Bangaii Breeding Journal
 

I figured some of you may be interested in a journal, as well I'd like to keep a record, and what better place?! :D

Here's ma and pa:
http://i85.photobucket.com/albums/k4...-Dec152007.jpg

So on Jan 7th I stripped the male of the fry. He had been carrying them for approximately 25 days. I didn't have an egg tumbler, so I had to wait for them to hatch in his mouth before stripping him. When I caught him in the net, he spat them all out so I didn't even have to strip him. I transfered the babies into a 10g tank, and put them into one of those "net breeders". I've been hatching brine shrimp for them that I soak in Selcon before feeding.

Day 1:
http://i85.photobucket.com/albums/k4...yCardinals.jpg

There were 14 babies, but one got squished in the strip. It was obvious within the first couple days that there were two strong babies, and all the others were runts of some sort to differing degrees. The runts just layed around on the bottom of the net and jerked around. I culled four or five that looked hopeless. Four or five died on their own accord so far. I now have five. Two look good and strong, one looks ok, and two look poor and rest on the bottom of the net most of the time and can't swim very well. The strong ones are almost twice the size of the other three, are quick swimmers, and can keep themselves suspended in the water at all times. I should probably cull the three runts, but I'm waiting to see how they turn out. I keep the tank loaded with BBS so the babies can eat anytime they're hungry. Their bellies are always full when I look at them. I've started feeding FD Cyclopeeze, but it dirties the water much quicker...not sure what to do about that.

You can see the two strong babies and the one ok baby (the really blurry one):
http://i85.photobucket.com/albums/k4.../Jan192008.jpg

I'd like to know why there are so many "runts" in this batch. There is a possibility that the parents are siblings...I wonder if that may be it. I'll test them out for another few batches and see how they turn out. Hopefully this next one the male is brooding will turn out better.

Once the male was stripped I fed them heavily twice a day for a week with Piscine brand frozen mysis shrimp soaked in 3-4 drops of Selcon and 1 drop of Garlic Extreme. After the first week the male had regained most of his weight, and I dropped to my usual once a day light feeding of mysis (still with Selcon and Garlic), occasionally feeding Formula One flake, but the Bangaii's don't eat the flake much. The male ate 20 minutes after spitting the fry, although he was awkward eating and sometimes ran into the food forgetting to open his mouth. LOL.

The female started fattening up with eggs only 3 days after stripping the male. This morning the male's mouth was full of eggs once more! I couldn't believe it was only 12 days after stripping the last batch!!! I'm going to make an egg tumbler asap, and strip him as soon as it's built. I'm hoping that will be tomorrow.

I have to do a waterchange on the tanks tomorrow as the 10g has 10ppm nitrates. I need to set that tank up better for the babies as well, so it's easier to access the filter media since the filter is on the back of the tank, and the tank is on the bottom part of a metal stand below a 55g. It just has an AquaClear 100 on it that just has a sponge in it. I'm going to add carbon tomorrow and a second sponge, so I can toss out a sponge a week to keep the nitrates down. I'm wondering if there's a way to clean out the sponges well enough so I can re-use them withouth them becoming nitrate factories...? Bleach them maybe?

I'm interested. Please keep this thread going.

Real fascinating stuff. Keep it coming!

.

ya I remember when Doug ahd babies in his over flow. he raised them to

Could the babies have been runts because they were released from the mouth too early? A few years ago my bangaiis released their batch into the tank and the majority of them were swimming on their own.

I'm not sure, but if that was the case they should be swimming fine by now since they have been out of the mouth for 13 days, but the runts still don't swim well.

So decided to strip, eh! Good job! The male is perfectly fine and now more babies...now send 'em my way...J/K.

Js

EDIT: Can you strip maybe a week later when they are stronger? I dont know how long the incubation period and fry stage is but maybe wait a little longer?

I'm going to strip them as eggs this time. This is day 2 he's been holding eggs...I'm hoping I can find the pieces to make an egg tumbler today (didn't have much luck yesterday). If I get it up and going I'll strip him tonight.

Ok, so I spent like $30-35 on stuff to make an egg tumbler. I had to buy a whole undergravel filter kit just for the uptakes. LOL. Waste of $24...or maybe not if it works! HAHA!

