Maroon Clownfish eggs...

"Mislav" wrote in message ...
The pictures from Wednesday (8-10.*) were not in focus so
the count I took on them is not as accurate, but I counted
much more eggs, almost 850. I am wondering what could be
the reason for diminishing number of eggs every day...
Could it be some predation ?

It is normal that eggs dissapear through time. There are many reasons why
this happens. My guess is that not all the eggs get fertilized by males
sperm so some of them are wasted. Other eggs can get some sort of bacterial
or fungal infestations, some can be eaten by fish (not likely 'cose clowns
defend them like crazy), shrimps, worms...
More and more eggs will be lost until hatching but it is normal. That is the
reason why there are so many eggs. If only few of those eggs in nature
become adoult fish it is success for the breading pair.
If you achieve rearing to adulthoud 10 of them you should be very happy.
When you gain experience maybe you could rear more from each spawning.
Here is some articles on clownfish breading and rearing the fry
http://www.netpets.org/fish/referenc.../brdclown.html,
http://user.aol.com/cebrezzie/aquarium/CLOWNFISH.htm

Good luck and keep us posting!

Yes, larvae is 8-days old today, about 130 of them survived out of 650
eggs and I noticed first two fish changing in shape and color indication
the beginning of metamorphosis. The are all black, the silver/transparent
belly appearance disappeared, and on the back I can see two white dots
like the beginning of typical clownfish white belts forming. The two white
dots are not visible from the side yet, just small dots on their back.
Fish greatly improved their swimming and seeing abilities - they actively
hunt for rotifers picking them from the water surface and the tank walls.
They also escape quickly from my submerged hand during cleaning...
They did not do it just after hatch - they were passive plankton and now
they are more active swimmers like adult fish. They still have fully
transparent tail fin and still swimming in the larvae-kind tail waging.
Not the undulating adult fish fashion. I plan to introduce brine shrimp
larvae to their diet today. I was hoping to do this yesterday but something
happen to brine shrimp eggs and they did not hatch. I hope they will hatch
today because fish become too big to survive on rotifers alone...
If problems with my brine shrimp eggs forbid me feeding fish with them
I will have to substitute this food with pulverized flakes - hope this
will be enough. Not sure how to do it, what technique to use for feeding.
Do not want to polute water too much and want the food to stay in suspension
for long time...