Tomato clownfish
I bought this pair of tank-raised tomato clownfish about more than three years ago, in June of 2022.
They always got along fine but grew very slowly and didn’t actually spawn until early this year (2025, when the fish were almost three years old.)
Despite the modest accommodations in the video above, the fish were in a multi-tank reef system. Of course the needs of a reef system (low nutrients) and the needs of broodstock (feed as much as possible) are in conflict, and I suspect this is the reason these otherwise-healthy fish took so long to grow up fully.
Despite the spare diet, they did ultimately start to spawn. After that I ramped up their feeding quite a bit, and this earned me a lot more algae and also some more regular spawnings.
Since their early spawns were on a removable saucer, I tried moving the eggs into a tub immediately before hatch. That met with disaster, though, with the eggs all dying over night. I’m not sure if that was from the move or because the eggs weren’t viable in the first place; several times when I waited for an in-tank hatch the eggs just vanished overnight without any signs of fry.
In any case, eventually they parents figured out how to lay healthy eggs, although at that point they were exclusively laying them on the tank glass so I had to mess with the vossen snagger, which is very tedious when the fish keep kicking up clumps of algae that clog the snagger screen.
After moving the first full healthy spawn into a tub with L-type rotifers and Nannochloropsis, the fry did ok. At first the tank was around 70F, which online posts suggested was too cold. I bought a heater and warmed the fry gradually up to 80F which perked them up and sped up growth, but that heater then stuck on and heated the tub up to 90-something which was not ideal. A few days and a new heater later and I had still had some fry, but fewer than before. By that time they were eating dust-sized TDO pellets and growing quickly. I also started feeding them selcon-enriched bbs as soon as they were big enough. I don’t know if that’s strictly necessary but they certainly seemed more excited about eating live food than TDO.
The fry started to darken and settle after 7 days and were fully settled after about 10. At that point I had 12-14 healthy fish plus a couple of runts. Those fish are now growing up in the refugium of the reef system.
Unlike earlier attempts with marine species, the hard part with these fish was just getting the fry. I’m going to attempt to raise a second brood shortly; hopefully without the temperature disasters I’ll get a few more of them through the first week.