Spawning Banggai Cardinals

[Troy Valentine]

What to do?

A week or so ago I was looking at my tank and noticed at feeding time one of my Cardinals wasn't touching any food, this was odd to me since he was usually the pig of the tank. Then a couple of days ago when Larry(Instar) was over we observed that the Cardinals jaw and gills were flared out as if it had jowles. Larry was persistant in telling me that the male was carring eggs. He also said that you can tell because of the tiny tube that appeared behind the female fishes pectoral fins. Curious????? Well today after many hours I finally got a good look down the fishes mouth, and WHOOAAA!! eggs :D and yes I am a fish geek!! :-o

So now what to do? I also have a 60 gallon reef with a well established 30gallon refugium. I am toying with the idea of moving the male to the refugium of my other tank, so that in theory the fry will have the fauna from the refugium to feed on, and keep them free from predators, once I remove the male again......

Any opinions will be greatly appreciated... ;)

If you go to my gallery I will have a picture of the male with his eggs.

[Nano_Steve]

well my best advice would be to get into contact with leslea(pernelf) from marsh.com she just recently successfully had a brood of bangaiis and has given them all away. my second tip would be to let me know when they are ready to pick up as these are the fish that ive been talkin about all day and tryin to find someone to get some from ;)

congratulations on top of the advice!

take kare,steve

ps if u do end up doin a list of interested buyers for your fry throw me on it! :)

[Troy Valentine]

Thank you Steve

Maast members are welcome to all the babys. IF we can just keep them alive. ;)

[OrionN]

What for the male to realease the fry at about 20 days or so after the light turn out. Earlier than that, and the fry are too imature to survide. Try to scoop all the fry and put them in your refugium because the parent will eat them up. Try to feed them with gut loaded Brine shrimp babies and try to wean them from this ASAP. If all you feed them is brine shrimp, they will be deficent in certain Omega 3 Fatty acid and will died when they are about 1-2 cm.

I have two Baby Banggai mature in my overflow box (30 inches X8 inches X34 inches). They then proceed to eat all their sibbling who got to the overflow box once they are big enough. Everytime, my Banggai spawn, 7-10 make it to the sump/refugium. The flow there is too high and they eventually got suck up by the pump. I don't have the room or the time try to raise them.

Good luck

[kaiser]

I think the idea w/ the fuge sounds pretty good! Depending on the design of Your Fuge You may have to modify it to where the fry doesn't get sucked up into the return pump and into the tank.

[Pernelf]

Chris pointed me over here for my .02 worth so here it goes :-D

The male will hold the fry for about 20-25 days from the day he quit eating. Don't be surprised if he spits out the eggs or eats them the first few times. My male didn't figure it out until about the 4th batch. I have had three sucessful spawnings so far and raise fry from the first two. I lost my most recent batch when I moved. The male will release the fry over a period of a few days a couple at a time. Since I keep my breeding pair in a 75 gallon tank all by them selves with less than 20lbs of rock, it is very easy for me to pull the rock out and strip the male of fry. Once caught in the net, when I start to raise it out of the water the male usually spits all the fry out. It is a lot easier for me than having to watch the tank night after night to try and catch fry. I start feeding them on newly hatched brine shrimp three times a day to bulk them up as around day 10 the fry have used all yolk reserves. After a few weeks, I started to introduce frozen baby brine shrimp then cyclops-ez. I waited til my fry were about 6 mths before selling them. I have a webiste that semi-chronicles my last batch http://www.pernelf.com/banggai.html Also you should read the articles by Frank Marini here http://www.reefs.org/library/talklog/f_marini_020799.html Frank has his own forum on reefcentral in the fish breeding section. Hope I've given you some help.