So then I stripped the male of the eggs (it's day three holding the eggs). I had to open his mouth this time as he didn't spit as soon as I netted him like he did when he had fry last time. I used a short piece of airline tubing cut at a 60° angle, grabbed onto him gently (keeping him submersed in the water) then I used the point of the tubing to gently pry is mouth open and kinda bob him in the water a bit. He spat them out when I opened his mouth.

I put the eggs into my egg tumbler and realised my egg tumbler sucked!! Oh no!!! I had the egg tumbler built like this:

http://i85.photobucket.com/albums/k4...Jan1920082.jpg

The air would go up past the eggs, but the problem was that a large bubble would form between the air stone and the netting for awhile, then a big blast of bubbles would go up, then it would build, and big blast. Well this was blasting the crap outta the eggs! So I built a new tumbler that looks like this:

http://i85.photobucket.com/albums/k4...Jan1920083.jpg

Now the air doesn't pass by the eggs at all. I have it turned down so that the eggs rest on the bottom but are kinda hovering down there. I hope it works! Here's the eggs:

http://i85.photobucket.com/albums/k4...Jan2020083.jpg

Oh ya, I figured I would note that those "Brine Shrimp" nets...don't work. The little BBS went right through it, and down my drain. Rrrrg...

How do you guys rinse your BBS before feeding?

Nothing overly interesting going on...

The runt Bangaii's are starting to swim around more, but are still way smaller than the others.

The eggs in my tumbler went from sinking to floating a few days ago. Not sure why. Now they aren't "tumbling" they are all pushed up against the top screen. I hope that will be ok. They seem to be growing. I am wondering about light though. The ones one the top of the ball of eggs are whitish, and the ones at the bottom of the clump are pink/orange. I'm wondering if the light is causing them to go white...I don't think they'd normally get light in the mouth of the male. None of the eggs seem to be dead...maybe I'm naive though. lol

I don't know much about these fish or their eggs. I did however do some work in a small salmon hatchery years back. One of the critical daily duties was "dead picking". You would pick out any eggs starting to cloud or turn white. Whitening eggs are generally a sign of fungal infection. If they are infected, they will die or are already dying. If this is the case, you will need to remove them or the fungus will spread to the live ones. My clownfish will constantly pick at their eggs and pick off any that die. Just my 2 cents....

Ya, this is what I thought too, but these eggs still seemed to be developing normally. I just took a closer look, and it seems like the white ones are actually disintegrating, so I think you are right. I'm gonna pull all the white ones out right now. Also, upon close inspection, I see there are eyes developing in the orange eggs. COOL! :D

Aw...there are only 7 orange eggs. I guess I should have removed the white ones much earlier!!! The water quality in that little tank isn't the best, so I'm guessing that isn't helping either. The eggs aren't buoyant anymore, so I guess that's a sign that there are fungus infected eggs if they go buoyant.

So...all the eggs in the tumbler ended up turning white and dying. :( I think the water isn't clean enough in there.

Mr Bangaii has his mouth full of eggs again as of yesterday. I think I'm going to let him hold them until they hatch. I don't think I'm really set up right to use my tumbler...unless I want to put that ugly thing in my display tank...which I just might do.

The babies are now 7 weeks old, and the only ones to survive are the two that looked good from the start. I figured that would happen. They are now eating only FD Cyclopeze, and seem to be doing quite well. I'm going to start mixing in some finely ground Formula One flake. :)

The two remaining babies went belly up a few days ago. Both on the the same day...I don't know why.

The male Banger is still holding eggs. I'll leave them in there until they hatch. :)

That's too bad, appreciate the journal though.

I'll keep up on the journal for sure. :)

That little 10g mysteriously kills fish after some time I've found. I used to use it for a QT, but fish would mysteriously die in it if they were in it for very long, so I quit QTing, and haven't lost a fish since (until this morning when I lost new fish...28 hours in the bag is likely to blame though).

So...I'm going to try raising the fry in the display. I'm going to have to rig something up that is horrendous to look at though...so that should be quite the challenge...not sure how that's going to work. When I get my cube, I'm going to plumb a Banger tank into the system, so that will be nice.

I went to strip the male yesterday at 24 days holding the eggs, and they are still eggs! Ooops! They are almost fully developed, but definately still in the egg. Luckily he didn't spit them all out when I opened his mouth to take a peek, but one egg did come out.

