Killer Bagghi!!!!
 

Hey guys,
I bought 4 bagghi Cardinals from the LFS abot 5 days ago in the hope i would see a pair from them.
The best i could do with sexing is i selected 2 of the smaller ones and 2 larger ones!
The tank is an 8' 360g. After about 2 days one of the smaller fish wasnt looking so good, i didnt witness any harrassment but he cowered in a corner all day long, so to no avail i attempted to catch this fish and move it to one of my other tanks.

The next day the fish had disapered - i exspected this!
the remaining three spread across the tank.
One would hover bang centre and one would hover in the middle of each end. On occasion two would swim around each other (not always the same two)! But all 3 fish ate well on frozen and flake, and were of good bodyweight, and their tankmates are completly peacefull.

Today i have one left!!!:( !!!
It is the biggest of the four, what happened??

Is it obvious that i got all the same sex (i didnt see this a prob in this size tank)?

Have i just got an evil bagghi?

Can i safetly introduce more to this fish (doubt it)?

I am really gutted with this as i intended to have a go at rearing these fish. If i move this one to another tank and keep it as the sole cardinal, and added another group of 4 to the 360g tank am i to exspect the same? Am i doing something wrong?

Thanks for the help guys, i feel really guilty about losing these fish, especially being how they are endanged! I am really aprehensive about repeating this.

Any thoughts on where i went wrong?

Cheers
Mark

:(

You should not keep several Bangaii cardinals in any aquarium - no matter the size. They are territorial and aggressive with conspecifics. What I recommend is having only one pair in your tank. Preferably a male and a female, since then they won't fight.
I have a pair in my 30 Gallon, and they are doing wonderfully.

But how did you source the pair?? Thats what i was trying to do.

Mark

What you can try to do is look closely at the fins and mouth of each fish. The male should have the larger mouth and his second dorsal fin should be longer than the females. It is sort of difficult to tell the difference between the sexes, but I hope this helps.

Were these tank raised or wild caught? The wild caught don't do well and are frequently cyanide caught. Maybe you got a bad bunch. I never had any luck keeping these fish:(

[QUOTE][i]Originally posted by AlliCat0225 [/i]
[B]What you can try to do is look closely at the fins and mouth of each fish. The male should have the larger mouth and his second dorsal fin should be longer than the females. [/B][/QUOTE]

While those were both the original conjectures, neither has turned out to be true. Using those methods to sex BC will give you about a 50:50 chance of getting a male:female pair.

One method that I've found to be more successful than any other is to shop at a store that will get many of them in at once (tank-raised, of course). Just watch the tank for a few minutes, and you can usually find a couple that stay together more than the rest (or a couple of couples). At my old store in my old city, the guy who ran the saltwater section would pull out those pairs and put them in another tank as he discovered them.

Dave