Breeding Journal, Species: Pterapogon kauderni (Banggai Cardinal)

General
Species: Pterapogon kauderni (Banggai Cardinal)
Social Structure:
Size of Individuals: 3 inches
Age of Individuals: 4 1/2 years     
Date added to Tank: 4 1/2 years ago

Broodstock Tank Details
Size of Tank: 40 gallon Breeder
Substrate Details: Nature's Ocean Bio-Active Reef Sand and Reef Substrate
Filtration Details: UV Sterilizer, Natural Live Rock
Water Changes: %15 water change after every Hatch
Water Temperature: 81 Degrees
Lighting: Aqualight Pro HQI/Compact Flourescent/Lunar Light Fixture
Lighting Cycle: Lunar always on, Flourescents on from 10pm - 8am, HQI on from 12am - 6am
Other Tank Inhabitants: 1 Cleaner Shrimp, Half Dozen Hermits, Dozen Snails, various Acros.

Broodstock Feeding Details
Food Types: Mysid Shrimp, Omega 3 Brine, Spirula Enriched Brine
Feeding Schedule: 1/2 cube morning, 1/2 cube after work, 1/2 cube before bed.  Switch to only 1/2 cube in morning when spawn occurs

Spawning Details
Date of First Spawn: January 2007
Dates of Consecutive Spawns: Every month since then except from November 2008 - Feburary 2009.  (Moved those months someone held onto them for me to get my new tank up and cycled. Once back at home spawned March 2008.)

Larval Tank Details
Temperature: 81 Degrees
Size of Larval Tank: 10 gallon
Substrate Details: Barebottom
Other Tank Decor: Plastic Grass looks like Urchin, Plastic shark with open mouth
Filtration Details: None
Lighting: Glow from parent tank. (No lighting)
Lighting Cycle: Glow From Parent Tank. (No Lighting)
Water Changes: 50% once a week.

Larval Feeding Details
Food Types: Live baby brine, sometimes enriched with selcon
Feeding Schedule: every morning before work

Metamorphosis/Settlement
Date of Metamorphosis:
Date of Settlement: 11/28/2009

Grow-Out Tank Details
Temperature: 81 degrees
Size of Grow-Out Tank: 125 gallon
Substrate Details: Barebottom
Other Tank Decor: Live Rock, Live Coral
Filtration Details: Berlin Turbo Protein Skimmer, UV sterilizer, Natural Live Rock
Lighting: 2 Pendulum 250W HQI's, 5 independent Moon Lights
Lighting Cycle: 1 pm - 7pm HQI's, Moon Lights always on
Water Changes: 15% once a week.
Size at Transfer: 1/2 inch
Age at Transfer: 1 1/2 - 2 months

Grow-Out Feeding Details
Food Types: Omega 3 Brine shrimp, Spirula Enriched Brine Shrimp, live brine everyone once in a while
Feeding Schedule: 1 1/2 cubes every morning, 1 cube a night.  (Houses approximately 50+ babies)

Additional Information
Miscellaneous Information:  Been breeding Banggai Cardinals every month for the last 3 years.  Obtain approximately 30 - 40 babies per spawn.  Parent breeding tank contains 4 Hydor Koralia water circulation pump, 1 Number 2 pump, 1 Number One pump and 2 nano Pumps. Number one pumps blows straight accross front of tank, Number 2 pump blows diagonally across from end of where Pump number one goes, One Nano blows from where pump number 2 ends to pump number 1.  Last nano blows next to pump number 2 in adjacent corner blowing accross back of tank and across heater.

Babies as stripped by the following methods.  After day 21 of the male's hunger strike due to babies being populated in is mouth I strip the babies by the following process.  Step 1 have a 10 gallon tank ready (or larger size depending on what you have available) with temperature set as the same as main parent tank, with air strip bubbler, and a plastic plant to simulate an urchin.  Step 2 prepare a batch of live baby brine in 24 hours prior to stripping.  Step 3 have a 5 gallon bucket filled about 1/3 of the way full of water from the parent tank.  Step 4 give chase to the male and attempt to net him.  Once in the net and the net breaks the surface of the water in the main tank the male will spit out the babies.  Immediately dip the net into the awaiting 5 gallon bucket.  Babies and adult will swim free.  Using smaller net quickly net the adult male and re-release him back into the main tank.  Step 5 dump babies from 5 gallon bucket into 10 gallon aquarium.  Babies will school together into fake plant for protection.  Step 6 add live baby brine shrimp to the aquarium.  Babies will immediately begin to feed.

