bangi cardinal breeding

[85galsalty]

Well I'm pretty new with salt water tanks. I adopted my buddies 85 gal tank with no idea of to take care of it 7 moths ago.
He swore to me all I had to do is add water...lol.. Anyway my brother was so excited that I got this setup he went out and got me a pair of bangi cardinals as a gift. I never thought they would have babies. So far the dad has been pregnant twice and is now on the third .(these fish are like rabbits). Out of 27 frys total I have only been able to keep 2 alive. They are now almost 4 months old and the only food they will eat is live baby brine shrimp.
With the new fry coming I was wondering if anyone had any additional wisdom on keeping the new fry alive ?

10 gal tank
small heater avg 78 degrees
sponge bubblier filter
feed them 2 to 3 times a day
small water change weekly

 

["Umm fish?"]

They really should be able to eat more than BBS now. Try some different foods on the first feeding of the day. That's when they are at their hungriest and willing to take a chance on different stuff. At 4 months they should be able to at least take small (Hikari) mysis.

Maybe try upping the flow rate in their tank. I just grew out a batch in the tank with their parents with a decent amount of flow, using no live food (at least, none added by me). I think the higher flow helped. The fry would set up in the lee of some object in the tank that would break the current (so they didn't have to swim so hard) and would pretty much try anything floating in the water column around the obstruction. That made it really easy to get them to try anything I threw in the tank that was the proper size.

I wouldn't really advise normally raising them with the parents, though. I think the 'rents ate about half of the juveniles. I just didn't have a lot of choice.