cardinals consistently eating eggs

[lizardlady]

I have three pairs of banggai cardinals which are all breeding but the males for the most part eat the eggs every time between day four and seven. I did save one batch of eighteen but unfortunately they died off one by one until the last one passed at four months. Not sure why the babies didnt do well, I fed them the same as the baby clowns. Back to the males eating the eggs, each pair is in a different tank ranging from twenty to a thirty five and a fifty. None of their tankmates are aggressive and water quality is fine-no nitrates, sg at 21, 81 degrees, one tank is bare bottom and the other two have gravel. All tanks have lots of rockwork, etc. for security. I am careful not to work in the tanks or stress the fish when the male is carrying. The fact that the male did carry to term once tells me that the eggs are probably fertile, at least for that pair and maybe it is an environmental issue.

 

[zoolover]

How often/how much are they eating? In the little experience I've had, the males need to eat very heavily before they hold eggs. If they get too hungry, they'll spit out the eggs so they can eat. Just my two cents, sounds like they aren't eating enough to hold them over for three weeks while they hold eggs.

 

[lizardlady]

I feed my fish three to four times a day six days a week. I feed them a home made food that I feed my clownfish broodstock consisting of beef heart, squid, bloodworms, shrimp, fish, fish roe and algae powder, among other things which I supplement with hufas on a daily basis. One day a week I feed flake food. I think they are definately eating well lol

 

[edandsandy]

It sounds like you are feed them pretty good! How old are they? Sometimes they will do this 4-5 times before they hold the eggs to full term.
What are you feed the fry?

 

[lizardlady]

One of the pairs is at least two years old, the other two pairs have spawned a few times now so I suspect that they may just be inexperienced. I feed the babies live baby artemia enriched with selco for the first few weeks and gradually introduce non live food that I feed the rest of my fish (scaled down to smaller size and enriched with selco) as well as otohime pellets and flake food. I continue to feed enriched artemia until about the third month. All the babies exibited heavy breathing and listlessnes before dying within hours. The last remaining baby I had was in with a brood of six month old clownfish and seemed to be doing very well but as with the babies before him he started to breath heavily and died within two hours.

 

[edandsandy]

From my experience with raising the fry..... I found that weaning them off BBS and onto a mixture of shaved frozen mysis shrimp, Octomine A or B, Selcon and frozen copepods, I continue to add smaller amounts of BBS each week in the mixture........... then just frozen mysis.....
This works for me....
Good luck

 

[lizardlady]

I will give that a try next time, thanks

 

[NewbyReefer]

Did you ever get them to hold eggs? I'm having the same problem with my gold stripe cardinals. The male holds the eggs for about 3-4 days then swallows them. Did yours ever hold them full term?

 

[Derikku]

From my experience, a couple ideas come up. The most likely sounding issue would be how long to the males get between breeding attempts to regain fat? Technically a female could lay eggs as fast as every two weeks, which is faster than they hatch. I try to give my males at least a month alone before pairing them up again. Do you keep your pairs as strict pairs or do you rotate males to give them breaks between attempts? It's possible they're eating the eggs because they get hungry.

Another thing I notice is when I have pairs in a smaller system without a proper skimmer is that there's a possibility that the eggs are going bad for some reason and dying so the males just eat them. This doesn't seem as likely because of the bigger tanks you have them in.

One thing you can try is to keep one of the older males that has bred well before and keep him separated from the female for 3-4 weeks with heavy feeding before reintroducing and see if it has any effect on how long he carries the eggs.