Spawning Clowns?

[Mike62]

I have a question for anyone who has had clowns spawn in their tank. What sort of behaviour indicates that the female is about to spawn. The reason I ask is because over the last day or so, my female clown has been burying herself in the anenome, and when I say bury, I really mean it. Not the usual sort of lying on the top, it gets down in there so deep that you cant see her at all. If she does spawn, how big and what color will the eggs be?

[Darth]

they start off orange and would be a cluster on a rock they turn silver right before the hatch

[Cheebs]

If sh'es acting out of the ordinary, it oculd be spawning behavior, but not necessarily. Other behavior you might notice is the male (and female) cleaning off an area of rock or glass near the anemone. If the eggs are already laid, you iwll nromally notice them guarding and grooming the area. Sometimes that area is out of sight.

There is no telling how many eggs there will be, but usually the first couple batches are lower in number... My Maroons, when they started laying, would produce about 30-40 eggs. Now there are upwards of 500-600 (She is 6 inches long though, so I guess she can hold a lot in there!). So your first batch could have very little, perhaps a dozen, and as they are comfortable that number should increase. The eggs aren't big, and can vary slightly in size depending on the type of clown, but mine are tiny. I'd compare them to the size of a sesame see, maybe a tiiiiny bit bigger.

As Darth said, they will be orange when they first appear, and as they get closer to hatching, as long as they are fertilized, they will start turning a silvery colour, and if you looks closely, you can see a very tiny pair of silvery eyes inside each egg. This is usually close to the 7-10 day mark. My clowns spawn every 10-14 days. roughly.

If you want to encourage spawning, I've found that having a flat surface near the anemone can help. I use a flat piece of rock or slate. When this is removed, they stop spawning until I place it near them again. They would eventually find a new spot I'm sure, but they are comfortable raising the eggs on the nice flat surface.

All this is based mostly on my personal experience with my pair of clowns. There are hundreds of sites out there dedicated to clownfish spawning, raising the fry, etc. Here's one such example: http://www.breedclownfish.com/step-2-preparations-for-clownfish-fry/

Hope that helps!