Toledo Reef Aquarium Club
Web Administrator
www.TracCentral.org

More information and pictures will be coming soon.  I'm also preparing to setup another tank to recreate more breeding pairs to try to repeat the success of the current breeding pair.  I've got a 30 gallon, 40 gallon and 50 gallon breeders on the way thanks to Arc Katana.

Toledo Reef Aquarium Club
Web Administrator
www.TracCentral.org

Just for an FYI.  Had a new spawn as of yesterday morning.  Male has a new mouthful of eggs.  In approximately 21 - 24 days should have yet another batch of babies.

Toledo Reef Aquarium Club
Web Administrator
www.TracCentral.org

A couple days ago he had his mouth full of eggs.  That was an under statement until I just went down into the basement 5 mins ago.  Now looks like he's trying to take on two batches of eggs at once.



Hopefully you can see all those eggs....   Yikes he hasn't lost any since the first day of holding its going to be interesting to see what happens here...

Toledo Reef Aquarium Club
Web Administrator
www.TracCentral.org

Verty cool.  Mine is holding too, but not a mouthfull like yours!

http://www.fishtalpropagations.com/#!home/mainPage
"Making captive breeding easier."

I'm going to have too keep my eyes on him to see how he does.  Never seen that many in his mouth to where he couldn't even close his mouth.  Not sure how that will hinder things but he's pretty resilient on keeping those babies in his mouth for as long as necessary.  The longest he's held was over 30 days.

I will attempt to get more pictures of my stock.

Toledo Reef Aquarium Club
Web Administrator
www.TracCentral.org

Scott I'm probably going to be looking for some breeding stock very soon. I'm going to try to get a pair in my Nassarius snail culture tank.

Chad Penney - MBI Council
Agis quod Adis

So here is some photos of my breeding and a little explanation of whats going on.

This first picture is my attempt at a breeding colony.  This is a 125 gallon aquarium that contains approximately 50 Banggai Cardinal fish that are 3 - 4 months old.  I'm trying to attempt to simulate the ocean in hopes that these fish will start to breed with each other and produce many offspring.  This tanks temperature is kept at ~81 degrees and the lighting is 250W MH Pendulums.  It contains two number 4 Hydro Korilia pumps at each end.  One points up to the top of the water to promote surface adjitation. and the other pump points straight across angled at the front glass to riciche the current in the tank.  It is a bare bottom tank.  Natural Live rock filtration, along with protein skimmer and UV Sterilizer.  Other tank inhabitants include 4 cleaner shrimp, 8 peppermint shrimp, 2 blood red shrimp, 2 pom pom crabs, 1 royal gramma, 1 clam, 4 -5 dozen snails of 3 different varieties, various coral species of acro's and mushrooms, and a long spine urchine.  FYI... None of my tanks contain sumps.



Here are some of the 50 babies contained in the tank this picture was taken when they were approximately one month old.  Here they are about 1/2 inch in size.



This next picture is the same batch at 4 months old.  The are approximately 1 inch to 1 1/2 inches in length.  Sorry for the messy glass  I was going to do tank maintainance today but got distracted and fasinated with the parents mouth being overly stuffed in the picture above.





Next is the parents tank.  This is a 40 gallon breeder with an Aqualight pro light fixture.  The lights run opposite of daylights.  During the day this tank only receives glow from the 125 aquarium which is perpendicular to this tank.  This tank contains approximately 3 inches of Live Sand, Live Rock for natural filtration, UV sterilizer, and NO Sump and NO protein skimmer.  What you see all over the front glass is coraline algea which I've given up scrapping up since this tank is only a breeding tank.  The only other tank inhabitants are 1 cleaner shrimp and about a dozen snails.  Plus a few different varieties of Acros and LPS corals.  A top you will notice some chemicals.  Normally I don't use them but I've been playing around with these a little bit lately to see if they have any effect on parents and coral growth.  No effect on parents and yes helps maintain healty coral.  Its calcium additive, alkalinity additive, and essential elements additive.  This tank contains 4 hydro Koralia pumps.  1 number 1 pump which blows across the front of the tank from left to right, 1 number 2 pump that blows from front right corner to back left corner facing towards the surface for agitation.  2 Nano pumps that blow from back left corner to right corner and the other nano from back right corner across the back and across the heater.  The tubing you see coming out of the tank is for the UV Sterilizer.



This is my baby grow out station.  Here I have 4 10 gallon aquariums.  Currently all of these aquariums are full of babies ranging from a few days old to 2 months old.  Each 10 gallon aquarium is currently holding 25 or more babies.  There are now glass lids on these tanks as or trash can lids covering the tanks since we just got a new kitten and he discovered the tanks killing approximately 10 babies out of each of the tanks.



Here are some of the babies in one of the tanks.  Sorry for the cruddy picture all I could find was my camera phone to take these pictures.  My digital camera is missing.



This next picture is on of my last tanks that contains babies.  Its a 15 gallon Biocube which is currently housing 15 babies that are 3 months old.  Next to this tank is a couple live brine hatcheries to feed the babies in the 10 gallon.  The 3 months old in this biocube have been weened off the live baby brine and are now eating frozen brine shrimp and mysid shrimp.



That concludes my tank tour if you have questions about Banggai Cardinal fish breeding please feel free to ask and if you'd like to see my fish or setups I would be more than willing to show you.

My next steps in this process is to get more breeding pairs going which I'm hoping to do with the Equipment I'm picking up from Arc Katana.  I'm going to replicate the current parent setup and see if I have new babies in a couple of months with some of the stock from the 15 gallon biocube.

Toledo Reef Aquarium Club
Web Administrator
www.TracCentral.org

FYI altogether I have ~150+ babies currently in my basement.

Toledo Reef Aquarium Club
Web Administrator
www.TracCentral.org

Impressive setup Scott. How many pairs do you have activily spawning right now?

Chad Penney - MBI Council
Agis quod Adis

Looks great Scott!  Question, how do you measure your Banggais?  Nose to tail, or the diameter of the body?
 
Hopefully I get some babies soon and we can mix our gene pool. 

http://www.fishtalpropagations.com/#!home/mainPage
"Making captive breeding easier."

Currently all of these babies come from one pair.  This pair is 4 1/2 years old so I'm getting worried about the age and that they may not have long to go.  I got these babies off of Blix70 at a frag swap 4 1/2 years old when they were just 3 -4 months old.  So I'm trying to get another pair or two going in backup, but if I have that many pairs I will soon run out of room for tanks to hold the young.  I'm thinking about building racks in my basement to hold all of the tanks and babies.  There are other fish I want to try to breed but these guys breed like bunnies so its hard to get other fish when all available tank space is overrun by Banggai's.

Toledo Reef Aquarium Club
Web Administrator
www.TracCentral.org

I usually measure by the diameter of the body.  Tail size actually varies in a lot of these babies.  Some have really long fins and others relatively short fins.  A couple as babies got their fins stuck in the pumps and had them loped off, but still seem to swim well and function well with the other Bangers.

Looking forward for a baby swap with someone.

Toledo Reef Aquarium Club
Web Administrator
www.TracCentral.org

Scott, any pointers on getting a pair when buying from a store?

Chad Penney - MBI Council
Agis quod Adis

My biggest pointer would be get a young pair (Smaller than an inch), and make sure they eat before you bring them home.

Toledo Reef Aquarium Club
Web Administrator
www.TracCentral.org

Ok, that's how I measure them too... dime, penny, nickel, quarter, etc.  Wasn't sure if that was how others did it.

http://www.fishtalpropagations.com/#!home/mainPage
"Making captive breeding easier."

Update on Mr. Mouth Too Full.  This morning I checked up on him and he's now got his mouth closed around the eggs as I have a feeling he had to dump some of them out in order to do this.  But he is still holding and it still looks like a record number as I never seen him so bulged out before.  Only time will tell how many I get from this if I can recover them as I'm going on vacation the week after Christmas which is when he will probably release them.  If he can hold on for a few extra days then I will be back to recover them the first week of January.

Toledo Reef Aquarium Club
Web Administrator
www.TracCentral.org

Scott, you have some great pics.  Mind updating your first post's settlement section with some dates / info on the stripping process as you outlined in your MBI reports.

Updated..

Toledo Reef Aquarium Club
Web Administrator
www.TracCentral.org