My Banggai Cardinals Are Breeding

[fsn77]

I've always thought it would be interesting to have saltwater fish breed in one of my tanks. I've had it happen multiple times with a variety of freshwater fish, but until recently, not with any saltwater fish. I had really hoped our black and white occellaris clowns (which we've had pretty much since the beginning of our saltwater adventure) would mate, then our ORA naked clowns, but the clowns just aren't cooperating for whatever reason.

Then, I decided to get a pair of Banggai cardinals. They've been in my tank for what seems like no more than 4 or 5 months, and wouldn't you know it, they've mated. Very exciting, as this tank is in my office at work and many of my coworkers (we're all biologists) stop by frequently to see how things are progressing.

While I've not taken the time to read the entire document, this PDF is quite informative about Banggai cardinals, and the parts I've read have been helpful to me.

Thursday, January 28: Observed the smaller cardinal of the pair (now known to be the female of this pair) shaking and twitching about all around the larger cardinal (now known to be the male). Both cardinals ate their normal fill of PE Mysis.

Friday, January 29: The larger Banggai has a noticeably full mouth and flared out opercula. The same fish also has no interest in food at all. While this fish was thought to be a male all along (more square jaw with a noticeable "pouch"), it is now confirmed.

Oh man, so it's pretty clear now that the cardinals have layed eggs, seemingly overnight on January 28. Days go by and the male cardinal continues to ignore food and mostly hover in one spot under an overhanging candy cane coral. Fast forward now...

Wednesday, February 17: Based on the banggai cardinal "manual" linked to above, the eggs should have hatched on this day, give or take a day.

Since a day or two after February 17, we can definitely tell the eggs have hatched. The fry are visible within the male's mouth and have grown increasingly active. They literally are miniature versions of their parents -- stripes and all (well, not the spots yet). The "manual" says we can expect the male to release the fry any day now as of February 23 (most likely to be released at night). As of this moment, the fry remain within the male's mouth, but he is clearly struggling to hold some of them in.

In the wild, Banggai cardinal fry are known to use a long spine urchin as shelter. Even a quick Google search will show pictures of Banggai fry doing this in captivity. The other fish in the tank are my ORA naked clowns, which I just know will enjoy a tasty meal of cardinal fry. What to do, what to do... Well, of course, follow the "manual" and build an artificial urchin! The manual suggests using plastic wire, which I could not find, so I went with 8" black plastic ties.

Step 1: Drill holes in the 2" PVC cap. I started out by making a cross pattern, then made it an asterick, then drilled the areas in between to finish up. I did free hand drill it with a hand held drill, so it's definitely not perfect, but I'm going to bet that it doesn't matter.

Step 2: Begin inserting the plastic ties. Important note... Do not pull the plastic ties all the way through at this point. Because the ends that the ties zip through are bigger than the rest of the tie, they begin to block the holes drilled in the PVC cap. It's much easier to feed the later ties into the holes if the ties inserted early on are only pulled through about 75% of the way.

Step 3: Finish inserting the plastic ties. It doesn't look too bad, if you ask me. Then again, I'm not the one that needs convincing. Oh, btw, in case anyone's wondering, I used exactly 65 plastic ties to make this artificial urchin.

Another important note... When pulling the plastic ties through the holes that were drilled so they'd intentionally be a little tight and hold the ties securely in place, a fine "thread" of the plastic ties gets shaved off the edges of the plastic ties. Removing those shavings is probably a good idea, however, a rinse under the faucet doesn't really help. I had to shake the urchin dry and remove them all by hand. Ugh...

Step 4: Place the urchin in the tank (after a good rinsing just to be safe). Please ignore the caulerpa that's begun to overrun the tank, and the less than stellar BB pic.

Apparently, I didn't do too bad of a job, as both the male and female cardinals have been moving in and out of the artificial urchin throughout the day today. Now, we just wait for the fry to be released... Everyone's very excited!

The male Banggai in the artificial urchin.

