Bangaii Cardinals Spawning Like Crazy

[ShilohPSU]

So my bangaii cardinals are spawning like crazy They have had 3 generations of babies and are working on their 4th. The male only gets about a week off to bulk up, and then the female forces him to carry the next batch of eggs. I was watching the wildcard football playoffs and noticed that the female began "countering" with the male to signal that she was ready for the next spawning.. So I managed to get a video of them in action:

http://shilohpsu.tripod.com/cardinalfish.avi

The funny part about the video is that I was watching an Arizona Cardinals game while the countering was taking place. In the video, the announcer happened to mention that the cardinals have been scoring on their last 5 drives. My cardinals were scoring at the same time and it is in the audio of the avi file (which I found hilarious).

The female swims on one side of the male, vibrates her fins against that side for a few seconds, then swims to the other side and repeats the process. I hear that Cardinals spawn all the time and I know that my pair isn't anything too special, but I figured that people don't always get to see the countering or capture it on video. Sorry that the video quality isn't the greatest, but you can see the countering and my bomb *** 8" crocea clam. Let me know what you think...

 

[ShilohPSU]

So they wouldn't let me link the video directly... I made a homepage really quickly with the video. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click the video link.

http://shilohpsu.tripod.com/fish.html

 

[Lifes A Beach]

nice video...thanks for sharing!

 

[Heterodonut]

Are you letting the male carry full term until he spits the babies out? How many babies are you getting per spawn?

 

[ShilohPSU]

I let the male carry the eggs until the babies swim out of his mouth. There are 3 indicators that let me know when he is pregnant. First I'll notice the countering from the female. A day or two later, the males mouth becomes huge and swollen with eggs. When he has the eggs in his mouth, he can't eat, so I notice that he isn't eating any flakes or marine cuisine.

The first batch had 20+ babies, and I just let nature take its course, so I ended up with 3 out of the 20.

Second spawning had around 15 babies, but only 1 survived.

Then I got 1 out of 10 from the 3rd batch.

I'm not sure if the babies die or get eaten. After they hatch and leave the mouth, they go straight towards my long spine urchin and sebae anemone. I have a territorial female gold banded maroon clown that lives in the anemone, but she lets the babies hang out with her for about a month before she chases them out of her anemone. I have tried putting a baby or two in my roommates tank, but they are mistaken as food and instantly eaten by his fish. I recently took down my 30g reef and it is just sitting with water and 30-40 lbs of live rock, so I might do a big water change and let the babies grow in there.

 

[bugbdon]

canyon pizza is great.....but only at 2am lol
good job with the banggai's wish you would have had them when i was there