Breeding Bangai Cardinals

[ginger]

Hi Everyone

I bought 3 Bangais last week to add to another two I already had. when I got them home I noticed a number of eggs in the bag which were consumed by my clowns when I released them.

One of the Cardinals fish has been sheltering in a cave whilst the others are eating well which leads me to believe that he is still incubating some eggs.

I'd like to know the following:
1) what is the incubation time
2) does the male look after the fry like cichlids or does he just spit them out and carry on with his life
3) how often do Bangais spawn
4) do they spawn in the open and is there any noticeabl change in behaviour prior to spawning.
5) what size are the fry when released and do they stand a chance without the protection of an urchin.

I look forward to receiving your advice.

[Marc Foord]

hi

if you run a search on here, there have been a few posts on breeding these lovely fish, and some good links to other bits of the internet with articles etc (the frank marini article from reefs.org is a good one)

can't pretend to be an expert, but i have previously raise a small amount of babies

1) what is the incubation time
- iirc, it's about 2 weeks roughly

2) does the male look after the fry like cichlids or does he just spit them out and carry on with his life
- he just spits them out when they're ready, sometimes all in one go or sometimes over several days - i usually found mine got spat out in the evenings/night time

3) how often do Bangais spawn
- at one stage mine were spawning back to back - i.e. the male would spit babies out and then within a couple of days would be holding more eggs.

4) do they spawn in the open and is there any noticeabl change in behaviour prior to spawning.
- as above they tend to release the babies after lights out/at night. you can tend to tell when it's getting near for them to be released as you can see tails and heads poking out of the male's mouth. in terms of spawning, never actually saw "the dirty deed" as such.


5) what size are the fry when released and do they stand a chance without the protection of an urchin.
- they are very small - a few mm's i guess, but perfectly formed fish. they don't stand much of a chance without an urchin unless you remove them to a separate nursery tank imo

hth

marc

[dark_stranger]

Hi Everyone

I bought 3 Bangais last week to add to another two I already had. when I got them home I noticed a number of eggs in the bag which were consumed by my clowns when I released them.

One of the Cardinals fish has been sheltering in a cave whilst the others are eating well which leads me to believe that he is still incubating some eggs.

I'd like to know the following:
1) what is the incubation time
2) does the male look after the fry like cichlids or does he just spit them out and carry on with his life
3) how often do Bangais spawn
4) do they spawn in the open and is there any noticeabl change in behaviour prior to spawning.
5) what size are the fry when released and do they stand a chance without the protection of an urchin.

I look forward to receiving your advice.

1) The incubation time is normally around 18 to 25 days, give or take a day or 2.

2) The male will carry them until they are ready to look after themselves. You can normally tell when they are ready as you can see them looking out of their old mans mouth.

3) Normally the female will try and get jiggy with the male soon after, but as the male fasts during the egg/baby carrying session you need to make sure you feed him as he would not have eaten for a long period. Some peeps put the male in a seperate tank to fatten up.

4) You will notice the female getting rather close to the males rear, switching from side to side, shaking very fast.

5) They are normally 5 to 6mm long (nose to tail) and can survive without an urchin. The will use a nem, holes in rocks, other corals to stay out the way of preditors.

As it happens my male dropped his 3rd batch on sunday night and I was able to catch all 15, although 1 died straight away and now the 14 survivers are living in a nano tank.

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[ginger]

Hi Gentlemen

thanks for taking the time to answer my questions. I'll keep you posted with progress and upload any photgraphs I manage to take.

[greengrass]

whats the best food to feed the tiny fry on please??

if its night time when they are released, surely they'll need to be fed straight away??

thanx, in advance..... les

[dark_stranger]

I feed them on baby brine shrimp first of all, but they also seem to like de-capsulated brines shrimp eggs. Then move on to the above, cylopeeze & frozen artima. I have never feed then straight after they were released, but normally the next morning . Then the misses feeds several times a day. I currently have 12 babies in a nano tank & the male fish has another mouth full of eggs. Breeding like rabbits & to quick between batches for me to look after all of them.

[Marc Foord]

iirc, they can survive a number of days (sorry can't remember how many days :rolleyes: ) before they need to start feeding - something to do with the little bloated belly they have when born.

you can also get a powdered fry food - sera micron - which they seemed to feed on ok for me - also baby brine shrimp and cyclop-eze as dark_stranger says....

[greengrass]

thanx for your answers guys, that helps a lot.

les :)

[spk]

The first batch that I had we feed every four hours, but the follwoing ones what I do is to put a whole 2lt bottle of BBS in the sump and they feed on that for 24hrs before the next feed. This seems to work very well.

I have tried ti use Cyclopeze , but it killed several of the babies from one batch. They did take frozen quickly but, found that they grow quicker on the BBS that I hatch.

Stuart, Where are you based, as I would gladly take the batches off you that you do not have the time to look after. I need more of them anyway. Let me know.

Thanks

Steve

[ginger]

Male relesed fry overnight on the 14th May but I wasnt aroaund to catch them so the rest of the tank occuapnts must have had a mega fry up.

The good news is that two males are now carrying eggs. I am considering transferring them to another tank to give me a better chance of rescuing the fry when they are released as I suspect trying to catch them without removing the rockwork will be a difficult task.

comments and sugestions would be appreciated

[dark_stranger]

Hi Ginger, I had a similar misfourtune as my male released his babies Sunday night, but it just so happens my tank went tits up as I left the skimmer off and suffericated my copperband, flame angle, antharis, bannerfish, several crabs & shrimps, plus possible the babies as I can not find then. What a fcuk'er.

With regards to catching your males, oce you see the babies poking their heads out of dads mouths & you feel they are ready to abandone ship, get a net ready, have all the lights off & then switch the lights on, this will stun the fish for a few seconds & you can hopefully scoop up the male. Then all going well, once you take the male out of the water, he will spit the babies out. I hve used this method several times.

Stu