Bangaii Cardinal Pairing

Wolf93

New member
Hey guys and gals,
I have been considering the idea of getting a bangaii cardinalfish pair. One of the employees at my LFS said he could put two in a tank for me to see if the get along or not. I am estimating the fish to be 1 1/2 to 2 inches long. Would this be a way to get a male/female pair? Thanks in advance
 
i would think by putting 3 in a tank and watching them over a few days you should be able to find the odd man out, bangii males do not like other bangii males
 
This is an excellent example of "how bad do you want it" :) It's pretty obvious you have no experience pairing bangaiis or you wouldn't be asking. Sure you can let the lfs toss two together and if they don't rip at each others throats they might be a pair. Of course they might simply be two females or just two males who just don't give a damn. The only simple and "low budget" way is to to buy an established pair from some local reef club member breaking down an established tank. Outside of that you will need to buy several adults and place them in a 40+ galon tank. In time the pair will make itselfe quite evident. :D
 
You're right, :-) I have never paired cardinals before. I didn't think of there being two males. I was looking at them as a reef-safe community fish for my 55 that I was thinking I might attempt to raise in the future. I will keep my eyes open for a mated pair now. Thanks
 
I am not sure what to think about the first reply here, it seemed a little rude to me, but then maybe that is just me. Your response was well tamed, I salute you.

Still, I concur with the basic facts presented. There is one excellent solution I'll suggest at the end of my post.

I am certainly a fan of buying captive bred, and it is as was indicated much easier to find an established breeding pair from someone who for whatever reason isn't going to keep them.

But when was the last time you heard that. Finding a breeding pair of BC fish is wicked rare; finding someone with a breeding pair that wants to let go of them is almost impossible. Just check the posts on RC of people looking for them. I was looking for two years and just got mine Saturday.

There used to be a breeders as I recall, in the US who would sell you a pair of mated, proven breeders for around 150$ plus of minus, plus shipping. You could also get just "mated pairs" for a bit less. But I called a few months ago and they don't have them.

I am afraid it won't be easy for you either way. I heard recently that the Banggai situation is real bad. I was told the following:

1) many importers have simply stopped carrying the BC because the mortality to market is 99% or higher. Economically they just can't afford to carry a fish that won't live long enough to get to market.

2) wild caught (WC) are still afflicted with some malady (assumed or maybe even known to be parasitic in nature). As a result many of the fish the live long enough to sell die within the first 3 months in the home tank. This is what happened to me a year back. I killed six before I called it quites.

3) the BC is on its way to the Endangered Species list because it is so overfished

4) CITES is considering making the BC the first fish to be put on some special "banned" fish list (forgot the actual name of the list). Not sure what kind of legal power they have but if I recall correctly it was implied that they could and would halt all trading of the species through this act.

So, your options look like this I think:

1) buy a bunch and try to make your own from WC fishes. Doing the 10 in a tank trick, is risky. You will pay 150$ or more to buy 10 fish that likely have some parasite problem and will be dead in 3 months anyway when you could have spent the 150$ on a pair and 3 months later had babies.

2) buy a pair if you can find the outfit that was breeding them, for the 150$ or whatever the price is, assuming the are "back in" now.

3) put out the word in your local reef club you are looking for pair and see if anyone has them. Then try to sweet talk them into selling or trading (good luck).

But here is the best solution. Although those of us with breeding pairs like that we have breeding pairs, we don't alway raise the fry. Sometimes we need a break. It is very likely that although you don't have a pair of fish yourself, you can get someone who does, to give you their fry and you can raise them. This is afterall what most of us are really after right? the chance to raise fry. This is how I got my first set of BC fish. I raised someone elses fry. I learned a lot from my first attempt (0 survived) and on the second attempt managed to get 3 babies to live (so far at month 3 and eating cyclopeeze and hikari mysis). Looks like I'll get a pair from this three too (cool) which I will be giving away to someone in my reef club so they can try their hand a breeding.

I would suggest that you let the doner of fry get involved too, by showing them setup plans, feeding schedules, planning together etc. Its just like building a business partnership, co-operation, communcation, and joint exercises create long term realtionships you can both exploit. Once you find someone willing, you will likely get fry many times to try and raise, especially if you succeed. And if they should want to raise their own again, you would be first on their list to get a pair that they raise.

