Pajama Cardinal Breeding Blog

[Caesra]

I have it in me to try to breed these things..dunno why, they don't sell for much, but I just want to.

So I am going to just use this thread to keep notes. I keep notes locally, but sometimes it is helpful to put things in a different format, and actually have to explain something to someone with a question...brainstorming is a great way to progress in anything.

So...the story goes at this point, I have had an itch to do these, I stumbled on a mated pair at LFS about 6 months ago. I conditioned and have held about 6 batches.

I feed the same mix I feed to all of my fish, Rods, mysis, spirulina brine and a food made locally. Selcon added to food about once a week. This combo has worked well on my bangaiis, and my rubies (who I have not been able to rear the fry for yet either).

I generally try to stimulate a breeding response in my bangaii with fish eggs added, and it usually works well. In the pajamas it does not seem to have an effect, they just keep pushing out eggs. I generally am able to give my male Bangaiis a break by not providing the eggs, as soon as I put eggs in the tank, I get a batch in a few days. So it has been effective at allowing me to affect their cycle.

So I will do my best to track info that might relate to my attempts.

Starter info: One pair of Sphaeramia nematoptera in a dedicated breeding system.

My breeding system and fry rearing tank are linked together, but I can detach a single tank from the system if needed. Setup is listed here http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2026834(I will be updating more on it as I have time).

The tank size they reside in is 16g tank, and they do well in there. The reside between two bangaii's pairs in adjacent tanks and do not seem to have an aggression issues without a visual seperator.

After conditioning the parents, the father seems to be a pro at holding eggs.

The mother produce eggs roughly 2-3 weeks apart, and the father seems to hold for roughly 11 days. I will list out my logs here on out.

I generally only test for ph and salinity in this system. I have attempted rearing the fry only once with little success.

 

[Caesra]

6/23/2011 Father found to be holding a new set of eggs.

Salinity: 1.020
PH: 8.2
Nitrates: unmeasured

After debating the last failure, which had fry ranging from 1-3 cm I am debating setting up a tank that is fed with photo to encourage high pod growth....sort of a in tank culture. Due to the size of what I saw, I have a hard time believing that the fry could eat rotifers, although maybe....S or SS strain. I did notice the fry taking interest in the large pod growth that existing in the fry tank I placed them in. The batch lasted 4 days, with the largest dieing off in the first day, suggesting they ran out of sack to live on.

I had suppliemented BBS and Reed Rotigrow Plus. Significant pod poppulation existed in the tank they were in. Flow was provided via sponge filter with low bubble count...water change occured via drip back into main system....would estimate about 1L an hour of water change.

The water was kept a light green tint at all times, using feeding of Rotigrow about every 6-8 hours.

So my thought actually was to setup a 10g, with a series of egg crates or plastic plants..i.e. lots of surface area to hold pods...begin to feed the system with photo to encourage a pod growth, maybe keep BBS growing in system as well. After allowing this system to build up to a very high level of pod count, then capturing a batch for growth. I might setting this up in a seperate tank for a future attempt.

For now, I will attempt to raise the incomming batch in the same fashion and see if I can learn anything.

I have learned with my Bangaii that flow is a HUGE factor in success (at last for them)..something I am not sure how I could replicate with larvae. I also need to focus in on lighting concerns regarding the fry.

I think my first focus is to try to observe if I can see any feeding response to differing food offerings, with flow considerations in mind.

 

[muttley000]

Just put a group of 5 in my softy tub to dirty the water up a little, and in hopes of getting a pair. I will for sure be checking out your progress. What kind of fish eggs do you add?

 

[Caesra]

They are from Rod's. Sadly the only store that carries them in my area is going out of business. =/

 

[Caesra]

6/30/2011 - The father had not released after lights out. I checked 4 hours after lights out, with no release. Come morning, he head released and was ready to eat. Larvae appeared to all be gone.