Easy to breed Marine fish.

[msouth468]

Hello.

I was wondering what species of Marine fish are easy (figurativly speaking) to breed? I'm going to start my 55 gal marine tank soon and probably after a year of getting aquainted with my SW tank I would like to breed some Marine fish. Any suggestions?

[OrionGirl]

Clown fish and cardinals are the easiest to breed--but getting the young to survive past the larval stage is tricky. Sea horses are probably next in line, but are more challenging to care for in general than either clowns or cardinals.

Of course, this is assuming you don't really mean 'bread'--in which case I think snapper or tilapia would be easiest. ;) :laugh: (Please read this with the jocularity that's intended--I'm one of 'those' speller nazi types, and can't help but picturing a deep-fried breaded chunk of fish when I read this).

[msouth468]

Sorry, I wasn't exactly an A student in English class. :D

I read that Clown fish were easy to breed. And in the future I would like to try. I have a LFS lined up that will buy the babies from me. I actually will probably give them to him. I'm sure by the time they are old enough to leave I won't want them anymore.

[OrionGirl]

Do lots of research before diving in--it really will require multiple setups to successfully raise larvae to juvenile stage. The clowns will happily lay eggs in a community tank, but the larvae won't survive the tank (they are quickly eaten by a variety of filter feeders and mechanical filters), so you have to have tanks setup just for them, plus tanks for the food for them, and then grow out tanks to get them up to size. All in all, it's often not worth the effort, other than as an interesting addition to keeping a show tank. There's a really good thread on here somewhere from Guy, in Florida, and his efforts at raising clowns, complete with pics of the fry and the problems he had raising them out.

[msouth468]

Well I am actually willing to go all the way. But I won't just jump into it. When I start my SW aquarium I will give it some time before I deciede.

[mysis]

i know marine biologists, that breed clowns, seahorses, pipefish, peppermint shrimp. if you want info PM me and i will either post it or PM it to you. I just thought i should provide some pics.

http://www.oceanarium.com.au/images/magnifica-occelaris.jpg

http://www.oceanarium.com.au/images/baby_clarkes.JPG

http://www.oceanarium.com.au/images/cultured_barbs.JPG

[Fishieness]

clownfish are pretty hard to raise past metamorhpisis. if you have a pair, then taht is the tricky part
bangaii cardinals will breed and pair up as long as you feed them well and often and you have a male and a female (unfortuantly, th eonly way to tell is to see if they beat the crap out of eachother). but because bagaiis are mouth breeders, the male does a lot of the work. by the time he lets them go, they are already big enough to eat baby brine shrimp.

[Richard_a]

Nice photos of the clown fish and seahorse, but that tank really looks like a mess!

here's a nicer one, from national geographic's site:

http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/staticfiles/NGS/Shared/StaticFiles/animals/images/primary/clown-fish.jpg


Ritchie from TheReefTank (http://www.thereeftank.com)