A new arrival

[Tomoko Schum]

Hi y'all,

My cardinalfish had a baby!

Here's the baby with a baby sitter:

Can you see his orange tummy? He just had his first meal.

The rest of the babies are still in their daddy's mouth. If you look very closely, you can see a baby's eyes at the right corner of his mouth.

The babies are about 4 days over due. Daddy is still hanging in there with the rest of the babies in his mouth. He has not had a meal for 30 days now. What a dedication! I am very glad that a human mom doesn't have to carry babies in her mouth.

Tomoko

 

[mltmtascp]

How SWEET! Nice pics. Keep us updated on their progress.
Monica

 

[gflat65]

Awesome, Tomoko. I hear they typically do well (compared to other fishes). Keep us posted.

 

[ct_vol]

Thats great... How long have you had your pair???

 

[NicoleC]

Fantastic!

If I ever get my new tank set up, I may have to hit you up for a pair.

 

[Tomoko Schum]

Thank you all.

I got a few young ones in mid October. By December this pair formed and I was pretty sure that they mated. However, the male quickly lost the first batch of eggs - I am afraid he ate them.

The baby is pretty big for as young as he/she is. Banggaii fry should be very easy to raise. My FW fancy angelfish fry was a lot smaller (about the size of clownfish larvae) and took a lot of care to raise them through metamorphosis (they look like regular fish babies initially) and all. These guys are already big, well formed and eating bbs from the start

Nicole, I will be sure to save you a few.

Tomoko

 

[TOYTEK]

Congrats, Tomoko. A pair of those is on my wish list(and more importantly my wife's ) And the lil' babies are so cute.

 

[timrandlerv10]

is there any issue in future breeding from the same...litter?

could you breed brothers and sisters without issue?

 

[stephish]

This is most fabulous!!! congratulations on your new additions.

 

[snuggle2me]

Oh! I bet that is really cool to see up close and in person. Especially if i get excited seeing it in a picture like yours. Really awesome! I'll have to show my son this thread when he gets home from school. He will think its really neat that the daddy holds the babies.

 

[NicoleC]

Tim,

There is a very thorough article summarizing everything about Bangaii cardinals in the latest issue of C, The Journal by Fr. Frank Marini. In it, he discusses that the populations are highly inbred in the wild, and that there have been no documented cases of genetic deformities. So, it is probably relatively safe to inbreed cardinals.

 

[timrandlerv10]

Nicole,
Cool-thanks, I'll try to finda copy of that!

Tomoko, how goes the child rearing? Any more kids leave dad's mouth yet?

 

[Tomoko Schum]

Thank you, Toytek, Stephish and Snuggle2me. It's really fun to see them in person. Even my daughter, who is used to see all sorts of fish bred at home in the past, thought it was neat to see such a tiny perfect copy of the parents yesterday (especially these buggy eyes.)


Tim,

I found four babies this morning with the sea urchin. I saw a tail and a pair of eyes in the male's mouth. I was expecting a dozen or so, but this batch may be small.

I am beginning to regret using a live sea urchin for a baby sitter. It poops too much and try to run away when I feed the babies leaving a cloud of bbs behind.

In-breeding is not a bad thing for certain purposes. When you try to fix a favorable trait, you often do line-breeding, mating offspring with a parent. Betta and guppy breeders often do this. By line breeding, you can enable favorable traits to be pronounced and maintained. When a recessive gene with an unfavorable trait is carried into the mix, you will end up getting the trait pronounced and carried over to the next generation. This is the bad part of the line-breeding/in-breeding. Otherwise, line-breeding is not a bad thing. You can definitely use it to your advantage.

Tomoko

 

[timrandlerv10]

i think i get what a 'babysitter' is (as i dont have one for valentine's day this year...), but how does that work? what do they use in the wild? what other options can you use in captivity?

 

[NicoleC]

In the wild, they use long-spined urchins (like Tomoko's) as shelter and protection while young, but will accept alternate fake versions in captivity.

Both in the wild and in captivity they have been known to seek shelter in anemones, too.

 

[Tomoko Schum]

I found six when I got home and now I have eight of them swimming among the spines of the sea urchin. There are at least two more in the male's mouth. They are eating bbs voraciously. It's amazing how they find their urchin so quickly without being taught to do so.

Tomoko

 

[timrandlerv10]

how neat--they're being hosted by an urchin!

i can't imagine my GSM letting them share her bta though...

Soooooo...Tomoko...when will they be large enough for you to take to the frag swap thi--I mean, when will you be pairing them up and selling them to Nicole and me?

 

[Tomoko Schum]

Early this morning the male surprised me with a lot more fry. I have more than 20 now!

Since the male is done, I moved him to the other side of the divider, leaving the babies with the sitter. Well, the sitter tried to high tail out of the part of the tank with the commotion I made, leaving all the babies behind I had to chase it back to where the babies were hanging around, bunched up looking confused. It took me a few tries, but I got them all back on the urchin. Then I fed them all with bbs. Again the sitter tries to move when I showered it with bbs. So the chase starts once again They are all doing well now.

Tim -

I can save some for you and Nicole. However, it's not going to be possible to sex them. It's very hard to tell males from females even when they are mature. My male and female look identical. Some people say that they can tell them apart by the look of their jaw lines, but I don't see the difference with mine. However, my male's banner fin is slightly longer. I expect them to be sexually mature in about 6 months or so. At that age, I don't think no one but the fish can tell the difference. You just have to get a few and let them pair up. You may lose a few in the process but that's the surest way to find a pair.

Tomoko

 

[timrandlerv10]

It must be easy to tell when they become a pair while part of the school then?

Do people get several, then pull the pair out and sell/return/trade the remainder?

 

[Tomoko Schum]

It's really tricky. It's a fish-eat-fish world

Young ones school and soon you will see one ousted from the group. You need to remove the ostracized one right away to save it. Otherwise, it gets stressed out fast and a powerhead will claim it pretty soon. This process will be repeated until you end up with a pair at the end.

With my other cardinals (the genus of apogons) I have a haren consisting of one male with a few females. I may have a pair and a trio of blue eye cardinals (apogon leptachanthus). My poor males are thin, constantly pregnant and hiding while the females are all fat and happy out in the open.

If you happened to introduce a Bangaii male on top of another single adult male, the stronger male will kill the other right away. John Newby sold me a pair several years ago, thinking he got the right pair, but I soon ended up with a single male (within a day or two). I introduced another fish that looked like a female, but he killed it right away, too. That male is still in my 120 without a mate.

Once you have a pair, the rest of breeding is pretty easy with Bangaii cardinalfish. However, feeding tiny newborn babies three times a day with bbs is time consuming, especially if the babysitter moves away with the babies as you feed them. I will have to make a fake urchin for the next batch so that they will stay put. Even then, bbs tends to rise toward the light or scatter everywhere. I suspect that it will get easier once these babies grow a little more since they will venture out from the spines of the urchin and chase brine shrimp down.

Tomoko