My Banggai Breeding Journal

[FMarini]

Carlso---awesome updates.

Just a few points, the mating dance is intiated by the female, make sense, shes got the eggs and is asking the male to NOT eat for 20-30 days. Believe me the females ar the aggressors in this fish.
The egg transfer take approx 1 sec, even if you were watching it and sneezed, you would have missed it

In regards to Pyjamas, obrics, blue eyed, flame cardinals, etc. The mouth brooding is the same, thats it
THEY are not like banggais.

Banggais have whats called direct development (elutheroembryos), they go from egg to fry. Thats why they only make <50 eggs

The other cardinals, produces thousands of 0.5mm eggs, which are mouthbrooded for anywhere between 7-10 days, then planktonic larvae are released.

 

[carlso63]

Dr. Marini:

Am I correct that the eggs are all in a kind of "sac" at first...?


At this very moment I am at work while my wife is fishing out 2 babies from the first brood for their new owner... she is telling me that the male has his mouth open rather wide and it looks like a "sac" inside that is moving around a bit.

Today (1/10) is Day 24 since the 2nd spawn (12/17)... is she witnessing perhaps the "sac" rupturing, or am I off-base on this?

If the eggs are indeed hatching to larvae (or premature fry) at this point in time, then I would guess that (similar to the 1st brood) the male will continue to hold them another 5 - 6 days before the final release, at full-term?

Which means another 29 to 30 day total time from spawn to release... does that seem on the "long" side to you?

BTW, I know sometimes temperature can influence egg / fry development times... in my case my water temp hits a low of about 75.5 - 76F overnight and a high of about 78.5F midday (with the halides on)... is that temp range OK or is my temp too low, and would that lead to longer gestation times?

- Bob

 

[sayn3ver]

Will you only sell local? I'd like to buy a pair (male + female) captive bred BC's in a few weeks.

If not could you recommend another breeder on the East coast (NJ)

 

[carlso63]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=11572965#post11572965 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by sayn3ver
Will you only sell local? I'd like to buy a pair (male + female) captive bred BC's in a few weeks.
If not could you recommend another breeder on the East coast (NJ)

It may end up being difficult for you to come across a truly "tank raised" mated pair if only because these fish take several months to mature sexually (I believe it may be as long as 4 to 6 months), and even then are difficult to sex. You may have better luck advertising for a mated pair (wild or not) and then raising a few broods and pairing them off yourself.

As for me, I don't plan on keeping any of my broods for the length of time that it would take to sell off reliably sexually mature fish. I let all of my first brood go after only 4.5 weeks (due to the impending nature of the second brood) and will probably wait no more than 8 - 12 weeks on this 2nd brood.

I tell people interested in my fish that if they are looking for a pair then just buy 4 or 5 captive bred fish total and let them pair off themselves...

And I'm out here in UT so I don't have any info on any East Coast breeders (although I am sure there are some)...

 

[carlso63]

01/12/ 2008

Time for ROUND II:

Saturday, 1/12, 9 PM:
The male has been placed in the nursery tank again... I still have 2 of the 1st brood of fry in with him - someone is coming for them tomorrow... we started "Round Two" -

6 babies have been released so far - with more to come (the male still has a nice full mouth)

Will shoot pics tomorrow and update the grand total!!!

 

[carlso63]

01/13/2008

Round 2 is a perfect "10"


Ended up with a total of 10 babies released into the nursery tank by the male...I believe that we should have acted a little sooner and that the male actually released some before we got him out... unfortunately we have not found any stragglers in the display tank yet (probably already someone's lunch), but you never know... since the male carried 29 days last time (and Saturday was only day 26) I foolishly thought waiting "just one more day" wouldn't matter - and I was busy coordinating the last of the pickups for the first brood and, well... apparently the male couldn't wait any longer.

I was able to net the male quite easily once again (that "lights out" trick really works well) and I also put my divider into the 10g nursery so the male can remain in isolation and away from the females "amorous advances" for awhile and get his strength (and a little weight) back...

I managed to snap a few photos of the adult male, the 2 remaining fry from the first brood, and the 10 new babies all together in the nursery tank... a little later the last person came and picked up those last 2 - so all the 1st brood has now been taken and given new homes.

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(Note: I am having trouble uploading the photos at the moment; I will post again later to include all the photos as soon as they become available. Thanks...)

 

[carlso63]

Here are those pics I was referring to in the last post -

1) Here is a side view of the nursery tank with the divider separating the tank into 2 compartments; 1 for the adult male to recuperate within, and the other for the newborn fry:

2) Here is a closer view. You can see the adult male is on the right side compartment, while on the left there is 1 of the 2 remaining 1st brood juveniles just above the silhouette of the Naso Tang , and a couple of the newborn (2nd brood) fry near the divider, just above the line of the tanks black plastic trim:

3) Here is a top-down view inside the nursery tank... the 2 first brood juveniles (at 4.5 weeks old) were approx 4 times the size of the 1 day old 2nd brood fry:

4) A second photo of the juveniles and fry from the same vantage point:

 

[yellowslayer13]

you might want to seperate the larger juvis because i know in some fish the smaller broods wont grow as big as the ones in the same tank i learned this while breeding fancy guppies

 

[carlso63]

No problem - the 2 bigger ones are already gone and they were only in with the newborns for 1 day...

but thanks

 

[carlso63]

Not much new to report -

The 10 babies from this 2nd brood are doing great on live bbs with an occasional feeding of frozen bbs... they seem to be just as eager to eat the frozen as the live, so that's cool.

But the frozen doesn't dissolve 100% into individual nauppli for some reason; I'm thinking maybe they use a tiny bit of gelatin or agar to hold the cube together or something... not a big deal; it doesn't mess up the tank or anything. You just end up with 4 or 5 small "lumps" of maybe 20 nauppli each on the bottom of the tank after you feed the frozen, that's all.

In a couple more weeks I'll start weaning them onto Cyclopeeze.

The adult male is doing great as well... he is living it up "like a King" in his half of the nursery tank. he just lazily floats around all day, waiting to be fed. I have been feeding him HUFA - infused frozen brine to fatten him up. Wheneverthe female swims over to the glass he gets all excited; otherwise, he just chills most of the day...

Once he gets to a full month of R&R then he should be nice and fat and I can put him back in with the female and wait for Brood #3 to happen

 

[otto486]

keep it up man.

Keep the pics comin

 

[da1jewfish]

Can We Get Some Updates Carlso63?

Can We Get Some Updates Carlso63?

This is a well written thread to which I have learned from. Some updates of Brood #3 and beyond would be great.

 

[jeff209]

i agree i think my cardinals are getting ready to have babies and this thread has been more than helpful

thanks

 

[bangaii man]

sayn3ver:

If you're ever coming to CT, send me a PM, I have about 30 nearly 1year old Bangaii Cardinals that I have raised from my pair of adults.

carlso63: thanks for the blinding technique to catch the male. I also let mine breed in my 180g reef tank and my son and I destroy the tank trying to catch the male, and we have lost entire broods in the process, but I have had had about 5 sucessfull catches, some yielding as many as 45 +/-. I will definately try your lights off/on technique next time.

your setup looks great, I also used one of those perforated tank dividers for my 10G setup, but I didn't have enough water flow on one side, and in just a few hours I lost an entire batch of about 35, so be sure you have plenty of water flow on both sides of that divider.

One thing that I did was to make an egg tumbler. I have saved entire sacks of eggs released too early by putting them in the tumbler.