Bangaii photo
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"Umm fish?"
Premium Member
He won't eat while he's holding eggs. Basically, he has to be fat enough to go 'til a week or so after the eggs have hatched without food, so you have to pump him full of food while he doesn't have eggs in his mouth.
Good luck!
Good luck!
"Umm fish?"
Premium Member
Oops. Another post while I was writing. Sorry rhunt.
Big tip!!! Bangaii cardinals hate each other. The pair up and then the pair tries to kill all the other cardinals in the tank. I have a lot of places to hide, but they spend all their time hiding out instead of being in the water column and it drives me crazy. I'll be splitting these guys up when I pull down my tank for my renovation.
Good luck!
Big tip!!! Bangaii cardinals hate each other. The pair up and then the pair tries to kill all the other cardinals in the tank. I have a lot of places to hide, but they spend all their time hiding out instead of being in the water column and it drives me crazy. I'll be splitting these guys up when I pull down my tank for my renovation.
Good luck!
Oh fun. I use to breed them a long time ago and hadn't been able to get any healthy ones until about a year ago. The male hadn't held eggs past a few days until this past couple of weeks but he finally gave up yesterday and spit them out. Hopefully I will hve a good batch here soon. They are really neat to watch when baby fins start sticking out of the gills and they start peering out of the mouth. It's pretty funny too when he is ready to get rid of them and starts shaking his head with his mouth open and the babies are trying to stay in his mouth (swimming in the opposite direction). I guess even baby fish are defiant of there parents wishes from an early age 
Good luck with the next batch!
Good luck with the next batch!
"Umm fish?"
Premium Member
Thanks, Linkia! I hope he'll get there. If he doesn't do it this batch then I fear I won't see them for a while as I'll be moving the tank soon. 
Hey, I think someone was looking for you over in a nudibranch thread....
Hey, I think someone was looking for you over in a nudibranch thread....
"Umm fish?"
Premium Member
Day 10. I was completely wrong about my male having lost eggs. I found the original male today and he is still huge and carrying an enormous mouthful of eggs! And I found out why I thought he had lost eggs. I found male #2 as well (I could see them both at the same time) and he is also carrying a smaller clutch of eggs! :shock: Woohoo! Female #2 is still being very protective of Male #2 and jumps in front of him whenever she sees a camera, but I will try for more photos.
Two spawning pair in one tank. Crazy.
And I'm going to have to tear down the tank in a month or so.... Grr.
Two spawning pair in one tank. Crazy.
And I'm going to have to tear down the tank in a month or so.... Grr.
"Umm fish?"
Premium Member
Hey Becky, if you ever need anyone to take the juveniles off your hands, let me know. Once I get settled, I'd be happy to buy them from you just for the pleasure of raising them.
"Umm fish?"
Premium Member
Still not much on the photos. I think I'm forgetting how to do this.
Pair #1:
Pair #2:
Pair #1:
Pair #2:
"Umm fish?"
Premium Member
Day 11 or so. Both males are still hanging in there. (I'm not really sure how many days we're talking on pair #2, but I'm pround of them anyway).
One of the males (I think #1) showed me the egg ball a couple of minutes ago. He looks pretty uncomfortable.
One of the males (I think #1) showed me the egg ball a couple of minutes ago. He looks pretty uncomfortable.
"Umm fish?"
Premium Member
Of course, but oh man! Knock on wood somewhere if you would, please! It's right after people talk about wanting babies that the male tends to swallow them....
Will keep you in mind. Did you read the article (can't remember which one right now) that said additional males will pick up extra eggs in the wild? So if you have an extra male you could even have 4 males carrying at once in your tank. My theory on the reason yours get along is because of your surplus of food. Amazing what 10 extra feeding a day will do to a tank huh.
"Umm fish?"
Premium Member
I never heard that. That's crazy. I wonder what the evolutionary story on that is. (I'm not a big fan of evolutionary stories, a la selfish gene theories, as they never really make sense to me. It seems to me that a lot of animals do things that can't be easily summed up in some kind of probabalistic, advantage to the DNA kind of story. But I digress.)
Yeah, but aren't most people who are conditioning to breed over-feeding their fish? Maybe they just aren't going over the top enough? Gotta feed to breed.
I still see some aggression, but it's not even every day. I think it really helps, too, that they can all have places where they can't see each other. That said, I'm separating them when I get the chance. Well, maybe.... I need to get back to work, but I'll expand on that later.
Yeah, but aren't most people who are conditioning to breed over-feeding their fish? Maybe they just aren't going over the top enough? Gotta feed to breed. I still see some aggression, but it's not even every day. I think it really helps, too, that they can all have places where they can't see each other. That said, I'm separating them when I get the chance. Well, maybe.... I need to get back to work, but I'll expand on that later.
roguemonk
Premium Member
Mutation produces variation, selection just picks from what's available, and the advantage is rarely absolute, mainly it's incremental. Altruism is a part of every species' makeup, just in varying degrees (more so in those that DON'T generally eat their own young)... Picking up the eggs may help to increase the size of the local school which may help everyone in the school survive at a higher rate, for example. And, if everyone in the school is loosely related (cousins and second cousins), then most of the males and females in the school have the same genes, so they're sort of "evolutionary communists" increasing their own representation in the gene pool by increasing that of their siblings and cousins. So carrying someone else's eggs (when you don't have any of your own anyway) may actually give your genes a better shot at increasing their representation in the next generation.
