My Banggai Cardinalfish captive breeding log

[Grenade Glass]

I just moved into my new house and was lucky enough to talk my girlfriend into letting me have a fish room (one of the extra bedrooms). I have a small mixed reef moved over and setup already. I had a extra 30 gal tank and I was thinking about doing some captive breeding. I have no prior experience in this and have learned completely through articles on the internet. I found a mated pair at Marine Oasis and setup the 30 gal with established sand and rocks. I created a cave like rock scape which allows the cardinals to hang out in the middle where there isn't much current.

They spend all day right next to each other, and pick at some meaty frozen cube food melted, in a cup with salt water and turkey basted into their direction. I also bought some brine shrimp eggs and DT's phyto. Today I put 1 package of brine shrimp in a 2 liter bottle with a air hose run through the cap, creating a nice flow throughout the bottle. Tomorrow im going to try to get the baby brine shrimp into another bottle and start feeding the DT's phyto to it.

The breeding tank has a couple of small frags of zoas and a green yuma, along with about 6 snails and 2 hermit crabs as a clean up crew. I have a couple of cell phone pics taken tonight with the flash. Bare with me, as I'll update tomorrow and take some real pics.

 

[Grenade Glass]

Here is my update, late at night, but just sat down with the time do write this real quick. First some pics of my new fish:

Full tank shot:

 

[Grenade Glass]

So as of today I have a 30 Gal tank setup with live sand and rock, a koralia 2, small heater and a charcoal filter/ surface agitator. For lighting I took a old 24" hood/light combo and gutted it out to retrofit 2x 65watt power compact 50/50 10K/actinic bulbs.

Temp is at 77*, salinity at 1.023, PH 8.2, Nitrite 0, Nitrate 0, Ammonia 2. Not sure where the Ammonia is coming from.. might need a new kit or maybe its just from the switch to a new tank. I'm hoping its not enough to injure the fish or start a cycle in the tank.


Here is a video of them:
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I drained the hatched brine shrimp into a bottle today and fed them some DT's, I let it sit for about 3 hours with light on it and then poured half of it into the cardinals tank and half into my reef. Needless to say everything has been on a feeding frenzy today. My next step is to try to grow the brine shrimp out a little bit. They were basically microscopic when they were poured into the tanks. I have read you can grow them to be much larger by feeding phytoplankton. is DT's sufficient? how long can they survive? anyone here have much experience with hatching brine shrimp here?

 

[Allmost]

Brine shrimps do not develop a mouth or anus till they are 24 hours old, so feeding them after hatching has no point.

gut loading Brine shrimp takes 24 hours. (2, 12 hours, with different waters)


secondly, its best to decap the Brine first, u get more energy from them (less energy spent to break the shell) and higher hatching rate.

good luck

my cardinals are having babies soon as well, I can see fry in the males mouth, but too many SPS in my tank to get him out lol

ohh and also, you would be lucky if the fry would eat BB ehh ? they ussulyy start with rotifers, so not a bad Idea to get a culture of rotifers going as well.


PS. goto seahorse page, look for RayJay, and follow to his website, he has some good info and links on BB. u basically have to grow them till they are 1 month old (full size)