Clown larvae dying inside their egg

[Francisco Andrade]

My clown larvae seem to be dying inside the egg. They used to hatch within seven days, now after nine days they have silver eyes and the next night the eggs turn white and fall from the substrate. Maybe the clowns are eating too much shrimp (70%).

Best regards

 

[Len]

Hey Francisco,

You may also want to consider posting questions in the General Reef Discussion where you may get more responses. Hope this helps.

 

[curly20sa]

sorry,

but how do the clowns actually spawn,??

can you tell us??

 

[Martin Moe]

In my experience there were two reasons why clownfish eggs did not hatch within the proper time. The first was temperature. When temperature dropped below about 78 F the hatching time was extended to 8 to 9 days (A. ocellaris) and if it dropped to 76 - 75 F, they might not hatch at all. The other was an unusually strong egg shell, which seemed to be caused by excess shrimp (maybe chitin) but this is just a wild theory at this point. But you might try reducing the amount of shrimp in the diet. Also once hatching is delayed for a couple of days past the optimum time, for whatever reason, the embryos/larvae seem to lose the ability to hatch and if they do hatch, they seem to permanently retain the body bend they have in the egg, are never able to straighten out, and swim in circles till they die. Also, at the time of hatch 7 to 8 days (A. ocellaris) they evidently need physical stimulation, typically provided by the male, in order to hatch. If you set up a nest under aeration and miss part of the spawn, that part will not hach and the larvae will die in the egg. So your eggs not hatching may be due to a variety of causes (also possible is a microsporidian parasite in the egg, but this is usually manifested within a 2 to 4 days after spawn). I would check temperature and activity of the male first.

Good luck, Martin

 

[Francisco Andrade]

Hi Martin,

First of all, thank you very much for the reply. I do believe in the excess shrimp theory. I live in northeast Brazil, where the temperature never drop bellow 27ºC ( 80F ). I never had any hatching problems, the male keeps working hard as always, the only change was the food with much more shrimp.

Chico