Banggai update

km133688

New member
Got Jen's Banggai breeding pair Saturday. He even delivered, can't beat that. They are eating and I believe have accepted the right third of the tank as their domain. I acclimated and then slide them into that side of the tank. They went to the bottom and hung out near a small rock cave in the right front corner. This is fortuitous as it means I get a good view of them if there is no algae covering the glass. The female has adopted the cave as a hiding place when she gets spooked, but won't let the male in most of the time so he hangs around outside looking wanting.

Momma clown fish was quick to point out that the territory of her domain was bounded by the existance of three BTAs. She would swim between the three anemones (roughly positioned as an equilateral triangle) and sit in the one closest to the new arrivals for a minute or more on every pass, making sure both intruders saw her. She would also stop at "home base" on the flip side, and pester little Gilbert. He follows the advice of "Jesus is comming so look busy" and hence when he sees momma, heads for the egg pile and fans furiously.

The three little banggai babies are still growing. I observed a strange behaviour... About three hours after introduction, the little babies found the parents and were swimming with them. Indeed, one can be seen regularly hanging out with MoM and Dad. I wondered how they knew the fish had been introduced and suspect possibly that they could smell them and knew who and/or what they were. They are too big now to be eaten.

Additionally, the banggai children seem to have adopted a taste for cyclopeeze. You may recall that I had no success at all feeding them cyclopeeze in the past. However they are now I think about 3 months old and do eat it. In fact, the baby that hangs out with his parents, has a huge appetite for it. He will swim in the current at a choke point between the rock and front glass where the water current flow carrier goodly amounts of food, and eat his fill. I have seen him eat cyclopeeze continuously for 30 minutes (where does it all go?). This one is noticably larger than the other two babies so I figure his eating habits have something to do with it. He does slow down such that the more he eats, the more particular he is about which pieces he will eat but I suppose that is to be expected.

The babies are fine looking specimans. I still hope the two that swim with the seahorses may make a mated pair. They may be brother and sister but I guess that inbreeding amoung banggai is common in the wild. Hoping that the parents will hatch out another set of babies in a month or two, it is time to think about adopting these three little ones out. Anyone have suggestions as to a fair way to do this? My preferences are to, 1) find someone willing to try breeding them too; or failing that 2) put them in a club raffle.

thanks, Kevin Secretary, CTARS
 
hey kevin! not sure if you remember my post from your original but i would LOVE to try breeding them!:)
ive always wanted to breed clowns and bangaiis. my clowns arent mating yet, but i jsut hatched some brine that i will feed tonight. maybe that will help. and a pair of bangaiis would be my final fish to my 40 breeder.
if no one else is interested, i would be thrilled to give it a shot :)
how long does it take for them to be sexualy mature? just wonder
thanks!
 
maturity is achieved somewhere between 6 and 12 months I think. there are plenty of papers on RC and the interenet detailing it (see Frank Marini). I think the trick to these guys will like most fish, will be getting them to eat the food you like to feed.

I don't know about you, but I quit using flake foods a while back in favor of stuff like frozen mysis and cyclopeeze. Down side is these are much more expensive than any flake. UP side is they are "cleaner" foods overall (at least I think so). I spend about 2$/day feeding my tank which I think is a lot compared to what most other people do.

There are ways to improve quality and reduce cost of foods ofcourse, for example you can make your own from fresh seafoods you get at the grocery and fish market, but this requires you do a lot of your own work and can be messy, pluse many fishes prefer foods that look like real things rather than bits. But like I suggested, I don't know what you feed.

If we can get these babies to eat foods you are comfortable with, I am happy to let you take them. But first do some reading and figure out if you want to get involved with them. I have not seen a banggai eat flake. My clowns used to eat flake no problem but since I got the sea horses, they get the "better" foods because of the seahorse needs. So now the whole tank gets the same stuff.

Anyway, what do you think? Got any ideas about how we can get these babies to eat flake or some other food. They have been pretty particular so far, only eating live BBS, or hikari mysis, or now cyclopeeze.

Kevin
 
yeah. to my reef, i jsut feed a lot of frozen. i do feed some life spectra pellets, but mainly frozen. i feed:
-formula one
prime reef
squid
silversides
krill
cyclopseeeze
mysis
and i think that's it?
ive read a few things about raising bangaiis and such but not too recently.... ill have to get back into that. thanks for the suggestions. and im really not sure hot to get them to eat flake besides keep introducing it. lol. my moroon used to never eat anything except frozen. But i would pinch some flakes (i have some, but dont feed them often) and put my fingers underwater. This way they would sink and be in the target zone that he normaly feeds in and now he loves them. same with with my pair of ocellaris clowns.
 
HI there

The main problem with the juveniles and the adults in one tank will be that as soon as the juveniles reach sexual maturity, they will be beaten up by the adults. The only tank with more than one breeding pair of Banggais was an L-shaped tank with 22 ft total length, it housed three pairs in about equal distance from each other. The owner never caught the juveniles as he was scared to wreck his corals. As soon as the youngsters matured, they got killed by the adults.
Regarding the rearing of the fry, they can only be moved within the first 3 to 5 days after spitting. After this time they become extremely sensitive to stress and just die from being caught. They even die from stress when you add the food to rapidly!
During the first (at least) two months they only accept live food, i.e. baby brine shrimp. Be prepared to run at least two batches a day, otherwise they will slowly fade away and not make it to adulthood. I lost a whole batch of 12 after 11 weeks, because they were still not eating anything but live food, then I had to go on a conference and my neighbor could not manage the brine shrimp hatchery. The three juveniles that Kevin got most probably found enough food in the tank, but any larger number may not be sustained this way.
Raising Banggais is great fun, just be prepared to invest some time and to keep feeding on a very strict schedule.

Good luck

Jens
 
Thanks Jens. Its always good to get the real poop from someone who knows.

Yes, the three that lived were just dumb luck. I have a super large amount of LR in my tank. I also overfeed. Thus I have a larger number of "edibles" running around my tank then most.

I believe that between weeks 3 and 4 baby banggers must be weened onto frozen mysis and other frozen foods. Others say this is a good time to do it from what I have read. My suspicion is that at month three or so, they can't eat enough BBS to stay alive.

I sounds like you feed a fine assortment of items to your fish so you would make a great host for these guys. Send me a PM with your home phone number and we can converse as to how we catch them and get them to you.

Kevin
 
After reading this, I think I'll stay with keeping adults! Not that I even have an adult bangaii.
 
Minh, I intend to aggressivley try and raise these fish. With luck I should have more over the next year to give away.
 
Back
Top