Holy Moley- is it possible???????

[TwoTankAmin]

I have been putting off a project in my 125 gal. tank. It contains a bunch of big plants, mostly anubias, but also a couple of good sized Java ferns and a big Bolbitis heudelotii (African fern). There are only two species of fish in the tank- clown loaches,including two very large ones and, 6 very large redline barbs (Sahyadria denisonii).

The plants are covered with algae and debris and I needed to pull them for a bleach dip and cleaning. So I nabbed the big java fern out of a pile of decent sized rock and a big anubias attached to a chunk of woos mostly inside the rock pile. Behind the rock pile with the anubias is a giant cave with a big piece of slat atop it and part of the rock pile. The cave has no back so it is set against the side glass to form a back side to the cave. The fern is attached to a river rock and it sits atop the slate over the cave.

I remove the fern and its rock, got the wood and big anubias attached to it out of the rock pile and then removed one more big anubias attached to in a vertical piece of wood. These all went out into the other building into the fish space where they got bleached, rinsed, soaked in a bucket with a lot of dechlor and then put into a 20 gal can of clean water. Once all 3 plants were done I brought them back into the house to put back into the tank and that is when I saw something I never expected ever to see in my tanks. I saw what looked like a fry, maybe 3/4 of an inch. Then I spotted a few more. The were hiding in the rock/slate/cave area. Where they could hide easily and nothing else could fit.

After I did my double take and looked closely, I saw several of the fry swimming near the slate which they would then duck down behind and then come back out from again. I know they should not be clown fry, but they have me convinced by how they look that this is what they appear to be. They have very little color but they all have 3 black vertical stripes each side of their body. One strip is near the head, one is in the middle and the third is near the tail end. They all look the same.

At the very worst here I am wrong bout what they are and they are redline babies. But these are pretty rare also, but clown babies would be close to a miracle. I have returns the wood with the anubias and the fern. I saw five of the fry out while doing so. The is no chance I cou.ld catch them and pull them yo a grow tank. All I can do is cross my fingers and hope some of them manage to get bigger so I can get a posative ID. The tank has never had any other fish/water in it for over a years and was empty when a leak in the 150 where the fish had lived for years sprung a leak. So the fish and tank contents move from the 150 to the 125.

As I am typing this i am still in a fog. Clowns loach do not breed in tanks without hormone s being used. These must be fry from another tank accidentllly moved over. But I have never seen any fry like this in any of my other tanks. I must be dreaming.

 

[GaryE]

There was a local pet store owner/master aquarist who told a very similar story about clown loach young. He was a respected and skilled fishbreeder, with excellent credibility, and no one believed him!

 

[TwoTankAmin]

It is a poor image but it was the best I could do with my camera and not being able to get a really recent shot.

 

[TwoTankAmin]

My two biggest clowns are a male and female as far as I can tell. My understanding is that females are much fatter in terms of girth and males tend to be more streamlined. The one I believe is female is about 12 inches TL and came to me in early 2003 at about 4 inches. The males is about 10 inches TL maybe a bit more. I am not sure of when I got it as I had one that I got at the same time as the big fm or else it was one I purchased at about 7-8 inches about 8 or 10 years ago. I lost one of the two and am not sure which. However if is clearly more torpedo shaped than the larger one.

The fish in the 125 were moved there from their original home a 150 which leaked. So I transplanted everything in the 150 to the 125. That was a number of months ago 6 o or so. I made a few changes in the layout. One was to build up the rock pile and cave set-up to better hold a plant. About 4 months back I bought a gigantic java fern at my clubs auction. I divided into 3 plants. The on that was almost a foot tall and had many leaves ended up on top of the cave in the clown tank. It is in the back left corner and made great cover for the fry I spotted today.

In the summer of 23 I had to treat the 2nd biggest clan for wasting. I did this in an H tank from my summer outside set-up. I cured the fish and then power fed it a while so it gained bulked up some and then returned it to the main tank. The big one began to pick on it and did a bit of damage to its dorsal. Eventually they worked things out and he defers to her.

The big one loves to eat and will take flakes from=the surface and anything else she can get. She was not particularly afraid of me and when the food hit the water she was always ready for it. But about 6 or 8 weeks ago she became a lot more shy and would bolt for her cave when I would approach the tank to drop in food. For a while she would not even come out her cave to eat right away.

I am wondering if this recent behavior change was related to spawning in some way.

When I spotted them today I was afraid that the barbs or even a curious smaller clown came near it might see them as food. I also did not to risk spooking the fry into the open as I feared that made them more visable to the oother fish. I also wondered if the might not know how to find their way back to cover.

