I might be a daddy - Need Help!

rubytuesday · 11-25-2004, 09:23 AM

Greetings,

One of my 4 banggai cardinals (male) is carrying already hatched babies in his mouth. I presume he is in his 18-20th day since you can actually see the fry in his mouth. Here is my dilema: Since i was not really prepared for this, i do not have a breeder setup. 2 choices: 1)put the male into my refugium until he releases the fry, then move him into the main reef again. Not really sure if the fry will survive in the fuge, i will not get ahold of any live food until friday-saturday. 2) leave him in the reef, once he releases them, remove them and either put them into the fuge or wait until i can get a breeder setup assuming they are not released until i can get a small breeder tank. thoughts?

Sea monkey · 11-25-2004, 10:11 AM

what do you feed them anyways ?

mmclain · 11-25-2004, 10:12 AM

Rubytuesday,

How hard is it going to be to catch the male in your reef? Do you have lots of rock, places to hide, etc? Usually when you try to catch the male, he will release and you will end up having to catch the baby bangers anyway. Even though they are small, they are pretty quick.

The fry should be fine in your fuge assuming you have plenty of natural live food in there. I often found babies that had somehow gotten into my sump of my breeding system and survived on what they found there. Not optimal but good enough until you can get some live brine going. You should try to slowly wean(sp?) them onto frozen food after about 10 days anyway. For that matter, they will probably find stuff to eat in your main display as well although you will loose a number of them as they will become food for other life in your tank.

If you are going to hatch brine, make sure and feed them to the bangers within the first 12 - 24 hours of hatching or so. After that, the shrimp start to loose most of their nutritional value unless you fortify them with something.

Hope that helps. There are several of us (Capman, Mercedes, myself, probably others) that have raised bangers. If you have questions, don't hesitate to ask.

Mike

rubytuesday · 11-25-2004, 10:31 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sea monkey

what do you feed them anyways ?

Frozen, flake.

Mike, thanks for the advice, i will probably leave dad in the reef and either try to catch the babies and put into the fuge or let nature take its course until i can prepare ahead of time for the next round.

tico mike · 11-25-2004, 11:27 AM

I have a brine shrimp hatchery you can use. Have a couple more bags of mix as well. Has worked well for me. I can get by without the live food until your done. Will be gone this weekend but maybe someone can get it to you or next week...I'm in Hudson.

trodder · 11-25-2004, 01:30 PM

if your babies make it I would be interested in taking some off your hands if you so decide... let me know...

Congrats anyway!!

AnemicOak · 11-25-2004, 01:33 PM

Might want to search the fish breeding forum at RC. I remember a few pretty long threads on this species.

Good Luck!

MERCEDES · 11-25-2004, 02:33 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rubytuesday

Greetings,

One of my 4 banggai cardinals (male) is carrying already hatched babies in his mouth. I presume he is in his 18-20th day since you can actually see the fry in his mouth. Here is my dilema: Since i was not really prepared for this, i do not have a breeder setup. 2 choices: 1)put the male into my refugium until he releases the fry, then move him into the main reef again. Not really sure if the fry will survive in the fuge, i will not get ahold of any live food until friday-saturday. 2) leave him in the reef, once he releases them, remove them and either put them into the fuge or wait until i can get a breeder setup assuming they are not released until i can get a small breeder tank. thoughts?

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/sh...hreadid=450165
First, Congratulations!
Here is a link to one of many threads on RC that will help you. Go to the fish breeding forum and you will find all kinds of info that would take to long to even try to type. Atticus, Oceanarus,Undergrad are all good reefers to do a search on and read their posts. They have been breeding fish for quite sometime. As Mike stated you have to determine how hard it will be to get to the male and get him out of your main tank. I have had several different batches that we have grown out right in our main 220g tank. It was just too large and too much rock to even try to get the male and sometimes to get the babies. As Mike said they may be small but they are fast, they always seemed to gravitate to the same area in the tank when they were born. They hung out in our frogspawn,rose BTA's and my heliofungia. For now don't feel bad if you take the let nature take its course because the babies will be eaten by other fish/coral in your tank which is part of nature. I spent many nights waiting up til all hours for the male to spit them out because I couldn't bear to have one die. Ask Tracy about our first batch and how I freaked out over our tube anemone eating 3 babies. My only excuse is "I was a new mommy"

Good luck feel free to ask questions but be sure to go to RC and read the great threads and also the articles written by Frank Marini.
The 1st picture has babies from 2 different batches, the parents had back to back broods and we left them in the tank with the parents. It was interesting that after we left the babies in the tank the parents did not breed for many months. The second picture was from our very first group of babies that we put into a breeder net that we hung onto the side of our old tank. I fed them phytoplankton, baby brine and this liquid baby fish food that I cannot remember the name of.