Clownfish.

[scarface eddy25]

I just had a quick question about Clownfish. I was doing a water change today and cleaning my tank. I felt like a quick needle prick on my arm. By any chance could of of been my Clownfish who bit me?, because I saw it swimming near my arm and earlier I saw it bite my scraper for the glass. My Clownfish are still small so I'm not sure if one is Female and Male yet.

 

[smartorl]

With clowns you usually feel the thump, they impact you when they bite but if your guys are small, the may not have had much ooommmph to it, lol.
Yes, clowns are notorious biters. I have a pair of tomato clowns that are the most vicious clowns I have ever owned.
They are in the same family as damsels.
Clean the wound, small that it is. I am a tattoo artist and am sleeved and I have some pretty serious scar tissue from one time when I put my unhealed arm into the tank to get a coral out of the sand. It took forever to heal! Better safe than sorry.
Sorry to hear about your bubble. I saw the thread when I was on my phone but was unable to post.

 

[spanko]

Got rid of a beautiful pair of black and white occy's because they drew blood. Back to the fish store with them.

 

[scarface eddy25]

I don't even see any marks from my clown, probably was not the clown or it was just a random needle prick like pain I felt lol.
Yea, its a shame I lost it . I think I'l lay off Clams and coral like the Bubble for awhile.
What about a Torch?... are they fairly easy to care for? what is recommended for them? (i'd look it up but internet is being weird today)

 

[scarface eddy25]

They really are beauts

 

[chain]

Yea clowns will definitely bite. Sorry to hear about your black clowns =(. I had a male/female regular occerlaris pair and the female (who was good 3-4 inches at maturity) would take chunks out of my hands when I would try to remove her eggs she laid on the laying rock. It got to the point that now I wear sleeve length gloves every time I work in any of my aquariums.

 

[scarface eddy25]

Chain: Ouch!! Must of hurt lol . My Clowns are about 1" maybe a bit bigger now. Roughly how long until they fully Mature and lay eggs?.

 

[chain]

Haha you wouldn't believe. Once the clowns pair off it won't take long to notice a large growth spurt in both. One will definitely appear larger then the other and will remain so. It will be pretty evident and the big one will be the female. Really is just dependent on the system and how comfortable they are in it. Once she starts getting ready to lay you will see them 'dust' off the desired rock or area where she is going to place the eggs. I always put a nice little rock on the bottom in their little area and I got lucky. After she lays the eggs and they are fertilized I would remove the entire colony by just removing the rock to a secondary tank (10 gallon) with sponge filters, heater, etc. You can opt to wait a while; although sometimes the male will consume all of the eggs ( its a sort of abortion because they realize that an aquarium is not suitable for them to rear their young in). Big thing about raising clowns isn't the breeding, its the cultivation of green water, rotifers, and brine shrimp. You will more then likely have to grow all of these things to feed the baby clowns up until they can accept readily available food sources. I wouldn't worry too much about them not laying. Just keep your system as pristine as possible and as they settle in and pair off it will most likely happen. I have noticed the more pristine your water quality the more likely for them to lay multiple times. Sometimes they will lay before you can get the first batch of fish raised. Drove me crazy trying to keep up with them.

 

[scarface eddy25]

Nice . I saw something at my LFS that helps make water crystal clean and cleaner. Would you recommend that I get that to help?

 

[scarface eddy25]

I also noticed I had a fair bit amount of red algae on my sand and a bit on my rocks. Any suggestions how to get rid of it?.

 

[chain]

No I wouldn't add anything unless you absolutely had too. Chemicals tend to do more harm then good. Just keep up with your normal water changes and maintenance. It will all fall into place by itself. Usually takes a little time. You could start looking into green water cultivation and rotifer cultivation in the mean time though. I think there is a thread here where someone goes into great detail about setting up and breeding his clownfish. The whole green water and rotifer setup isn't really expensive it just requires maintenance and a little time to get figured out. It's difficult to put a timeframe on when two clowns will breed. Sometimes they take right to one another and want to do it the first date lol and sometimes they would rather wait until they get married. You'll definitely be able to tell though. Just hang in there and good things will happen in the form of hundreds of little clownfish

.
It could be cyano in which case it's phosphate related. You might cut down on feeding a bit, get a bag of chemipure elite (this stuff is great), and attempt to remove some of it manually if possible. Also you could get some phosphate removing media from purigen and place it in a mesh bag or run a phosphate reactor with phosphate media inside. Once the media starts to absorb the excess phosphate its just a matter of time until the cyano quits growing. Without the nutrients it needs to grow it can't do so. By manually removing the cyano already in your tank and using phosphate removing media you can combat the cyano in two ways. Their is still a source of phosphates though and you need to figure out where that's coming from to nip it at the source. Either from the water you use, or excess feeding.

 

[scarface eddy25]

thanks for all the helpful info . Cut down feeding as in not as much or not as often? (Less than once a day)

 

[chain]

No keep feeding at your regular times just shorten the amount of food you are feeding by a bit. Denying the cyano the excess nutrients will prohibit it from growing. Once the phosphates in your system are depleted you can just change your chemi pure elite once every 4 months or so and you shouldn't have too many algae issues barring some terrible event. You may look at possibly a large hang on the back filter that you could put some cheato macro algae in and use a $10 light from lowes or home depot to grow the macro algae. This would greatly benefit your system in removal of excess nutrients and It shouldn't cost much more then $50. Also it will always be removing nutrients from your system. The cheato uses these excess nutrients such as phosphate and nitrate to grow, effectively removing them from your system. All you have to do is give it a place to grow (the hob filter) and a 6500 kelvin grow bulb (you can buy a fixture and the bulb at lowes or home depot for around $20 total). Besides that just keep it trimmed and throw the excess away and your system will much appreciate it. There are also turf scrubbers and they are also fairly cheap to setup and from what I hear they work wonders also. Just giving you some options on which way you might want to go. There are some threads on here concerning both. Either one of these methods will greatly cut down on any excess nutrients in your system making your water clearer, getting rid of excess algae growth (besides coraline), and truly improving the overall health of your system.