Similarly I highly doubted I could net them without having to pulling a lot of stuff out to expose them. And if I did that, there was no guarantee that they would hang around as I doing so. And then trying to net them would have been a challenge. I figured if I left them alone and made sure their hiding place was secure, maybe they would grow to wheer they could get beyond a barb size mouth and for the other clowns to seer them as buddies and not as lunch.

I could not tell when I snapped three quick pics in not great light and with little time to focus. I posted the only one which came close to showing one of them to some extent. I feed a few soft foods which will break into small size pieces. I always drop some bear that rocks pile. So they should be able to find food in a spot the fish to not spend much time near.

This is one time I wished I used a smart phone as I think the camera on one would have gotten a better pic.

 

[Innesfan]

Yes, it is possible. Exceedingly rare, but entirely possible. And if you are saying that the only two species that have set fins in that tank are Sahyadria denisonii and Clown Loaches, well then, that photo pretty much tells the tale. That can only be a Clown Loach juve.

This is truly a 'holy moley!'

If I were you, I'd play the lottery this week.

 

[fishorama]

Wow whee!! That fry does look like a clown! I don't know what redline fry look like, but much more loachy than barblike to me.

I just looked at seriouslyfish pics of denisonii fry, similar in some ways, but not like yours!! Happy New Year my friend!!

 

[JuiceBox52]

This is incredible wow!

 

[GaryE]

Please keep the photos coming. I'd love to see this documented, as these ultra-rare successful spawnings of clown loaches are generally said to be impossible. But they are reported, and it seems to me that if you keep these fish well, are skillful with them and are phenomenally lucky, they can breed.

I'd put clown loaches high on the list of fish usually doomed by ignorance and a lack of respect for life. You've always spoken of yours in a way that showed they were being superbly cared for. This is a very exciting result of that.

What you described is really similar to what the local guy reported, although he was in an era when photos were difficult (this was in the 1970s). It's a chance breeding brought about by excellent fishkeeping, and it gives us a chance to maybe see these fry develop.

 

[Back in the fold]

My mind is thoroughly , well and truly blown .

 

[TwoTankAmin]

Ideally I would like to catch the fry and move them to their own grow tank. But, this is next to impossible. The tank is a 125 which means it is 6 feet long and 1.5 feet front to back and just under 2 feet deep. In the back left end I have a huge cave with a big fern on top of it. It has a big rock and wood pile in front of the cave which runs along the back wall. The fry are using all this cover as a secure place to hide as nothing can reach them there.

Doing the work on the plants disrupted that area and when I was putting things back together I spotted a fry and then more. T\eeyh were popping up out of the cover and going back into it. To catch them would require removing all the cover and that presents two problems. One is even if the fry somewhat stayed put trying to catch a 1/2 inch fry in that much space would be darn near impossible. And if they scatter it would be absolutely impossible.

If they did scatter I fear they would be seen as a snack for the other clowns and the redline barbs. All of this made me conclude is the best thing to do was to leave them alone and make sure their cover was back in place, which it now is. I never saw the fry until I removed a lot of the cover to bleach dip the fern and some of the rocks. When I spotted the fry was as i was working to restore the stuff I had bleached and prepared for return to the tank. I am hoping the fry will survive in their safe area and will not come out much until that time.

I think they need to grow to the point where the redlines cannot eat them and the 9 clowns in the tank recognize them as fellow clowns and also will not want to eat them.

I realize how rare this all is. I am still in a bit of a shock about it all. I can say without the slightest doubt that had I wanted to try to spawn clowns I would never have been able to do it. I see these fry as be equivalent to winning the lottery. There is ot skill in winning it and there is no skill here with the birth of the fry. I had nothing to do with it aside from the fact they are my fish and I always try to give my fish great living conditions.

Knowing how rare something like this is and how amazed I am that it happened, I am not looking for any sort of "fame" what i am hoping happens is that some of the fry actually survive and grow into normal clowns down the road. I doubt I will be able to get more pictures without risking losing them. So, I will not try as the downside is losing them.

One thing occurs to me here. I recently began feeding the tank cooked shrimp. I am feeding this about once a week or so and had done my third feeding two nights ago. I am wondering if this had anything to do with the spawn. What I feed the tank for the bigger fish includes sinking foods which tend to get soft, There are many plants and algae available as well. So I think the fry will be able to find food. I normally drop food all around the tank which includes near the rock/cave/plant area in which they are hiding.

