full term bangaii's

[FMarini]

rcypert--
as mentioned above sell for whatever you can get for them.
15 days old banggais are too young, were they weaned and regularly eating prepared foods? at that size they just won't do wellin a large aquarium (as they are food) or w/ alot of fast tankmates, even 20 days still too small. I've seen commercial firms sell their banggais around 30-45 days. When the fish are large enough to competeyet still sexually immature (ie not infighting)

However, if you really can get money for 20 days old fish- power to you.
I can tell you around here, most people get between 5-8 for their captive bred banggais

 

[seacraze]

How old are they before they start breeding ?

 

[FMarini]

IME they are sexually mature by 6months.
However in the home aquarium, the presence of dominant males will supress reproduction in other males, so you gotta segregate them. In the wild, Dr vagelli has isolated mature oocytes in 4 month old females (IIRC)

 

[seacraze]

I have to admit I am facinated and so impressed at how determined and knowledgable all of you are, its great to be able to learn like this -

 

[acropora1981]

this is my most popular thread ever! sweet!

Update: last night (christmas day evening!) my male release 31 new baby bangaii cardinals which are now in a brand new 10 gallon tank with a homemade sponge filter and a fake urchin. They're eating bbs and seem to be just as healthy as the last batch. I was amazed when i caught them, b/c I didnt realize how much my first batch had grown! They're about 1/6th the size at least! Another excellent development is that I have been setup with a local marine wholesaler who has said that he will take as many bangaii's as i can produce!!! awesome!

 

[acropora1981]

here's a pic of bangaii cardinal fry annex #2, located in my new fishroom

zoom in of the urchin:

 

[seacraze]

They are so cute, do they stay hidden most of the time?

 

[seacraze]

and congrats on the wholesaler!

 

[tpdpercula]

If I could only capture my pair from my large tank and seperate them I would be set. As long as they are happy I stick with my clownfish. Great thread and keep up the great work.

-Ian

 

[Deyoe1118]

this thread is great...cant wait for more updates...

 

[da1jewfish]

X4, or whatever where at... excellent thread!! Very inspiring to go through with it myself. My buddy and I are getting started on breeding, where going to breed ocelaris(sp?) clowns and bangaii's.
Anyone know of some good breeding books with this info for a quick look up guide?
Also, acropora, since you are having great success, I have a couple ?s for you. what size tank is the breeding pair in?
are you going to completely grow the fry in the 10 gal until they are size? and when trying to find a pair or 2, would you reccomend buying 4-6 fish and let them find there mates?
o yea, should I worry about imbreeding them? instead of buying all "horn dogs" from same LFS, buy all from different ones?

 

[acropora1981]

ok good book for clown breeding (i got it for xmas) is called Conditioning, spawning and rearing of fish with emphasis on marine clownfish by Hoff.

My breeding pair is in a full mixed reef 72 gallon. The fry will definately be moved from the 10 gallon into 40 gallon grow out tanks when agression starts.

I would definitely not recommend inbreeding. As crappy as it is, i recommend getting wild caught bangaii's or to do what you said, get from a variety of sources. That way they're genetically diverse. As i mentioned above the best method (which worked again for me today when i bought my second pair) is to put a bunch of medium sized bangaii's in a tank (be it 5 or 20 bangaii's) and wait for pairs to move off from the group. Then scoop and separate. This doesnt take long, pairs will start moving off in a few hours if they're the right age.

 

[FMarini]

Currently--- the best book on marine fish breeding is
Matt Wittenrich "Complete illustrated guide to Marine Fish breeding. (Microcosom/TFH) you can find it at Amazon.com

He covers, clowns, gobies, blennys, cardinals, angels and a whole bunch more, its quite outstanding.

If you want a clownfish species book, Joyce wilkersons book- Clownfish, covers every aspect of clownfish breeding in a non technical way.

Frank Hoffs book above is also excellent, but its more of his journal when he started a clownfish breeding facility back in the day, plus his expertise is in microcultures which I feel is the strong part of the book

 

[acropora1981]

weaning problems

weaning problems

yo...

ok so my first batch of bangaii cardinals are on day 34 or 35 and they are still utterly refusing everything but live baby brine shrimp. I've tried frozen baby brine and this week i tried frozen cyclopeze twice, after starving them for 36 hours each time, and they didnt take it. So about 25 mins ago i broke down and fed them a very large meal of fresh live bbs. So...how the heck does one go about actually doing this? I need to start getting them a more varied diet so i can get these things up to retail size, so i can get them out, and make room for batch #3(which i beleive will come soon as the parents are doing the dance again)...

 

[acropora1981]

ok nm i missed FMarini's earlier post about mixing bbs with shaved...is this shaved with a chees grater or something finer?

 

[seacraze]

Not sure if this helps - I breed seahorses and when I am introducing new foods I do it in combination ... example I feed the brine and add a few cyclopeeze as well, as they begin eating it I gradullay add more cyclopeeze and reduce the brine, once they take to it it usually goes very quickly. When I start changing to mysids I do the same in combination.

With horses they just did not seem to recognize the frozen as a food item independently either. Starving did not help a bit.

 

[acropora1981]

had a bit of a scare tonight.

Up to now i've been changing water for the baby bangaii's with water from my reeftank, but now i want to just use new water. Anyway, with my reeftank I usually dont bother matching the temperature because its a mid size tank (72 gallon) and adding 10 gallons of colder water doesnt really change the temp that much and doesnt seem to cause problems. So anyway, i mindlessly dumped about 3 gallons of water into the bangaii tank at about 10 degrees lower than the tank and BANG all the bangaii's were on there sides gasping!!! It was a panicky 10 minutes before they started to recover. Thankfully they all seem to be ok and didnt die from shock! I wont do that one again!

PS my male is pregnant again ...so soon i'll have somewhere around 90 bangaii cardinals!!!! ahhhh!

 

[acropora1981]

so here's another shot. Taken today at i believe 41 days. They're getting close to an inch tall. Adult coloration is really comming in now. They have very full bellies in the shot b/c they just ate...so far they are trying the frozen but just keep spitting it out...i'll keep trying.

 

[ReefSparky]

Rock on, man! Excellent thread. Hopefully you can keep spittin' them out (pardon the pun)!

 

[seacraze]

I am in complete awe ... this is great!