The Lightning Project

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

Browsing Posts in Lightning Maroon Updates

While I was away, Mike did a great job with the fishroom and the baby Lightnings from Spawn #27.  He got two hatches out of them, which means once again, these eggs hatched out over THREE nights.  Crazy.  When I stopped by Mike’s place on 4-3-14, he had maybe 50-100 pre-settlement offspring in one tank, […]

By March 21st, both Mike and I were at zero for larval maroons from batch #26…we both crapped out. It’s now the evening of March 25th, 2014, and Mike left my fishroom about 25 minutes ago with a bucket and a tile; I’ll be out of town at the NEC convention this week followed by […]

Last week, the hatch of Spawn #26 approached.  I’d been talking with Mike, at this point looking for really different way to approach the rearing problems I’ve been facing.  The thought process was simple – send a tile over to Mike and see if he can do any better.  Well, based on the 6-7 day […]

3/6/2014 marked the arrival of spawn #26.  Another good sized nest of orange-red eggs on the tile, laid on the “roof”, which seems to be the usual location for the pair. As I wrote last about Spawn #25…I thought the hatch had been a dud, but once I configured the larval tank and got things […]

Talking with Mike on Friday, as best as we can figure out Spawn #25 was put down Saturday, February 22nd. This fits the timeline…come Friday night (Feb 28th) we’d be at 6 days post spawn, which is the earliest eggs hatch. I opted to wait until the 7th night, which was last night (Saturday, March […]

I left for Reef Currents this past weekend in Houston, hosted by MARSH, and well, it was the typical dice roll of being a speaker…some things will be fine, and some things just won’t work out.  BTW, it was a great event – thanks for having me guys! Spawn #24 never really hatched.  Despite being […]

Just a short note, tonight Spawn #24 was pulled for hatching.  I set it up with 100% new water, at 1.025, with aeration provided by a limewood airstone and a hatching escape route set up at the top of the tile.  The bottom of the tile is held in position by another tile lying on […]

I have two posts besides this one I need to make…life has just been hectic as usual. They’ll come. First, Spawn #24 has been laid.  Sadly, it wasn’t a Valentine’s spawn, it was laid on February 13th, 2014. Following my extensive water testing of larval tanks to see what the heck was going on, I […]

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 […]