I have kept clowns for about 23 years maybe a tad longer. I kept altum angels for a number of years before I sold them. In my wildest dreams I would never had thought there was even the slightest chance that I would ever see either species spawn in my tanks. I knew that i did now have the sills needed to pull off such a miracle. So I am completely amazed that is has happened. I would have thought I had a better chance being struck by lightning, twice.

 

[TwoTankAmin]

About 25 minutes ag I headed into the room with the clown tank to get ready to finish the project I started yesterday. I wanted to get a quick look at the area in the back corner wghere the bfry are hding. To my surprrise they were out and about but never far from beibng able to dart back into cover fast. I have been shooting pics like mad.

My picture tanking method using my old digi-cam is simple. Take a ton of shots and, like the blind squirel who always finds a nut now and then, this also applies to the results or the ton of pics.. If I snap 50 times I shoould get 2 or even 3 decent shots I can use. I have done 3 shooting sessions here so far in the past 30 minutes and have nothing impressive so far, but a few are usable.

My camera is old and the USB connection on it is not working so I cannot connect it to my PC. I have a portable card reader. I take the card out of the camera and use the reader to view pics and load them to onto the PC. I have not looked at the 3rd session yet. I need to finish cleaning the plants in the right half of the tank and then clean the filters and especially the pre-filters. I should also clean the canister on the tank.

I will review and maybe edit the pics and then post some tonight. There appear to be more fry than I thought and they also vary some in size.

 

[JuiceBox52]

This is so cool to follow along to! Do you think the size variation indicates multiple spawning? Or simply variation in growth rates from the same group?

 

[GaryE]

There's nowhere the adults could go? A few times when I've had uncatchable surprise fry, they got the tank for a bit. I guess it's hard with big fish like clowns.

 

[TwoTankAmin]

I wrote this yesterday and failed to hit the post button.

I have had the two biggest clowns for a long time. They started in a 15 gal with 4 of them at 4 inches. One was lost a long time ago and the second one lost was the biggest. I buried it in the garden. The fish moved up in tanks sizes first to a 75 and then to a 150. When that leaked I had to downsize the space and they went into a 125. I do not have another 6 foot tank. So the fry either make it where they are or they don't.

I I found the fry when I did big work on the left 1/2 of the tank yesterday. I just finished the working on the other half. All of the fish were down at the fry end of the tank until I finished the dipping and returned the plants to the right half. I still need to do the water change and to work on the filters. The canister is overdue for the December semi-annual cleaning.

I did not see the fry out when the bigger fish were at their end of the tank. I think they are hard wired to dun and hide it they seen any movement at all.

Oh well , back to work, I have to clean up the fish space area where I was doing the dipping in our second building. I will do the water change and filter cleaning in the 125 tomorrow.

Now it is Sunday. I spotted the fry out and eating. They have been feeding one the algae and Aufwuchs on the rocks and slate around their hiding place. I checked a while ago and spotted 3 fry out and feeding. One of the larger clowns was not far away and did not show any interest. I just keep hoping I will be lucky and the fry will survive and grow.

I shot more pics and most were not usable. I think I need to increase the light overhead. I let the camera work in auto mode and I turn off the flash and turn on macro mode and then zoom in. The camera uses a small spotlight to help illuminate and that tends to scare the fry some. I may ask my brother, who used to be a professional photographer and who still has his great Nikon lenses but now on a digicam, to shoot some pics for me.

What makes this so odd was that in the 1960s I developed and printed B&W pictures and then worked in a photo studio on NYC for a while. I even worked in a private gallery he,ping to catalogue and extensive art collection. I was taking pictures of the art using a huge bellows camera with 5x7 and 8x10 Ektachrome sllde film. But that was another lifetime agao.

I used to think that my biggest success keeping fish was breeding the B&W Hypancistrus plecos. Not any more and I cannot even claim any credit for this as it just happened. I would have given 100 to 1 odds that I could never, in my wildest dreams, ever spawn Altums and about 500 -1 that I could never come close to spawning clowns.

The one thing I can say for sure is that neither the clowns nor the barbs in the tank have ever seen a fry in their entire lives. The problem is that they are all pigs and will try to eat anything they think might be food.

A number of months back when the 150 leaked and I had to move everything in that tank to the current 125, to catch the fish I had to remove everuthing else from the tanks and then drop the water level substantially. I got the bigger clowns by scaring them into one of the big caves I ut back ibto the tank and then moving the cave with the fish in it. I doubt I can get a net anywhere near the fry. they seem very smart in that respect.

 

[Innesfan]

I had a thought. I wonder if the accumulation of mulm in the tank contributed to the successful spawning and survival of fry, providing both cover and nutrition. So perhaps don't be too meticulous about clean-up?