View Full Version : More Baby Cardinals
dark_stranger
04-07-06, 12:02
I got my Male to release his babies last night & there must be about 35 of the little buggers and they all survived. Lets hope I can rasie most of them & help pay for the ever increase electricity bill :D
This is then at 5mins old in the holding bucket.
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This is them in the nano tank with their older brother and sisters (3 months old) in the background
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urban_hippie
04-07-06, 17:40
Dude just gotta say as a new person to reefkeeping, what you have done with your Bangai's is amazing, well done am in awe.
Do you have an answer for my thread in this forum?
cheers dude, oh i went to college at the amazing thanet tech many years ago, many days spent in the charles dickens!!
Cheers
dark_stranger
05-07-06, 10:38
Cheers buddy. I would like to up the production of baby cardianls as they are producing babies almost every 5 to 6 weeks. The last batch contained about 35, although i expect some die off. If I got get a better setup I could be quids in :D
Arrr the delights of Broadstairs - Many a mis-spent student loan/grant cheque has been used in the boozers around Broadstairs.
Hi
when you say "you got your male to release fry" do you mean you hooked him out and encouraged him to spit them out?
.
what are the ingredients for your home made urchin
dark_stranger
06-07-06, 09:07
The urchin is simply made out of millput & cocktail sticks. I catch the dad when I start seeing the babies look out of his mouth & leaving him in the net, keep lifting him out of the water, slightly longer each time, eventually he flaps aournd as fish do when out of water & he spits out his kids.
Sorry to butt into your thread, but you seem an expert!
I just noticed a few dead baby cardinals in my skimmer :(
Wondered if Dad was carrying as he was off food, and sure enough I can see little babies in his mouth.
I don't have a seperate tank to rear this in, is there anything I can do to try and rear the remaining fry? I have a sump in my tank with chaeto that they could live in, are they strong enough not to get sucked into the return pump?
regards,
Greg
in the absence of stuart, who hopefully will be along later.
make an urchin like his using cocktail sticks and milliput. this should offer enormous protection.
reading your post i assume your flow is very high, maybe consider getting a tupperware container, large as possible, make sure it is spotlessly clean, add a rock to the bottom or some substrate and lower to the bottom of the tank, add aforemention fake urchin and hoe the male finds it.
hopefully stuart will be able to give further raising and feeding advise as i know he still does this with success. had a batch of young'ns in just the other day, very impressive.
That's a really good achivement.
hmm, re-read the other threads about catching dad, as soon as the net hit the water, Dad disappeared into the rockwork, so catching him is going to be hard!
I was hoping the chaeto would provide a similiar hiding place to the home made urchin???
There isn't massive flow in the sump, the return is an OR3500...
Cheers,
Greg
based purely on guesstimation i would say chaeto was better than nothing but i've never tried it myself. might be tougher to feed them down there tho and certainly harder to catch to put in the main tank in time?
well I've found 3 down in the sump area, one in the main sump, opposite side to the chaeto of course, and two in the return pump area.
Will try and get some cocktail sticks and get an urchin made!
Luckily I have a copepods and rotifer mix I'm breeding which they should feed on?
regards,
Greg
just incase tho i'm sure you've thought of this. i rolled my aquascape into a ball, shoved the skewers (wooden and longer than cocktail sticks) into it then left it on a brace bar under the halides to go off rather than risk a large amount of scaping 'smoke' get off and potentially clog the gills of baby banggaiis.
dark_stranger
04-01-07, 21:38
Hello mate, expert! flattery will get your all you need to know. Is this the 1st time your pair has breed? if so, i would expect to loose a few, if not all of them as my 1st lot were all lost (swallowed/sapt out). Anyway, do you have any idea how long he has been holding the babies? saying that, if you have some already in your tank they most be at least 20days + old as the dad will spit out on or around the 28th day. With regards to catching the dad, it depends on the tank, but i simply wait till lights out, watch were he is sleeping, place the net in the tank, not near the male & switch on the tank lights (T5's ideal as instant light, MH's take a while to warm up) or room light to stun the fish. He will stay stunned for a 5 seconds or so, hopefully long enough to scoop out. Once caught, dont keep out for to long, if anything keep dipping him in the tank & eventually he will flap about & spit out the babies. Regarding the sump, i think would be the next best thing apart from a seperate tank or you could even by once of those floating breeder tanks & float in your main tank. Then once old enough place in the sump. I think that covers it, but if not just as and also please provide your address to send an invoice for my services :D
Well done Scoob, blinding service ;)
Sorry to butt into your thread, but you seem an expert!
I just noticed a few dead baby cardinals in my skimmer :(
Wondered if Dad was carrying as he was off food, and sure enough I can see little babies in his mouth.
I don't have a seperate tank to rear this in, is there anything I can do to try and rear the remaining fry? I have a sump in my tank with chaeto that they could live in, are they strong enough not to get sucked into the return pump?
regards,
Greg
cheers Stuart,
I do reckon he has had them in his mouth a fair few days, it only started to strike me that maybe he was pregnant in the past week or so, then today I saw the bodies in the skimmer, and was amazed!
So I have 3 safely in the sump, that somehow survived the journey down there, but they are in the return pump chamber!!!
Regards,
Greg
Just to jump in here as a 'no experience of this what-so-ever' type person...
When I was breeding mouth brooders (Cichlids) I found the best way of getting the parent to spit the fry was to:
1. Net parent fish
2. Use a bic pen lid to hold open mouth (the long thin piece that points down the pen when lid is on), this is rounded off plastic so doesn't hurt the fish's mouth
3. Dip fish's mouth in water so gills are submerged
4. Pull fish backwards out of water - this forces water backwards through the gills and out of mouth which pushes fry out
5. Repeat 4&5 until all fry are in net/ growing-on tank.
If this is rubbish advice for cardinals than feel free to disagree.
dark_stranger
06-01-07, 11:11
In theory I dont see why that wouldnt work, but as a "no experiance of this what-so-ever" type of person I have never tried this :D but as with most things, its all down to personal preference
Diplomatic Stu
I have successfully raised bangaii's in my sump for the past 18 months without any additional feeding - I nave a Miracle Mud ecosystem with two big chambers of algae, so the babies get whatever flows from the main tank and I think they also eat any copepods climbing around on the algae. Once they get to 6 months and ready for sale, then I start target feeding with frozen and flake. No doubt they would grow quicker if I had a rearing tank and fed them directly from an early age.
One negative from this method is just that you only get to raise the ones that reach the sump. I have never tried to catch the male (too difficult in my tank) so have never had more than 7 survive from any one brood.
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