The Lightning Project

The ongoing saga of the PNG Lightning Maroon Clownfish breeding project.

Browsing Posts published in June, 2012

Shot in the very wee hours of the morning on 6/29/2012:

So not sure how much I’ve conveyed, but the jist was that I had an artificial incubation hatch last night. Once hatched, I tinted the water (about 5 gallons of broodstock water) green with Reed Mariculture’s RotiGreen Nanno (a frozen algae paste specifically made for use in greenwater technique).  It took about 20 drops.  I […]

Impossible to say how many just yet, but after turning out the lights at midnight, I gave them about an hour, and I’ll give it another hour yet before I turn on lights to check for any remaining eggs (split hatches are common).  But in that quick peek with a tiny flashlight at roughly 1:05 […]

Seriously, one baby found hatched in the tank, and failed to collect it.  One more baby has hatched out in the BRT (Black Round Tub), and that’s it!  It’s now 4:00 AM, so I turned on the lights on the BRT, angled it off to the side so that the light intensity is greatly diminished. […]

6-28-2012 1:23 AM – HATCH HATCH HATCH HATCH HATCH HATCH HATCH HATCH HATCH HATCH HATCH HATCH HATCH HATCH HATCH HATCH HATCH HATCH HATCH HATCH HATCH HATCH HATCH HATCH HATCH HATCH HATCH HATCH HATCH HATCH HATCH HATCH HATCH HATCH HATCH!!!!!! (after discovering  a single hatched-out baby in the flashlight’s beam, the tile was pulled under cover […]

Pumps are off for the next 2.5 hours (used a feed timer on the Apex to ensure it’s automatically turned back on tonight – no way am I going to screw up and leave the pump off overnight!), lights out save one flashlight for attracting larvae.  I’m still leaning towards tomorrow, and my worst fear […]

There has been a lot going on – the Lightning Maroon actually came down with yet ANOTHER recurrent bacterial infection, we removed the Butterflyfish from the tank, I started treatments with Maracyn & Maracyn II back on Sunday night which restored the Lightning’s appetite and appears to have fought back the problem.  All the while […]

Some photos of the nest laid yesterday 🙂 The big question now is how I’m going to be dealing with the eggs / babies while I’m speaking to the Boston Reefers next weekend!  Mike’s Maroons are on a 7 day schedule, and I can certainly bump up the temp a bit to encourage faster incubation […]

Yes, that “surprise” that happened today was the honestly unanticipated 2nd spawning of the Lightning Maroon.  The massive flooding in Duluth the last couple days prevented Barb from making the trip to teach me how to do a skin scrape on the Lightning Maroon; had she come yesterday as originally planned, I very well may […]

So the day after I said “we’re all good”, I should’ve known better. The very next day, the left eye on the Lightning Maroon started to pop out yet again.  It’s an odd thing in that it’s the tissue that surrounds the eye in the socket that is getting pushed out, creating a ring around the […]