After waiting patiently, my pair of A. polymnus - Saddleback Clownfish finally spawned on Friday, December 17, 2010.
The Saddleback pair are approximately 2.5 years old, which from what I understand is the age they must attain before they spawn. The female is 5 - 5.5" and the male is 3.5 - 4". Although they are not considered the black variant due to their mid stripe not fully extending down the length of their side, they are completely black. The pair resides in our 40 gallon refugium of our reef / frag system. I placed them there because I ran out of room in my broodstock system where my breeding fish reside. :)
Two to three weeks before spawning, the female starting digging in the deep sand bed of the refugium where they are located. Her digging was to such an extent, she would cloud the water of our 800+ gallon reef / frag system. On the days she was most actively digging, there were times we could barely see in the 285 gallon display tank. Those were the days my husband thought about "fishing" for Saddlebacks!
To my delight, at 5:00 PM of the 17th, while feeding my broodstock and our reef system, I noticed the female laying eggs on one of the tiles I placed in the refugium many months ago. The pair of Saddlebacks spawned for approximately two hours. After they finished spawning, the female immediately started fanning the eggs with the male lagging behind in his duties. Every so often, he would fan them and then swim away. As with most first time spawners, the egg mass was small compared to the amount laid from "veteran" spawning fish. I would guesstimate there were 300 - 400 eggs whereas, the Saddleback generally lay approximately 1,000 eggs.
Since laying the eggs, the first time spawning female tended to the eggs faithfully while the male (also first time spawner) was vacationing on one of his many anemones. After the female fanned the eggs, she would go find the male and chase him over to the eggs until he started fanning. I am sure they both will get better at tending to their eggs in time (namely, the male).
On Saturday, December 25th, he night the eggs were due to hatch, I assembled the rearing tank:
- 5 gallon tank - all sides except for one painted black
- black towel to cover the one side of the tank that is not painted
- small heater set to 80F
- airstone
- enough water from the parents tank to cover the tile
After setting up the rearing tank (8:00 PM), I immediately transferred the tile to the tank. The air from the airstone was set to aerate the eggs enough to keep them in constant motion. I decided at this point to cover the top of the tank with a black towel also since we have some of our frag tanks on reverse lighting; I wanted to be completely dark in the tank to stimulate them to hatch.
I couldn't help but take a quick peek in on the tank before going to bed. When I uncovered a corner of the tank, there they were! Many very small larvae. Interestingly, the larvae of the Saddlebacks are smaller than those of my A. percula clownfish. I thought the Saddlebacks would have been larger than the perculas whereas they are a much larger fish.
I was able to get a video of the fish spawning with my iPhone. Unfortunately, the video is of poor quality.