I put the one stray egg into a net and just let it sit propped on the edge of my display tank. This morning the egg was gone, so someone must have sucked it through the net. :(

This time I'm going to put the breeding net right into my display tank, and try raising them in there instead of that 10g tank. Hopefully it will work better.

Hmmm, ya so I guess he was carrying the eggs for longer than 25 days last time... :)

Today is day 28 since the male first received the eggs on the latest batch.

I just stripped the male a half hour ago. Lots of babies! I counted somewhere around 28-30...they won't stay still long enough! I think it was perfect timing for stripping as the babies are almost all swimming very well, but still have a bit of the egg sack. There are 4 that are swimming jerky, and may have swim bladder issues as I suspect the first batch did. I think this batch of babies is much stronger than the first batch I tried to raise.

I decided to try something a bit different with them this time in hopes it will work better. I put them into the display tank. I have one of those old "livebearer" breeding traps, and is plastic instead of netting, which I decided to use in hopes that none of the critters in the display tank can suck them out as I've heard this is possible. I'm hoping they'll be ok. I'd feel awful bad if they all got sucked out by some critter! They're so cute, all huddling in the fake plant, which is that best I can do for a fake urchin.

http://i85.photobucket.com/albums/k4.../Mar212008.jpg

The 4 with what I think are swim bladder issues aren't showing any change. All of them are eating BBS. I make sure that the BBS that I feed them are less than 48 hours old so that they haven't developed their exoskeleton yet and are much more nutritious.

Very cool. Yes, they are cute. This makes me want to get a couple of cardinals and see what would happen.

Well, eventually you'll get a pair, and then the female will pump the male full of eggs repeatedly. If you don't intervene he will end up starving to death because she won't let him fatten up between batches!! Poor little dude...

pair
 

How can you tell if you have a male and female I just got two today and from what I
could see at the lfs there was three in one tank one on one side and two together I tryed
to push them togethere but the one was chased away about four times. do you think I may have a par I hope so.

It's possible. Time will tell. If they are siblings, then it's tough to tell.

It seems like the four with swim bladder issues are getting better. One of them is doing very poorly, and is much smaller than the rest of the batch, and lays on the bottom. I don't think this one will live. The other three are the same size as the rest of the batch and are doing well. So far I haven't lost any, and all are growing well. I have rigged up a good little BBS hatchery chain. :lol: They are starting to eat Cyclopeeze and Coral Frenzy now too.

I never had any problem with surviving babies that were left in the tank. Sure there were 30, then 20, then I scooped out 10 and they were all good to go at their size. Maybe you could just segregate them with some mesh or something?

Only one I ever left tanked was the one Christy took home and he had a homemade urchin...:lol:

I want ALL of them to survive! :lol:

Very cool thread...I'm not sure I'm cut out for breeding like this though because I can't imagine being able to hold onto any of my fish while prying their mouths open...I have enough trouble holding onto my 10lb baby and prying her mouth open...lol.

:lol: He's getting used to the routine. He's easier to catch, and after I just pry a little bit he gives up and spits them out for me. Poor lil guy...

Hi Myka

I posted this a while back and I think I made the right choice.
How can you tell if you have a male and female I just got two today and from what I
could see at the lfs there was three in one tank one on one side and two together I tried
to push them together but the one was chased away about four times. do you think I may have a par I hope so.


Well I think I have a pair and it looks like the male may have eggs (cool)
His mouth looks big and he's not eating.
If you have any advice for me It would be greatly appreciated

Joel

My best advice is to read this journal. :D If you have specific questions that aren't answered in the journal, feel free to ask. If your plans are to raise them, where/how to you plan to house them?

Eggs
 

Ok, so the Bangers are getting good at this breeding thing, although it sure took them a LONG time between batches this time. It's 5 1/2 weeks since I stripped the male last, and the time before that it was only 1 1/2 weeks between stripping. I wonder what they'll even out to... The female was looking huge, and this morning Mr Banger is ridiculously full of eggs!!! I don't think he could possibly hold one more in there.

http://i85.photobucket.com/albums/k4.../Apr292008.jpg

On the other hand, the babies who are now 5 1/2 weeks old are doing well. I'm fairly certain there are 23 of them in there today. I'm having troubles getting them onto dry food. They're pretty keen on the BBS, and if I try to starve them into eating dry food they start dying. Not sure what to do about that...I'm going to try just feeding BBS twice per day, and feeding dry the rest of the day. The next batch I'm going to get onto dry sooner in hopes they'll get used to it easier. They're starting to get pretty crowded in the breeder "trap" thingy, so I'm going to have to figure out something to do with them soon because Mr Banger is going to be needing to be stripped in 25 days, so I'll need the breeder trap for them. Maybe I'll set up my 40g...