So my best advice is to put out the word that you are looking to raise the fry from someone local who has a breeing pair. Do this in RC and in your local reef club (you are a member of your local reef club right? best thing I ever did in reefing was to join my local club). Be prepared to drive some distance to pick up fry, and make sure you are ready to feed BBS at least twice a day, three of four times would be better.

Good luck, Kevin
 
Siklid, I think he meant the second reply :rolleyes: I should have apologized, sometimes I come off sounding differently than I intended.

Kevin, there is so much rumor about on some of the points you made. I keep hearing CITES this and restriction that, and "fished out" gets tossed around a lot too. But on any given day you can tour the wholesalers up on 104th St and see literally 1000's of bangaii's packed like sardines and selling for a whopping $3.50 apiece. Obviously even at that incredibly low price the importation is profitable or they wouldn't be there. To me this pretty much indicates the "rumors" are just that. My hope is that someone (hopefully someone here) that has an interest in this fish and the knowledge/ skills to investigate the situation can give us some hard anaylisis on the status of the bangaii. There has to be stats out there on the wild population and there has to be paperwork doccumenting any plans to restrict the importation. I know that Frank love's this fish and would think he'd be all over it, but I'm sure it takes time and effort to figure all this out. I just hope some legal beagle type who gets off on research will make the effort to set us straight.

In the meantime... I can raise bangaii 'til the cows come home but I don't. Too much real estate and too little profit. I have ten for sale right now and can't even get $25 for them on the local boards, that is pathetic. LFS will give me maybe $12.50. It is my belief that until the price rises no one is going to raise them on a large scale. That is why cb are so hard to find, the only ones doing it are hobbyists who's primary interest is not profit. That makes them rare. I am collecting & conditioning pairs in the hopes that things will change soon, in the meantime I watch with dispair as the males swallow their eggs month after month.

JMO and hopefully not too "rude" :)
 
Kathy55g, a keen point, no one was offended, I should have kept quiet.

David M, forgive me of thinking ill of you, it was not very Christian of me. Once again you have hit home with several points:

1) yep, my knowledge is second hand. I have no direct info and can only repeat what I hear from those who say they have been to 104th street (or its equivelant elsewhere), not having been there myself. The rumor mill keeps putting out.

2) I too expect Dr. Marini will set us straight if he knows.

3) I certaily could never make a profit raising and selling these guys. Forget that I am a beginner, there is a lot of effort and expense in it. I am amazed at those people who do make a profit on similar ventures (ex. seahorses).

I am hoping to get our club more into the breeding of animals in addition to the corals. There are 200+ members in our club, but only a few have really nice tanks that grow so much coral they can regularly sell off pieces to others in the club. But I find that many more of us can raise fish successfully. We have instituted our own Breeder's Awards Program in an attempt to get people going on it. So far not too much interest, but some. My oldest daughter having seen daddy succeed on his second attempt, is trying her luck in the banggai arena.

Too bad you are so far away from CT. It would be good for our club to have someone with your breeding and business backround come and give us a talk about the pratical aspects of it all.

Kevin Meade Secretary of CTARS.
 
Maybe bangaiis will become like many of the african mouthbrooding cichlids in the freshwater hobby. Many of them are pricey in the stores and their quality is often questionable. Go to a local freshwater club and you can often buy a bag of six fry for less than the price of one at the store. The "home grown" fry are often hardier and healthier then thier higher-priced retail cousins.

The reason for this is that it is just not that profitable to tank raise a fish that only produces 15-25 fry on a large scale. Like someone else pointed out, to much realestate, not enough profit.

Keep up the hobbyist raising and distribution, Its worth it!
 
ladies and genltlemen, help me out with some advice. I have found a fellow reefer in our Connecticut club who wants to take the three baby banggai I have raised to three months, and make them his own in the hopes of creating a mated pair which he can then breed from next year at this time.

Since I now have the actual mother and father pair that gave birth to these babies, in the same 125g tank, I have only limited time I think before the parents start beating up on the babies. I have tried very hard to create zones such that fish pairs stay in their zone. I have used lots of rock aquascaping to create such areas and it seems to be working but the banggai pair are newcommers.

