Pickles Clowns

very awesome baby there!
So thank you for posting your link earlier... I read through and it was verrry informative

I have one question: you mentioned about the water quality and how it effects the white on the clowns. You were a little vague though as to what exactly so do you mind elaborating a little here please?!

 

Sure Dingo -

I use RO/DI water - and starting on day two I start adding about a gallon of water a day (I started with 6 gallons in a 10g tank). By the time the tank starts to fill the algae and rotifer waste starts building up and I start pulling a gallon by vacuuming the bottom and sides and then replace the gallon with fresh mixed SW.

They typically go through Meta between 6 - 10 days after which I will move them to a new ten gallon and add a sponge filter.

Then at around day 15 - 16 they are moved to a grow out since as they become larger and more active it becomes more difficult to maintain the water quality.

I use prime every couple of days as needed as well.


Water quality throughout the development of the fry is critical to maintain - Obviously poor water quality can kill the fry and can attribute to mis bars and some other more serious problems like flared gills.

 

Makes sense! So I have some photons from Sanjay and they are misbars.
Now down the road if they were to spawn would the fry have a larger chance of being misbars or is that solely dependant upon water quality?

And how do you encourage more interesting white patterning like that of the snowflake or piccasso?

 

Unfortunately the misbars are not genetic - My Misbar GSM's threw perfectly striped fry because of the better water quality. You could try to reproduce the misbar marking by lowering your water standards but you are risking other problems and possibly loss of the fry. I would not encourage anyone to specifically try.

The interesting patterns are genetic and have been bred specifically because of that more desirable trait - in order to get picasso type stripe you would need one of your clowns to possess the genes that encourage the pattern type or additional white.

I get snowfalkes because my male is a black ice snow and he passes along the richer dark colors as well as the broad white stripes.

 

Quick update - Last clutch of fry - 300+ - is on day 9 and looking strong. Seeing some signs of meta but otherwise very fat and active. No signs of any losses.

Geared up for another hatch tonight. Fry tank is ready so all I have to do is pull the pot and black out the tank tonight.

 

That's awesome! Can't wait to see pics.

 

You tha man!

 

Try feeding something like arcti-pods or heavy on the betacarotene. You can enrich baby brine with it. It enhances clowns colors and they come out bright RED.

 

Your clowns are beautiful. Great work on the breeding. And I love all the info you have.

 

I've been enriching my frozen mix - you also have to realize that these are from a black ice male and many of them will have darker colors as opposed to the bright orange that you see on standard snows.

Thanks!