[fsn77]

Sorry folks, I didn't realize the pix don't show up for the rest of you...  I'll fix that, as that's half of what makes this thread interesting to begin with.

[eruss]

Neat Frank...  Good luck raising the fry, it's not easy without a dedicated "fry" tank.

I have anywhere from 2-3 Pajama Cardinal males incubating eggs at any one time.  I've never seen any fry...which likely explains why my Pseudochromid looks like a bright purple dirigible.

[scubaclimber]

Good job, Frank! I hope it works out! My sailfin tang loved my Bangi fry so sad to see as you are watching the release... and I had a real long spine urchin

[fsn77]

It just so happens that I have a 10g set up that I can move the fry into, if they survive long enough for me to see and catch them.

February 25: Despite all the anticipation, the fry were not released overnight. The male's mouth seems to literally be bursting at the seams and he can no longer close his mouth all the way. Considering it's now Thursday and this tank is in my office at work, I'm really starting to worry that they won't get released until overnight Friday / Saturday, when I won't be around.

The female cardinal is going nuts, dancing and twitching all around the male. I don't know if that's suppose to encourage the male to release the fry or not, but I surely hope it's not her trying to say she's ready to mate again. The poor guy hasn't eaten in almost a month -- I hope he's able to eat enough before they mate again, which I've read can be as soon as 5 days after the fry are released.

[skey]

Are those the ones from me? Cardinals have a shorter lifespan than clowns therefore reach sexual maturity much faster (even though I've seen clowns mate @ the one year mark which isn't too old, I know your pain trying to get clowns to pair up... they can be super tough to pair for the long term).

Very cool btw. I am willing to trade for babies if you have luck with the fry. They are supposed to be easy to raise, but not very commercially viable bc of the small batch production.

Good job Frank!

[CTAquatics]

Get in line Skey, Club members get first shot at Babies. LOL .

[scubaclimber]

So far I have counted a total of 3 in the tank and the male is still holding some!

[fsn77]

February 26: Stopped in to see if the male had released the fry before I left to go out of town for the weekend. Of course, no fry out and about. Go figure... he's holding onto them for the full 6 - 10 day period before releasing them. I'm hoping that once the fry are released this weekend, they are able to find enough hiding places until I get back.

March 1:  I wasn't in the office today, as I needed to take the day off to get some work done around the house while my wife is away.  I did hear that fry had started to be released finally!  Chris was able to snatch up 4 of them and move them into the fry tank.  He also spotted that some of the fry were still in the male's mouth.

March 2:  Now there's more fry...  The male released the remaining fry, raising the total for this brood to a known 8, which is surprisingly what we were guessing all along (we thought 8 - 10).  Only 2 of the 4 fry that were moved to the fry tank have been seen, but there's 4 - 6 fry still in the main tank.  They literally are miniatures of their parents -- it's quite remarkable.  Some of the fry are using the artificial urchin, while others are utilizing the thick growth of macroalgae that's been allowed to grow in as their release was anticipated.  I'm currently thawing out some frozen San Francisco Bay Brand Reef Plankton (bright orange cube of very small plankton -- typically feed it to our corals) in hopes that they will eat it.

Even more surprsingly, the male already has another brood of eggs in his mouth! The poor guy didn't even take a break to eat... I'm guessing that he'll end up eating some or all of this next batch of eggs, or at least that he's instinctually smart enough to do so before he starves himself to death.

Off to try and feed them... And hopefully snap a few pix.  



Oh, I almost forgot...  Yes, Scott, these are the two Banggais I got from you.   

[fsn77]

March 2 (cont'd): Feeding the frozen plankton has created some difficulties, as the fry and the plankton are so small that I cannot tell if the food is being eaten. The fry dart towards it repeatedly, but I'm not able to see if they are actually eating it.

I did snap a few pix though... Sorry they aren't better... I really need to bring in my digital camera from home to get better shots. My camera phone isn't so great at capturing something this small.

