First month with Bangaii Cardinal fry

So as I write this, my first batch of Bangaii Cardinal fry have reach a little over a month now and I just got my second batch of newborn fry yesterday and boy has it been a busy month for me. I kept meaning to post more but caring for those little guys takes up a lot more time than one may realize! (I think I started writing this at about 1pm and it's now 1am when I finally had time to finish writing this)

A bit of quick back story with my fry is that my first batch of fry came from "Male A" and it took him 3 attempts to carry the eggs to full term. After I received my wonderful first batch of babies, I thought I'd try to raise them before attempting new batches, since getting a new batch every month would only complicate my situation when I just wanted one batch to grow to adults as practice before attempting more. However, as I stated above, I just received my second batch. Why is that? Well after the fry were born, I moved Male A into another tank so he could feed and store up energy again. So I moved "Male B" from there to the main tank with the female. He was the younger of the males when I got them and has never attempted to breed yet. I figured, "Hey, it'll probably take him 3 attempts (~3 months) to get things down, that gives me time to learn from this first set."

Man was I wrong. The little hero decided he'd break the odds when it comes to his species and captive breeding. He held them full term. About two weeks in I was starting to wonder, but after 3 weeks I had to prepare the first batch to be moved downstairs to a 20g. Sort of a rushed deal but I hope it's cycles. It seems so since I had it running a couple months already as a QT for other fish and used some spare live rock from my main. Male B decided to "barf" the fry when I tried to catch him, before I even tried to move from net to a cup of water, which is a little unusual but I managed to react and scoop the net out before they got loose in the main tank, where more than just the Bangaii live and would probably eat them. It was day 26 or 27 I believe, so I expected the eggs to be hatched. I'm glad I didn't have to hand tumble the eggs this time like the first batch.

I'm going to throw in a couple quick recorded videos here. First one will be a the little over one month fry, and the second one will be of the newborn fry. Hard to imagine how fast they grow in a month. The rounded fry are so cute when they still have their yolks.

For a bit of numbers, my first batch has 28 survivors when I counted them as I moved them to the new tank. I think I had about 36 to start, but since I had to hand tumble them to hatch and it was my first time, within the first two days of hatching I had 8 that didn't make it, but since then I never saw one get ill or die. The new batch has about 36 of them, which I think is a coincidental number. Since they were hatched already, but still with their yolk sacs, I hope I get a better survival rate. First the first two weeks I run two of those 2L bottle hatcheries, and then I move down two a single one after when training the fish to eat frozen foods. I go back to two when the male carries to about 24days since I try to catch on day 25 or 26 when I see hatched fry in their mouth.

Reboot (plus more)

It's been a long year, and I admit blogging is not something I do naturally. It's very easy for me to overlook and forget to write about a dozen different things I wanted to write about. I'm going to try to reboot my blog and get into the motion of things again. Now is an especially good time because I am raising my first batch of Bangaii Cardinal fry! They are about a week and a half old now and here are some pictures of them one of my sump partitions:

I've been keeping three adult Bangaii Cardinals lately, one female and two males. The second male I've been keeping in my side tank along with a very old Blue Damsel and Maroon Clownfish. This is the first batch of young that made it to release by the first male. It is technically his third batch, which puts him in line with most Bangaii males when they first start to carry eggs. Most sources seem to indicate that the first 1-3 attempts may not go to full term as the male isn't used to or ready to carry the eggs the full 3 weeks or so. I will probably do a more detailed followup post about this batch of fry and some of the setups I am using that I've built.

Honestly, I'm not quite sure where I want to take this blog right now. I do know I want to keep my first breeding attempts or progress updated for those that are interested. I'm also considering doing some basic product reviews for anyone out there that would like to hear my opinions of the various products I pick up. As with most aquarists, we end up buying many products, some of which we love, some not so much, and even some that seem to work for us, but somehow not for others. Anything I might say in the future are not necessarily going to be the same experience with someone else. Just take it with a grain of salt along with all the other opinions out on the web you might find.

As a side note, I've recently become a volunteer at Aquarium of the Bay as a Water Quality Technician, which is basically a fancy way of saying I test their water parameters for them about once a week. I think I shall make a quick post with a few pictures about my experiences there and hope that I'm not breaking any rules by doing so. Should be free publicity if anything. They're a non profit aquarium with a heavy focus on local conservation. Anyone that lives or is visiting San Francisco that hasn't been there before should definitely take a look around. They run some pretty spiffy exhibits.

So that's that. Stay tuned for future updates and drop me a comment or an email over here with any comments, questions, or suggestions about what you'd like to see me post more of.