All right, all right!
After failing at clutch after clutch and then having my one baby die that was almost a couple months old (for no apparent reason...), I got frustrated and needed a bit of a break from the frustration hence why I hadn't updated here.
I ditched the black, plastic bins. They just seemed to be black holes of death. I picked up a 2.5G glass rectangle tank and set that up identically as I had been previously. Clutch 12 was the first to be tried with these, this was a few weeks ago. I had gotten lazy with the clownfish mommy daddy feeding schedule and my hatch for clutch 12 reflected that. Only on baby hatched. I put the lone little guy in his new home and did my usual thing. At 6 days old, he disappeared and later noted as dead. Again, I couldn't find any reason for his death.
Clutch 13, about a week ago, hatched and I tried again. I only just started the mommy daddy diet again so again, a low hatch rate. I got 8 little babies and put them in the tank. 2 died only a couple hours later but the 6 did well. Then, day 6, they started to die... again. One by one.
I thought about it. Day 6 is just after I start adding BBS to the tank, maybe it was that? But I couldn't see how, I filter and rinse the BBS before I add them to the tank. But then there was one other thing I thought of. Since I started adding BBS, I stopped caring about the rotifers. I stopped giving them greenwater because the larvae didn't need them anymore. I was starving the rotifers and there was so many that it was causing ammonia spikes which inturn, was killing the babies. I didn't make the connection before, because my ammonia readings were always 0 because my water changing schedule and water testing and rotifer deaths conflicted in just the right way that the ammonia was never caught in my tests.
The ammonia tested at .25 at this point and I added an ammonia neutralizer and then did a water change. I tested it again later that day, and it was at 0. At this point, unfortunately, I only had 2 babies left. The next day, the larger of the two got his first stripe
a new record. A stripe at 7 days old. They are now 11 days old and still going well. The larger has two stripes and the second is just starting his tail wagging today, so he will probably have his stripe tonight or tomorrow morning.
Now, Clutch 14. They're due to hatch tonight. The Game Plan: Changing the water earlier!!
Hopefully my hatch rate will be increased with the better diet this time.
In other news...
New Friend (now name Trub Trub) now has a girlfriend temporarily named Miss Trubs. Trub Trub's previous girlfriend ended up being a... erm.. boy. It didn't work out. Then Miss. Trubs came along. She's older than Trub Trub, but he told me likes the more mature females. They've been together for a couple weeks now, I'm hoping the family starts soon.
Here's the two of them spending time together at Trub Trub's place (Trub Trub is in the back & Miss. Trubs in the front):
And here's a picture of some of the older babies:
And one of the new baby with his little stripes:
I'll let you know how Clutch 14 Goes.
I hope they get on well together 
