gmdcdvm
Supporting Member
Hello,
For those of you who are interested in breeding bangai cardinals I wrote a summary of my experience below. It is pretty lengthy and detailed, and I may have missed remembered some of the information. But, it is an easier read than going through the other thread. Sorry for the length, but I wanted to try and capture everything that was involved. Here is the link for the original thread.
Gerry
For those of you who are interested in breeding bangai cardinals I wrote a summary of my experience below. It is pretty lengthy and detailed, and I may have missed remembered some of the information. But, it is an easier read than going through the other thread. Sorry for the length, but I wanted to try and capture everything that was involved. Here is the link for the original thread.
Bangai’s bred in my tank!
Well, Hopefully we are able to raise these guys. My son has been wanting to breed some sort of fish for a while. I got these Bangai’s about a year ago. Two paired up. Over the last few weeks we noticed the male’s mouth looked distended. My son got a pic where you can see the babies inside two...
www.bareefers.org
- Sexing: This is very challenging until you have fully mature individuals. Even then it was not easy at first. There are several pics online on what to look for. Someone described the male’s jaw as more of a bulldog or square shape. Once you see two side by side it is easy to tell the difference, but this change was not obvious until after a year of age. There were some posts that talked about looking for 1 or 2 bumps near the anus, but I found this impossible to do with the fish constantly moving around.
- Breeding: I have no clue why my two decided to pair up and breed in may tank. I purchased four fish, probably 4–5-months old. They were OK hanging out together until they were close to a year of age. They bred at approximately a 1 year to a year and a half of age. From what I have seen and read these guys will partner up on their own but will not tolerate any other cardinals in their territory. We started with four hoping to get a pair and lost one within 2 months while they were still immature. I noticed two of them were hanging out together all the time at about 10 months of age and chasing the third fish away. Thankfully, I have a 5ft tank, so the third fish was able to find her own place to hang out. After birthing the fry, I reintroduced the male back to the display. He disappeared and I never saw him again. The males will not eat while brooding the eggs (approximately 28 days), and I read some of them will die due to lack of food intake. This left me with two females. They spend the day at opposite ends of the tank, and one will occasionally chase the other one during feeding time. I think for most tanks the best you can do is one pair even in a larger system. I don’t know if anyone has tried to keep a large group (say 6 or more) in one system similar to large clown fish harems, but I don’t think this will work for these fish. If anyone has seen or knows anything different let me know.
- Birth: The male will hold the eggs in its mouth for approximately 28 days. I read online they might spit them out or swallow them when stressed. Overall, my tank has very peaceful fish, and no one seems to bother the bangai’s other than other bangai’s. I would keep this in mind if you plan on trying to breed them. I think they will do better in peaceful tanks. The main signs the male was brooding is that he held his mouth half open all the time and stopped feeding. Once I noticed this behavior I had my son help me look for signs of when birth might be eminent. I posted pictures of this, but eventually you will see either pairs of eyes looking at you or ideally fins/tails hanging out of the male’s mouth. Once I saw this, I set up a spare tank and went to work catching the male. The male was easy to catch, and as soon as he was in the net he spit up 4 or 5 fry. This fits with what I read online. If they feel stressed, they will spit up or swallow the fry. This is why ideally you should look for fins and tails verses eyes since then you know the fry are fully developed. I moved him to a small 5g tank. Over the next 48 hours he brought up the remaining fry. I read some reports about the male eating the fry so after 72 hours I did not see any new fry, and I put him back in the main display. Then is when he disappeared and likely passed away from stress/lack of nutrition. If I have a chance to do this again, I will put the male into a tank by himself to let him recover and make sure he is eating before considering putting him back in the main display. Then, I would use an acclimation box to make sure the female is OK with his return. At the same time, given how small the fry were when they were released I am pretty sure even in the most peaceful of tanks they would be eaten pretty quickly. I don’t see the fry surviving very long in any kind of display that has any fish in it. Somone posted about a fry they found in their sump and this make sense. Lots of microfauna in the sump and predators around.