Certainly, in general, the imperatives are different for species that reproduce by the hundreds than those that reproduce one at a time.
Brad (I'm not an evolutionary biologist, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night)
Certainly, in general, the imperatives are different for species that reproduce by the hundreds than those that reproduce one at a time.
Brad (I'm not an evolutionary biologist, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night)
"Umm fish?"
Premium Member
Yeah, see that's my problem with genetic natural history stories. They all sound plausible (even competing stories), and not a single one of them is actually scientific (can't prove, can't disprove, can't even design a test).
On second thought, not all of them even sound plausible. (Not yours, Brad. Yours sounds pretty reasonable.)
So, your telling me that the cardinalfish's _genes_ know that it's related to most of the other cardinalfish around? Hmm.
On second thought, not all of them even sound plausible. (Not yours, Brad. Yours sounds pretty reasonable.)
So, your telling me that the cardinalfish's _genes_ know that it's related to most of the other cardinalfish around? Hmm.
roguemonk
Premium Member
Genes don't know. Natural Selection is truly results oriented. If the actions of a being with an "altruistic" gene makeup add to the survivability of his own or closely-related genes, then those genes will proliferate. In the case of fish, if a particular population is able to produce more offspring than nearby populations because its members are predisposed by their genes to pick up extra eggs when they don't have any of their own, then the next generation of the species will have a larger representation of those genes that predispose the fish to take on extra eggs, and a smaller representation (as a percentage) of the genes of more selfish fish that won't raise anyone else's eggs. And the next generation, the representation of the altruistic genes will increase, and so on, until perhaps the entire species bears the genes related to the predisposition.
A note on "just so" stories: They are seized upon by opponents of evolutionary theory as representing holes in the theory, since they cannot be proved. But they do not exist to bolster the theory (clearly only actual observed evidence can do this), but to rebut the objections that sceptics raise against the theory: that no one knows how certain transitions happened (thus they must have happened by some other process, aka a Miracle).
We can't always (barring the invention of a time machine or recovery of fossil evidence that, because of sampling, we may never be likely to find) go back and discover the fine details of the full story of how certain traits arose, how certain speciation events happened, or how certain stages in chemical evolution took place. That is not a scientific criticism of the theory, because a theory does not have to explain all events, but has to be the best explanation of all events by scientific method in order to be accepted. (A quick example: we can't analyze supernovae that exploded before recorded history, but that does not invalidate the theories constructed about the life cycles of stars that were made on the basis of more recent observations that have been made over far less than the span of almost any single star's life span.) But when that criticism is offered: "It is impossible for mutation and natural selection to explain the altruism of some male Banggai Cardinalfish who will take on eggs fertiliized by other males", it is only fair to accept that any plausible explanation is sufficient to rebut it. In other words, my scenario is not intended to explain the altruism of Banggai Cardinalfish (although it might), but to rebut the allegation that mutation and natural selection can't account for it. Clearly, they can, even if this scenario doesn't represent the real sequence of events that produced their altruism.
To put it briefly, "just so" stories are not meant to fill out natural history, but to rebut unfair and unscientific criticisms of the theory of evolution. Those who use them to attack the theory of evolution are being doubly dishonest, because they don't have a better scientific explanation to offer, and they are making arguments from silence rather than attacking the observed evidence that overwhelmingly supports the theory.
Thanks,
Brad
A note on "just so" stories: They are seized upon by opponents of evolutionary theory as representing holes in the theory, since they cannot be proved. But they do not exist to bolster the theory (clearly only actual observed evidence can do this), but to rebut the objections that sceptics raise against the theory: that no one knows how certain transitions happened (thus they must have happened by some other process, aka a Miracle).
We can't always (barring the invention of a time machine or recovery of fossil evidence that, because of sampling, we may never be likely to find) go back and discover the fine details of the full story of how certain traits arose, how certain speciation events happened, or how certain stages in chemical evolution took place. That is not a scientific criticism of the theory, because a theory does not have to explain all events, but has to be the best explanation of all events by scientific method in order to be accepted. (A quick example: we can't analyze supernovae that exploded before recorded history, but that does not invalidate the theories constructed about the life cycles of stars that were made on the basis of more recent observations that have been made over far less than the span of almost any single star's life span.) But when that criticism is offered: "It is impossible for mutation and natural selection to explain the altruism of some male Banggai Cardinalfish who will take on eggs fertiliized by other males", it is only fair to accept that any plausible explanation is sufficient to rebut it. In other words, my scenario is not intended to explain the altruism of Banggai Cardinalfish (although it might
), but to rebut the allegation that mutation and natural selection can't account for it. Clearly, they can, even if this scenario doesn't represent the real sequence of events that produced their altruism.To put it briefly, "just so" stories are not meant to fill out natural history, but to rebut unfair and unscientific criticisms of the theory of evolution. Those who use them to attack the theory of evolution are being doubly dishonest, because they don't have a better scientific explanation to offer, and they are making arguments from silence rather than attacking the observed evidence that overwhelmingly supports the theory.
Thanks,
Brad
