The Lightning Project

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

Browsing Posts in Breeding

Pull too early and have problems…wait to the 7th night, and miss the hatch.  Sometime between 3:30 PM and 8:00 PM today the rather full looking Lightning Maroon Clownfish nest must have hatched in their tank, under full light no less.  Either that or their parents ate them. This isn’t the first time this has […]

They were alive this morning, but come nightfall all were dead.  The ammonia alert badge hasn’t said a peep, and is still relatively new and shouldn’t be having any issues.  Granted, it is testing for free ammonia, whereas my liquid test is testing total ammonia. I test the water, and once again I’m confronted with […]

Did a big 50% water change, Rotifer cultures failing due to too much harvest, lots of losses due to settlement issues presumably due to insufficient rotifers.  Nevertheless, a sizeable group of Lightning Maroon offspring is undergoing settelement starting tonight; first headstripes seen.  They’ve been getting TDO A1 for the last couple days…I hope they’re all […]

Just went downstairs…all but one offspring in Spawn #20 is dead on the bottom.  !#%!#!!@!! Water test shows completely off the wall parameters…eg. Nitrite at 5 PPM, Ammonia at 0.5 ppm, Nitrate at 40 ppm?!.  Now, whether that’s all the dead fish in the tank, or if that’s the cause, I’m not sure, but I’m […]

Just a quick note that Lightning Maroon pair put down their 23rd nest yesterday afternoon.  Spawn #23 was laid 1/31/2014.

It’s been a busy January here, with my trip to Cleveland to give some well-received talks at C-SEA followed by a grueling week of fishroom preparation in advance of Reef Builder’s world-reknowned Jake Adams dropping by for a surprise visit and a bit of Q&A at the Lake Superior Marine Aquarium Club’s winter / holiday […]

It’s the morning of January 13th, 2014; time to play a little catch-up. Back on January 9th, I split the larvae from Spawn #20 from one 10 gallon tank into the 10, plus a 15 gallon BRT on my larviculture racks. When I did the split, I took the opportunity to take a photograph of […]

Tonight, after several nights of battling my larval rack, I finally pulled of the split of Spawn #20 into two separate groups. Long story short, I had taken off two BRTs off a shelf that had somehow “Dropped” on the one side. Both BRTs got a full scrubbing followed by a wipedown with hydrogen peroxide. […]

Well honestly, I just don’t know what I did that caused this one to be so much better than any prior to date, but somehow the stars aligned and I wound up with something like 1000 baby Lightning Maroons.  And the best part is that I am HERE and able to care for the fish […]

I have photos of this spawn stashed away in the camera, but I figured I better get this on the books before I completely forget. Spawn #19 was put down on 12-14.  With tons of stuff going on with the holidays, I did a boneheaded thing and pulled the nest on the night of the […]