Advice for breeding startup

[Onsan]

Yeah, developing your own strain is a long term proposition, years of work and a fair bit of luck.
I bred the Darwin occies, and although there were miss bars they tended toward being less white, so if I held on long enough I could maybe have bred an all black occie but I don't think they're would have been much of a market. (maybe kiwis? All Blacks).
You also don't really know which of the parents carried the trait, if it was the female, great breeding the miss barred male back with the mum would reduce the generation period, but if its the male you have to wait for the clown to mature to female, same to with breeding with siblings.
As crash said, get into it first and work out out from there.

[millotoli]

Thanks

I understand it's long term,
And highly unlikely I'll follow through,
But thought, if I went in with a goal, for example, lightning clowns, I know I want to start with black and white, and ...?

Or if I aim for piccaso I find percs...?

Etc
Or if I go a black and White cross percs I cpuld expect...?

If you get my meaning.

It would just guide my plan.
As to setups, I will read through some journals and get my questions together

[Onsan]

My plan when I did it was pretty simple, survival rates.
Just learning the techniques you need to do to get good hatch rates, early survivals on live feeds, then getting them on to prepared feeds and final saleable survival rates is a pretty good goal, i think.
Second was colouration, which for the black and whites is about diets.
If you can get good success rates here, then you've provided a basis for the rest of the stuff you've mentioned to fall into place.

[millotoli]

Haha yes, I agree
I may not even successfully raise a batch.
But if I know what I want to end up with , I can start looking for certain pairs to start breeding

I am researching everything I can re breeding,
I guess the less available info is how where certain strains started

[CaptCrash]

This is probably a good start for you http://clowncalc.nolapete.com.
Further detail here http://www.mbisite.org/Forums/tm.aspx?h ... ge=1#95554

It lets you enter in pair types and look at the expected results.

[millotoli]

Thank you kindly

I'm not going in expecting it will be easy and I will just end up with designer clowns.
I was just curious about starting strains. More for my info. Iv been around long enough to know nothing is just that easy lol

I am excited to learn what to do, learn how to raise them, watch my success rates go from 0 to 10 to 100
It feels like a great challenge. And who knows where it will lead me, probably ooze the rest of my hair.

Another question, I am building a room in my shed at the office for some tanks, so I was thinking to put them there, so I can look after them during the day, is that going to be more beneficial then having them at home ?
I'm 7:30am - 5pm at office
5-pm - 10 bed at home

Will I hit problems ?

[CaptCrash]

I would go with a space at home.

The reason being is that once they start to hatch, then you need to be there to collect them. So going to work at 10-11pm to check if fry have hatched is painful.
During the day, you want to feed them and leave them alone. No distractions for the fish, so the quieter the area the better.

[millotoli]

so assuming I can't do it at home, as my missus only agreed to it as it was at the office.

The shed is quiet, it just to store my tools and materials, so disturbing them won't be a problem,

However your other point is one to think about,
How well can you work out the night of hatching? Do you have to check nightly, or do you time it?

[CaptCrash]

They hatch every 14 days ish once they become regular. So that part is not to hard.

To collect the fry you need to remove the eggs and place in a hatching vessel the night of the hatch. This way is probably be what you will need to do, it will require an air pump to agitate the eggs over night.

Leaving fry in a fry catcher overnight tends to lead to dead fry.
It's workable, but I never had any success with this process, others prefer it.

[mrbailey]

I know that this is a little off-thread, but I have just had a read through.

None of our fish have or ever will have any treatment to make them infertile, this would go against everything we started breeding designer clowns for... To see them spread and become more common in Australia.

If you want to make your own strain, I'd encourage you to breed from fish that you know the pedigree of.

Just an FYI to the conversation, clown hybrids are perfectly fertile. As are their resulting offspring.