How to Care for Baby Percula Clown Fish
Clown fish are among the most coveted among saltwater aquarium enthusiasts for their beauty and hardiness. Baby clown fish, also known as fish fry, are delicate little creatures that can be difficult to care for. Keeping a lot of clown fish fry healthy requires a specialized aquarium and even specialized food, but it can be done under the right circumstances and with a little luck on your side. The first step is to transfer the babies over into a fry tank, and then it's just down to keeping them fed and alive until they're large enough to survive in a standard aquarium.
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Things You'll Need
- 10-gallon aquarium
- Air pump, two
- Airline tubing
- Scissors
- Air stone, two
- Pre-mixed aquarium water
- Compact fluorescent light
- Nylon net
- Bucket, 5 gallons
- Live rotifers
- Rotifer diet
- Coffee filters
- Live brine
Instructions
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Prepare the Tank
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1
Fill a 10-gallon aquarium with premixed saltwater. This water, which can be purchased from pet shops such as PETCO or Pet Supermarket, is already formulated to match natural seawater. This is the fry tank and it should have no decor or substrate.
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2
Connect one end of some plastic airline tubing to where the air is expelled on the air pump -- or output -- and the other end to an air stone. Both the stone and pump should have connectors, which the tubing can squeeze over. You may need to cut the tubing to size with the scissors.
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3
Place the air stone in the fry tank and turn on the air pump. The air will come through the porous stone, creating bubbles and simultaneously circulating and oxygenating the water.
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4
Transfer the fry over into the fry tank with a nylon fish net. The nylon nets are usually white and have softer fabric with smaller holes. If you use a standard green net, the fry may slip right through.
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5
Place a compact fluorescent light fixture over the tank. The babies have poor eyesight and will need all the light they can get to see their food.
Preparing Food
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6
Fill a 5-gallon bucket with four gallons of premixed saltwater and place an air stone connected to an air pump via airline tubing at the bottom.
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7
Dump your shipment of live rotifers into the bucket. Rotifers are tiny organisms that the clown fish fry can eat and can be ordered online. Turn on the air pump to begin water circulation.
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8
Add rotifer diet to the bucket until the water turns a light green color. This is essentially microscopic plant material that the rotifers eat.
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9
Wait at least a week for the rotifers to multiply in the bucket. Continually add rotifer food to keep the water tinged green.
Fry Care
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10
Collect rotifers from the rotifer bucket with a coffee filter. This will catch the rotifers while allowing the plant material to slip through. Dump the rotifers into the fry tank for the babies to consume. Feed several times a day, as much as the babies will eat, for around two to three weeks.
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11
Begin feeding the babies live baby brine shrimp after two to three weeks. Live brine shrimp can be purchased in bulk quantities or can be hatched at home with a brine shrimp hatchery, which can also be purchased.
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12
Scoop out dead fry and rotifers on a daily basis. Dead organisms in the tank will result in ammonia spikes that can kill the fish.
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13
Change about 20% of the water every other day. Because their is no filtration, their is nowhere for the waste to go.
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14
Move the baby clown fish into standard aquariums after about two months, at which time they should begin eating flake food.
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Tips & Warnings
Cover the outside of the tank with dark paint or dark paper. This eliminates bumping into their reflections in the tank, which can hurt the fry.
Do not use a filter in the fry tank. The filter will just suck them up and kill them. Even if you use a nylon strainer on the suction tube, the fry will just get stuck on the strainer and die.
References
- Photo Credit Striped Clownfish image by Lucid_Exposure from Fotolia.com