Two pix of one of the fry in the 10g fry tank. That's a cinderblock wall behind the tank, with the seams being visible in the pic.
That's about as good as it gets for anything to indicate scale -- they are simply tiny.





Pic of multiple fry hanging out in the macroalgae near the urchin.

March 3: Since it's not clear if the fry are eating the frozen plankton, I set up to hatch brine shrimp for them. They should hatch by tomorrow morning, so hopefully I'm not too late.

As many as 6 fry have been spotted in the 50g tank in the area around the artificial urchin, bringing the known total to 10 fry with 8 still alive. At this point, I've more or less given up on trying to move any more of them to the fry tank, as there's likely much more food available for them where they are than there is in the 10g fry tank which was only set up recently.

[fsn77]

March 3 (cont'd): As a back-up since I can't really tell if the frozen plankton is being eaten, I started to hatch a batch of brine shrimp eggs. If you've done this before, you know how simple it really is and the only real cost is the brine shrimp eggs themselves. Because of how convenient it is for me, I opted to hatch them in saltwater with the same SpG of my reef tanks. I hope this will allow some of the baby brine shrimp to survive long enough to become more than just an instaneous food for the fry, especially in the fry tank (what I'm referring to is a few hours, not days or longer).
Fry count -- 2 in the 10g; 6 in the 50g


March 4: I'm beginning to think that not all of the fry are eating the frozen plankton based on today's fry count. Perhaps a couple have been preyed upon, but I'm not counting on that since I see no interest from the other fish in the fry during my office hours and I doubt one fry is looking to kill other fry at this point in their lives. I didn't put a heater in the brine shrimp culture, so no baby brine shrimp yet... They should be hatching in the morning.
Fry count -- 1 in the 10g; 5 in the 50g


March 5: Sure enough, plenty of baby brine shrimp this morning. Again, super tiny, nearly colorless food being eaten by very small fry, so I'm still not 100% sure the fry are eating. But, the fry are definitely chasing the baby brine shrimp, darting back and forth once I add them near the fry. I'm adding the baby brine shrimp 3 times a day while I'm in my office, again hoping that some are hanging around long enough to provide a somewhat steady food supply for the fry between feedings. Being a Friday, there's less people and eyes to count the fry for me. Here's what I've seen today...
Fry count -- 1 in the 10g; 4 in the 50g

[nrowensby]

Very cool read... How did it go? Have the second set of eggs hatched yet?

[fsn77]

The fry were doing really well, until they got to have a good bit of size to them.  Then, all of them that remained in the main tank disappeared.  Apparently, the female Banggai or the clowns decided they had grown large enough to be worth eating.  The only one that remains is the one that was isolated in the separate tank.

It really seems that if I'm going to have any real chance of raising the fry, I'm going to have to separate the Banggais into a tank of their own, preferably into one that I can then divide up to separate each of them from the others as needed.

The second set of eggs has definitely hatched, but the fry are still in the male's mouth.  Based on the reported timelines, the fry will be released by the middle of this week.

[fsn77]

Thought I'd post an update, although it's not a particularly good one...
The second brood yielded only 1 fry that survived long enough into the day after being released by the male to be captured and moved into the separate 10g tank.  The rest are presumed to have been eaten.

It turned out that there was 1 surviving fry from each of the first 2 broods.  Each was eating well and growing until just recently.  It appears that not being around to feed them on the weekends caught up with me, as they both disappeared within a couple days of one another about 2 weeks ago.

A third batch of eggs was incubated, but none of the fry were ever seen once they were released.  All are presumed to have been eaten, especially since there's an additional fish in the tank now.

This week, there's now the fourth batch of eggs being held in the male's mouth.  I have no hopes of trying to raise them at this point, between the low likelihood of me ever seeing any of the fry once they are released and my complete lack of desire to try and capture the male prior to him being ready to release them.

I'm still working on getting something together to house the pair and allow for separation when needed, however, work on the area where that'll be is slow with all the work being done in the main part of our house at the moment.