen in a thread I started this evening.(whistle) I know there is a way to inser photo's to be viewed as full size in the thread instead of just a thumbnail. So I thought I would start a thread that all could use as a reference to insert full size photo's if they wish. If someone could explain the process to post the full size photo's to a thread myself & many others would be grateful. Here is a pick of my first batch of clowns. Thanks, Cuda

I thought I would post one more picture of the setup tonight. Please ignore the electrical & plumbing mess in the middle. You'd probably expect more out of an electrician. (whistle) It was kind of thrown together to get the tanks back online when we moved them back to the family room. But when it is completed it will be trick. I am talking to my boss about some old plc's at work that i might take one & build a cool lighting controller with. I am going to work on the plumbing on sunday & maybe some electrical also. Once the sump system is online a lot of the airline tubing will go away.

Thanks, I do have 2 children. A 8yr old daughter & 6 year old son. They both think that it is very cool. Here is a pic of the cabinets we installed on sunday. They are 60" sink bases so the insides are entirely open. I found the cabinets at Lowes unfinished. I thought it was worth the $200 plus savings to finish them myself. The large panels at the top are fixed but the small panels are drawers. This will give me 10ft of counter top so I figured I can install up to 11 tanks across the top. All tanks will be plumbed into a central sump with live rock, skimmer, ect. This will make the maintanence portion of the setup much easier as it is getting more difficult to maintain with each new batch. Installed in family room.

I thought I would start a thread on the clownfish system that I have been working on. As a lot of people know by now I have started breeding/raising clownfishes. It started with one tank on the desk & over the last 2 months has started to spiral out of control. I am now at 5 grow out tanks, 2 rotifer tanks, & some nanochloropsis cultures. Well let's just say momma said it was getting out of control. So now we are converting some space in the family room to make it look a little more presentible as we still like to have company over & it was starting to look like a science experiment gone horribly wrong. It all started last week. Here are a couple of pics of the before. Here is a photo of the family room. The first generation tank setup. Cuda