Opinions on why fry died
 

This is exactly what I did for my clownfish eggs.

1. I put the eggs in 10gal tank with parent water from main tank.
2. Temperature was preset to maintain the same temp with an airstone over the eggs.
3. Turned of all lights and went to work at 10pm
4. Came home at 6am and turned on lights to see about 60+ larva swimming around. I noticed that some were eating the rotifers and went on to put more rotifers in the tank with a little DT.
5. Went to bed woke up at 4pm and they were all dead!

Any suggestions so that for next time I will make it a little further?

Thanks

Also, not all the eggs came off the tile, but looked healthy still.

Many variables but these are a few new breeders get wrong IMO

Aeration (too much)
Lighting (too much)
You turned on all lights before you left. Did you have anything over the top of the tank? If not I would bet this was the problem.

A detailed description of your setup or picture may help.

Jacob

Soooo many possibilities, beginning with the parent stock and moving on to the larvae and the set up. Parental nutrition is first, if they aren't healthy chances are the larvae won't be either.

Assuming you started with strong larvae then one good guess might be oxygen depletion. What temp & how many rotifers? Don't forget that warmer water holds less 02 and rotifers do consume oxygen. Light? Maybe. Never been a problem for me. What species anyway? DT's ? Are you sure it's good? Smell it. I doubt too much air/ current killed them, they are pretty tough. There are just so many possibilities, try again :)

Aeration can be too strong if it's not tuned properly and hitting the eggs directly. From what I know the bubbles should be rising near the eggs to create a gentle current, without subjecting them to "bashing".

Well, I didn't turn the lights back on till I came home from work in the morning around 6am. So, they were off from 9:30om to 6am. Also, I dont know if the rotifers had a good nutritional value due to raising them on yeast and then DT for a day. I will adjust for next time and let you know how it goes.
THey are percula.

Percs can be a PITA, I just lost 300 of them in a single tank and am still putting the pieces together why. So far as I can tell, I might never know why. They were 14 days old, average 5 days past meta and had just turned up the "online" system, all measurable parameters were within tolerable levels.
Good luck with the percs.

Wow, 300 is a lot to lose. I was bumed about losing them after a day. Next time around I will have had a little more preparation time, so we will see how it goes.

Sometimes you just loose entire batches on hatch night. It just happens with no explanation. Could be as little as you having some contaminant on your hands when you moved the eggs. The rotifers shouldn't of been the cause since they would still of had yolk sacs to feed off of. I'd suggest feeding your rots IA regardless.

How fresh was DT? If it was rotten, you could have killed the larvae with ammonia.

You might want to try algae paste (IA) from Florida Aquafarm or Reed Mariculture next time. I use it to feed rots and in rearing tanks.

I had to use the DT because they had a problem with there delivery and I didn't recieve the algae paste from mariculture till tuesday. Now I have the IA, so hopefully I will have better success in the future.