- Rearing and feeding: This was the most challenging part of this whole endeavor. Definitely easier than clownfish, and I suspect these are probably the easiest saltwater fish to rear. I am surprised no one has figured out any mutations for this fish. I started off in a 5g tank and used a sponge bubble filter. There is no way I would consider any kind of power head for these fish. I suspect they would be sucked up into the pump or the screen for the pump. They are large enough to eat newly hatched brine shrimp. I think most people are aware of the poor nutritional content of brine shrimp. I just did not have the time to culture any kind of pods and buying pods was cost prohibitive. I bought two brine shrimp hatcheries and set them up on an alternating two-day schedule. This was more than enough to provide 2-3 feedings per day on a consistent basis. I would add a few drops of selcon to the collection cup maybe 30 minutes to 1 hour prior to feeding. I found on algaebarn.com some cans of pods that look like wet cat food. I started feeding these along with the live brine shrimp. It took about two weeks or so before I saw them reliably eating these pods. They did have to go in at the same time as the live brine to stimulate the “feeding frenzy” (feeding response), and there needs to be a little current. Once the food settled to the bottom of the tank they were no longer interested. There is quite a bit of food waste that develops. They should be fed at least three times a day early on, and the frozen/dead foods are only consumed when moving in the current. I have never seen adults or the fry pick at things on the rocks or along the bottom of the tank. I suspect this is all part of their natural behavior. By about 3 months of age, I was able to get them eating frozen calanus pods, but again there needs to be some current. Over the last 1-2 weeks (4 months of age) I have finally seen them go after full size frozen brine, plankton, and mysis.
- Maintenance: I started with approximately 24 fish and a 5g tank. I switched to a 20g tank after 2.5-3 months since the fish were noticeably bigger and I could see some of the large ones chasing the smaller ones around (thank you JVU. I hope to get that 20g back to you soon). I zipped tied a sponge filter to the powerhead screen intake to make sure no one got sucked up or onto the screen. I think at this age (4.5mos) I can remove the sponge filter since they look strong enough to swim away from the intake. I used a seachem ammonia badge to monitor water quality which thankfully never changed color. I did weekly or biweekly water changes as time allowed making sure to focus on siphoning out all the waste along the bottom of the tank. I keep some bags of ceramic beads used for pond filtration in the sump of my display. I used one of these bags to jump start the biological filtration of the tank. Given how many fish and how much waste I would not try to start a tank from scratch for this purpose. If you notice your fish are brooding, I would get ready with a piece of live rock or some other sort of seeded media that you can place in your sump for a few weeks (polyplab genesis block, some other type of media material).
- Complications, losses, etc: It took a good 4 months for all the fry to reliably eat frozen/non-live foods. Having a steady supply of live food is important especially early on. This means having at least two hatcheries going at the same time. It takes about 24 hours for the first shrimp to hatch depending on water temp. Depending on how many eggs you added they can be productive or 2 to 4 days. When the winter weather hit and the ambient temp dropped I noticed the shrimp were slower to hatch. After 2 days there was a significant drop off in production for each hatchery. I kept a plastic pitcher of saltwater ready to go inside the house (trying to keep the water temp higher). Every 2 days I would dump, clean, and reset the hatchery to keep them going. While not very time-consuming this is a high maintenance project. You need to have a tank ready to go with biological filtration ready. You need to have live foods ready to go when you think the male is close to releasing the fry. You need to feed 3 times a day early on. You need to remember to alternate the hatcheries to ensure a consistent food supply. I lost most of the fry during my thanksgiving vacation. I was gone for 9 days. There was probably enough shrimp for 4 to 5 days. When I got back, I found one dead body. I suspect the others died and decomposed without the pet sitter knowing. I did see bits of thin film and mucus along the edges of the water line that was similar to the stuff that grows on dead fish after a few days, and there was one partially decomposed body. Thankfully, this did not affect the ammonia levels in the tank. If you plan on leaving town and don’t want to lose the fish, you will need someone to learn to hatch and feed live brine.
- Summary: Overall rearing baby fish is relatively easy. It requires some effort daily, but only a few minutes a day and maybe an hour a week to clean the tank. I would not recommend this to anyone with a busy schedule or if you do not have the help of a lovely wife and son (or other family members) who can help you out when you are working, running late from work, or out of town. Expect to lose some fish. I think if we were able to watch them 24/7 we would not have lost so many, but there is only so much time. From what I read online losing up to 50% mortality is not unheard of and with all the challenges I ran into I can see why. Finally, a quick note about “sudden fright syndrome”. This is something I read about that can happen with younger fish or those on brine shrimp only diets. Sounds like it may be some sort of nutritional deficiency, but no one knows for sure. When these fish are less than 4 weeks and are startled, they can freeze up and die suddenly. Some people noted this happened when the lights came on suddenly. When I had to catch all the fish and move them into the 20g I noticed three of them lying flat on the bottom. The next day I found one had died, and the two others had recovered (at least that is what I recall, but I would need to review my weekly updates to make sure). Either way, I know I lost one for sure and the others appeared to recover. I did not lose any more fish until I went on vacation.
Gerry
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