Anyways, is there some trick to catching these little buggers? I have heard that sneaking up on them at night with flashlight and then snatching them out while stuned can work? Anyone with experience at this? Got any other ideas?

Kevin
 
I'm not sure if I can go into excruiating detail to address your questions, but I'll answer the easy ones.

1) many importers have simply stopped carrying the BC because the mortality to market is 99% or higher. Economically they just can't afford to carry a fish that won't live long enough to get to market.

-unfortunately not yet. While the mortaility rate on WC banggais is dropping quickly it is not 99.99+. Unfortunately the fish are living long enough to make it to the LFS befiore dying. I suspect many wholesalers are reducing/stopping ordering these fish becuase they are taking losses. It is unclear from what the BC are dying from... while many theories persist, it is clear that fish in the wild are not carrying any weird pathogens. So these fish are contracting pathogens in the holding/collection/shipping stations.

Saddly- banggais are being collected & imported at a mind boggling rate. A published census/survey 2004 suggests 700, 000 annually. Saddly, since the initial census taken in 2001/2002 a small population of BC off of Limbo island has become unmeasureable (read potentially extinct) and another colony had dropped to 37 individuals. Other populations are supporting the huge collection pressure, but are "clearly threathened", but not consider "endangered" yet.

2) wild caught (WC) are still afflicted with some malady (assumed or maybe even known to be parasitic in nature). As a result many of the fish the live long enough to sell die within the first 3 months in the home tank. This is what happened to me a year back. I killed six before I called it quites.
This seems to be a common problem, one that we (and I) have no answer to, even a study using a shotgun approach to prophalytic antibiotic treatment has not slowed the onset of this illlness, a recent conversation w/ some field biologists suggest a virus- no data to support this thou

3) the BC is on its way to the Endangered Species list because it is so overfished
-Asolutely- it will be the poster child for overcollection. If AVagelli and I have our way it will be CITES protected w/in the next 3 yrs. Alex has meet w/ the local authorities and IIRC the IUCN. However it was after the last IUCN meeting. The issues w/ these fish have already been identified, outlined and started, the CITES will require more scientific data and census to complete before they will issue CITES protection. Interestingly G Allen(the person who described the fish back in96) went to the CITES committe back in 2001, and plead for protection then, however there was not enough scientific evidence to convince them

If anyone is going to MACNA06 this month in Houston TX, feel free to attend my talk "Banggai cardinalfish: 10ys and what have we learned? or stop by the workshop on culturing microfoods for fish breeding. Better yet just say hi
HTH
frank
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=8104212#post8104212 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by FMarini
2) wild caught (WC) are still afflicted with some malady (assumed or maybe even known to be parasitic in nature). As a result many of the fish the live long enough to sell die within the first 3 months in the home tank. This is what happened to me a year back. I killed six before I called it quites.
This seems to be a common problem, one that we (and I) have no answer to, even a study using a shotgun approach to prophalytic antibiotic treatment has not slowed the onset of this illlness, a recent conversation w/ some field biologists suggest a virus- no data to support this thou
Are there any visible symptoms of this? I bought one 2 months ago and he seems to be fine (I think it's a "he" anyway!?!). Seems to have grown some since I got him, his coloration and fins look terrific, and although he's a bit picky about food I think he eats plenty. As near as I can tell (and I'm no expert) my fish seems very healthy. I'd just hate to come home one day a month from now and find him belly-up!

John
 
Thankyou DR. for putting the proper numbers and perspectives to my loose information. I shall relay to the information source I used that his percentages of BCs dieing before sale to the home keeper are overstated though on their way up. His knowledge is pretty current and I see in line with yours on the other points.

thankyou again, your word carries much weight among RC'ers. There are several members of CTARS headed for MACNA06 and I'll make of point of asking them to attend both your presentations and those on culturing.

Kevin Meade, Secretary CTARS.
 
jgreen1025, my experience limited as it is, was that there was no real sign. One day, fish is easily spotted, next day no where to be found. But for all I know it could have been something other than this malady of which Dr. Marini speaks.

I would suggest to you that if your fish looks healthy, you are doing all you can do. My fish disappeared @3 months.

Good luck, Kevin
 
Back
Top