Breeding Set-Up

[1234-fishy-freind]

Hi guy, I really want to go in to breding marine fish. Something Ive wanted to do since starting marines and have success with emperor cardinals.

I have been given the opportunity to purchase a dock of tanks which I think will do the job well.
The dock consists of two 20UK (24US) gallon tanks at the top, three 10UK (12US) gallon tanks in the middle and two more 20UK (24US) gallon tanks at the bottom. The tanks are all drilled and leed to a sump at the bottom which is around 30UK (30US) gallons.
I would use the 20gallon tanks as breeding tanks and the 10gal tanks as rearing tanks. The sump would have live rock, heaters ect, and eat tank with fish would also have some rock, as well as a clay pot.

My question is, are the tanks big enough for breeding? Im sure I have read somewhere that a breeding pair of clowns will not stray for from their breeding territory.
I would like to have a pair of perculas, a pair of black and white perculas, maybe a pair of tomato clowns or skunk clowns and possibly a pair of emperor cardinals for the sump.

So what do yu think?
Any comments appreiciated.


josh

 

[-Nemo-]

Definitely big enough, I know other people who have similar set-ups.

EDIT: you may want to save one of the 20s or a little larger tank to use as a growout tank for the babies

edit again, only after when I thought about it, I realized it didn't make too much snese considering what you want to do. Let me exlpain more. Usually (and the most easiest IMO) you would have the broadstock tanks for the parents, and then smaller tanks for the fry. Juveniles would be placed together into a "Grow-out" tank until they reached the desired size.

 

[1234-fishy-freind]

So I should use 3 of the 4 20gal for parents, use the 3 10gal to raise fry then use the 4th 20gal as a grow-out tank?

josh

 

[-Nemo-]

That would be good considering you're only raising one species, more than one will obviously require more than one grow out tank. You can always not bother with a grow out tank and leave them in the fry tanks, but then you risk the problem of running out of fry tanks as you get more eggs.

Generally for grow out tanks, the rule is 5 fish per 1G, so a 20G could potentially hold 100 juveniles safely.

 

[1234-fishy-freind]

Cheers nemo
Im looking forward to getting this up and running.
I convinced my mum to let me have a shelf in her utility room for raising rotifers, BBS ect. It was a struggle but I got there in the end.

So excited!

josh

 

[-Nemo-]

Sounds good! Make sure you get those cultures up much previous to having any eggs!
Any questions, don't hesitate to ask. If I don't know the answer, I probably know someone who does