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.
