The Lightning Project

With all the stuff going on, I realized it’s been months since I showed the pair of Lightnings that I saved for myself.

I also wanted to update the “Lightning Maroon Clownfish Pattern Progression & Development” post, as there is obviously still a fair amount of justifiable skepticism as to whether these offspring will ever wind up looking like their mom.

At this point the fish are just under 1 year old. Here’s a quick look.

And no, these ones aren’t for sale.

Months back I moved the Lightning pair to the basement following the ongoing disease problems the pair was suffering through.  In short, this last ditch effort worked, and the pair (along with their Foureye Butterfly companion) have lived in a 33 gallon extra long since then.  Their Ecoxotic Cube Tank was bleached to sterlize, and then soaked with vinegar to take off all the coraline algae.  The tank was scrubbed, rinsed, and sat dry for months.

This story, combined with a lack of any photos, has led a few crackpots to suggest that the Lightning Maroon had in fact died / perished.  Well…I was down there shooting photos recently and thought “what the heck”

Of course, the long term goal has been to restore them to the original tank, this next time set up with Bubble Tip Anemones and not much else

Tonight I started down the path, filling the tank and adding fresh new substrate (Caribsea’s Fiji Pink).

Let’s see how quickly things clear up

Finally, some risk is diversified again.  The second of 3 locally-planned backup pairs is out of the house, this time going to Frank (who you may remember contributed the massive “Labrador” Maroon Clown to this project way back in the day).  Frank is an aquarist who’s in it for the long haul, so you know this pair of clowns is in GOOD hands.

The pair I sent home with Frank has lived together for months now…obviously far too young to be an actual pair, but the point is that they shared an 8 X 8 X 8 inch cubicle without killing each other.  The Lightning in the pair really is a nice fish, but the standard striped sibling is a pretty horrendous example and were it NOT for the fact that it’s progeny of the Lightning Maroon, would have long since been culled.  Still, it shows some of the classic “Horned Maroon Clownfish” patterning seen in the occasional aberrant wild Maroon Clowns from PNG .  Of course, it’s hard to know how many of the physical disappointments I’m seeing are the result of either fighting or general rearing mishaps, but I suspect THAT over genetic issues at this point in time.  I took the last few minutes before bagging them up to snap a handful of good shots.

You may recall that the first pair of Lightning offspring “left the nest” a while back to help serve as a genetic repository and safeguard should something happen here at my house.  Well, this morning, Mike (who you may recall played an integral part in rearing these babies for the first few days of their lives) shot me this photo of his Lightning.

Updated – he just sent over a cell phone shot of the other side.

Lookin’ good Mike!

Yes, here it is, has been too long.  With each passing day I am evermore convinced that my hypothesis about the Lightning pattern development is correct. The “lightning maroon clownfish pattern development” photo series post has been updated as well. This is what the Lightnings are looking like now.

This is the pair I’m holding onto to make a “Lightning” X “Lightning” pairing  Time to start feeding the one on the right twice as often as the one on the left so that 6 months from now, the one on the right is twice as big!

The left fish; future male.

The right fish; future female.

The most interesting thing I’ve noticed is that I’ve made no difference in care other than temperature and lighting; the large group in growout has been at warmer temps and has grown significantly larger and faster.  However, under only ambient lighting and in a group setting, they’ve not developed the intensity of color that these isolated specimens have.  I’m bringing on the lights to get these fish ready for sale!

Craig’s comments today got me thinking – I should show the progression of the pattern developing.  So this is for you Craig!  These are all the same fish; this is one I’ve decided to keep for myself…looks like it lost a ventral fin in early fights but is otherwise a really nice fish (take note, you can see how the damaged ventral fin has regrown / regenerated…looks like the other atrophied).  I’ll keep showing this fish in future progressions most likely.

August 8th, 2012

September 13th, 2012

October 23rd, 2012

November 13th, 2012

December 13th, 2012

February 22nd, 2013

March 23rd, 2013

NEW – June 18th, 2013

Updates coming soon on how you can have your shot at owning a Lightning Maroon Clownfish of your own, but for the moment, how about some photos fresh from the fishroom?

You missed a lot of Lightning Maroon Clownfish news!  Of course, the “news” can be summed up in pictorial form.

8-15-2012

9-5-2012

’9-13-2012

9-27-2012

At this point, the fish are around 1″ total length…maybe a hair more on the largest.  Still quite small.  Not every fish is perfect – in fact, I’m pretty unhappy with how the majority turned out…will be a fair number of culls I think.  Still, a lot of good genetic material is on hand to play with!  I also divulged my basic plan for the offspring at MACNA, so here goes:

Approximately 3 pairs will be held back for my personal breeding efforts.  3 pairs will go to local breeders.  Culls will be offered to established commercial breeding operations for genetic material to work with (the assumption here being that culls were the product of the environment and fighting, hopefully not genetic issues).  The remaining top tier fish will be sold at retail, probably at auction, to the general public.  My anticipation is that there will be maybe 30-40 fish at most to offer, which translates to only 15-20 Lightnings max.  Once again, time to start saving your pennies (and hundred dollar bills).

So we’ve all but forgotten about the original Lightning Maroon, so I figured it was time to first step back and see how she’s faring.  Sadly, the Baytril-laced feeds do not appear to have had any effect.  About 18 days ago, we switched from the Repashy Gel to soaking Spectrum Thera Pellets with 0.05 ML of the injectable Baytril and approximately 0.15 ML of Brightwell’s MaxAmino, which seems to encourage a highly strong feeding response and probably serves to mask the flavor of the antibiotic.  This got us back on track from a dosing standpoint; while there were a few days where the fish completely refused food (generally on days where I’ve scraped the algae off the glass), most days see better than 90% being consumed.  Despite this success in treating, the Lightning Maroon has had more pop eye, more recurring mouth problems, and is currently showing signs of both mouth and fin rot.  There is little more demotivating than this.

Still, the babies are doing great, although there is a widening size disparity which seems to correlate to how aggressive and dominating a baby can be.  I pulled out two specimens to photograph today, and they somewhat show the extremes of the range.  This also happens to be, at least in the Lightning side, one of the individuals showing the heaviest white coverage, with the headstripe connected to the midstripe and the midstripe to the tailstripe, on both sides.  This is a 1/4 gallon (small) specimen cup (to give you a frame of reference).  Sadly, it appears as though the pelvic fins may have already been badly damaged in the fighting of the offspring…I have dozens of breeder nets on hand now to implement plans to start separating out these fish.

More photos, these from 7-27-2012: