Well, I officially gave up on my male Banggai after he swallowed his third batch on just mere day 2. Just yesterday I came across someone mentioning nitrate in the 10-20 ppm range can cause this issue, so I'm going to research this more as my broodstock system is usually around the 20-30 ppm mark. In the meantime, I went to the fish room about 7 pm lastnight to see the male Bangaii holding some eggs. He doesn't even seem to make the first night very well without consuming (or spitting?) the eggs, so after his last failed attempt I planned to strip his next batch as soon as I found him holding.
So lastnight around 8 pm I collected approximately 38 eggs. I put the eggs into a San Francisco Bay pop bottle brine shrimp hatchery with approximately 600-750 mL of water from one of my reef aquariums (1.026 and nitrate undetectable). I filtered through a 53 micron sieve, sterilized it with bleach, and dechlorinated. I turned the air down fairly low - just enough to keep the eggs from settling on the bottom - and put a lid on it. I also added one drop of methylene blue dye in hopes of it preventing egg fungus. I then set the "tumbler" into the sump of my broodstock system to keep the temperature steady right near 80F (26C). I plan to do 50% waterchanges every few days, and keep MB in the water.
Now, this is far from high tech, but I want to keep this simple if possible, so I'm starting with the simplest setup I think
might work. I have antibiotics and formalin on hand to try in the future if the MB proves to be unsuccessful. I will take this project as far as needed until I achieve consistent and reproducible success.
I actually purchased 4 small adult Banggai Cardinals a few days ago in hopes to get at least one more pair going. I'm going to try the "vent method" for sexing them once I can get their bellies full. Right now they are just being weaned onto frozen foods and then I will medicate them with PraziPro for a week.
Wish me luck! Feel free to make some suggestions, although at this point I suppose "waiting to see what happens" is probably the only suggestion because if this works I'm stickin to it! Haha! It seems there aren't many people successful with AI for Banggai Cardinals, and I've only had moderate success in the past.
In the net the eggs didn't stick together
In the tumbler the eggs stick together
This is how they look this morning, I'm assuming the blue ones aren't fertile?
<message edited by EasterEggs on Saturday, May 19, 2012 4:00 PM>