400 post met ocellaris

[NicoleC]

David, I understand you have buyer's remorse, but the clowns were sold as-is. You will just have to deal with their sickly, easily disturbed condition and poor nests. No refunds.

[David M]

Damn, I was gonna ask for a rebate 16 whole days!!!! What a jip

[Kathy55g]

Mine aren't laying yet, in the basement tank since I moved them when the power went out. It's OK, since I have no space to raise a new spawn, but I hope they don't take a long time to start laying again. They are eating well, and have found their hairy mushroom home, and there is a nice piece of rock under them to lay upon. so far, no cleaning activity....

[Kathy55g]

Getting back to Martin's caution:
I am wondering if there is a hormone or pheromone that the clownfish release to keep the juveniles small. In nature, they do not ever get bigger than the breeding pair in their anemone. How do they do that?

[David M]

I am wondering if there is a hormone or pheromone that the clownfish release

Joe L has expressed a similar concern, your mind is in good company It seems that breeders have experienced problems with long term propagation of like species in GO. I can think of 3 cases, all slightly different but all with negative results.

Martin, how long did it take for the "toxic tank" to develope? Less than a year? I ask because after talking to both Joe and Morgman about their long term difficulties I have concluded (and they concur) that the way to go is to establish two (or more) smaller GO systems and cycle them, periodically bleaching and drying them out and then restarting them.

If all goes well for the next few months I will start building a second system, which I will begin to stock when this first one is 8 months old. By 12 months the new system will be full of marketable fish and the first system will be essentially empty, so dried out and restarted. Hopefully by alternating between the two with annual cleanings I can avoid some of the problems seen by others.

Cross fingers

[Kathy55g]

sounds like a great plan.

[MMoe]

Alternating GO systems sounds like a good plan. I found that even in bare tanks (no filtration, no structure) clowns and neon gobies can fall to toxic tank development. Angelfish also, they seemed extremely suseptable to development of toxic tank. In the larval stages especially. There we had to use antibiotics, and how we got to that point and developed a methodology that worked is quite a story. I think the easy answer is changing tanks but probiotics and chemical filtration are also good possibilities.

We also found that it is important to cull, well not cull, but separating the faster growing fish from the slower growers helped the slow growers to grow faster.... I recall one time we added a small juvenile to the tank of a spawning pair and he remained a small juvenile for well over a year. So yes, I think there is either an internal (most likely) or external factor that works to inhibit growth when larger fish are present.

Martin

[Kathy55g]

Now if we could just find a human use for Clownfish Growth Inhibitor (CGI) or its antidote, we could get funding for the research to find it. If that happened, there would be a surge in demand for captive raised clowns and maybe someone would pay me to do this on a larger scale.
Just engaging in a little Wishful thinking.

[aomont]

Some time ago, someone sugested here (can´t remember who) to put a larger clown together with the post larvae so the figthing would be restricted as all of them would follow the larger one.
I made sense to me but I´m confused with this "CGI" thing...

Has anyone tried this technique and got slower growth ?

Anderson.

[Ooulophilia]

If it is a pheremone doing this would the use of removal media work (chemi-pure is DI resin)?

[Kathy55g]

Nobody knows if it would work. Dont' know what chemi-pure is. Sorry

[Ooulophilia]

Chemi pure is a product, it is basically the resin used to make de-ionized water and it absorbs most organics in the water- it binds up smaller stuff carbon cannot