So yesterday morning I was thinking Mr Banger's mouth wasn't as full, but his belly was bigger than usual. Lastnight his mouth didn't look "pregnant" at all, and his belly was really full. So I fed them lastnight to see if the Mr Banger would eat. He did. Which means he aborted or swallowed that last batch of eggs. I'm going with the latter by the size of his belly!

I had dramatically cut back how much I was feeding due to massive hair algae growth in the tank due to it being UBER overstocked with all the Banger fry. So, I think Mr Banger was just too underfed, and found the eggs to be a little too tempting! Lesson learned...keep the Bangers well fed. *grumble*

The baby Bangers are dropping off like flies! I'm down to 18 now. I think it's partially due to trying to get them onto dry food, which I gave up, and partially due to the major overcrowding in the little floating breeder thingy. SO...the baby Bangers get a new home!!! I'm right in the middle of plumbing up my 40g breeder for them. I really wanted to set it up as a FW planted tank, but the Bangers need it more right now.

Pics to follow. :)

Stupid plumbing...I have a leak between the sump and the pump that I've fiddled with for the last 2 hours. I give up for today! I'm also waiting on RO/DI water...

I haven't done anything in the sump, I'm just going to put a noodle strainer in there with a sheet of filter media to catch detritus and act like a filter sock. There are no baffles in the sump yet. I will drain the sump down the road and fix it up right. I'm going to fit the tank with a Herbie overflow at the same I do the Herbie on my 75g. It's just a strainer on a bulkhead right now. For now, I just need to slap this together ASAP for the baby Bangers.

So it's quite a tight fit for the pump and the sump under the tank. I should have figured it out better. I couldn't get in there good enough to tighten it up where the leak is. I hard plumbed between the sump and the pump with threaded pipe. Bad idea!!! Stupid leaks!

So I ripped it all apart and decided to hard plumb with PVC and glue, and installed a union between the sump and the pump as well as between the pump and the 40g. I thought I had it figured out, but when I tried to fit the pump in the stand I couldn't shut the door!!! Ack! Back to the hardware store!

So...third try is a charm? I hope so!! I should get it all plumbed up tonight...hopefully.

In the meantime, mama Banger is getting pretty fat with eggs again. She probably has another 10-14 days to go though.

Oh ya...I think I made a biiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiig mistake by not introducing frozen foods to the babies right away.

I took some PE Mysis, blended it up, put some Selcon and a couple drops of Garlic Extreme in it, then refroze it in a thin little sheet for the baby Bangers. Some of them are taking to it, but most of them seem to have no clue that it is edible!!

This next batch...I'm gonna have it all figured out!! (hoping)

Eggs
 

Ok, so Mr Banger is pregnant this afternoon - exactly 30 days after the last batch. This is odd because he wasn't pregnant ths morning, so that means they got nookie during the day. They've never done that before. I think Mrs Banger was just so fat with eggs she couldn't keep her fins crossed anymore! Mr Banger's mouth is so full he can't even close his mouth all the way.

I just noticed ths morning how big the Bangers are getting, they're almost full size now I think.

The babies on the other hand grow soooooooooooooooooo slow!!! Including all finnage, they are about the size of dimes, and they're 10 weeks old now.

Eggs
 

Well I have a mere two left from the March 21st batch. They are now four months old, and stunted little runts. I have to get a serious system set up here. There's no way you can raise these guys to sale size flying by the seat of your pants that's for sure!! I'm starting to plan a 5-6 tank system that will be about 70 gallons total to grow them out.

I was away for the weekend, and I came back to find Mr Banger full of eggs - 52 days after the last batch. Or rather half-full of eggs. I think I caught it too late, and he's already eaten a bunch. I caught him and stripped him. I figured I will give my egg tumbler a go again, but this time I put it in my display tank in hopes that the better water quality will help get the eggs to maturity without fungus! Not many eggs in this batch...maybe 15-18?