Acropora -

Its one of my favorite sayings and so true when you apply it to this hobby! How many times have you heard ... " only if I had ..." I like to be lucky so I try to stay prepared!

I understand what you are all saying about being hooked on this --It seems like the bigger the challange the more addicting it is to over come the obstacles

Do any of you sell any of your offspring? And if you do are you able to make anything substantial off of doing so.

It just seems like your all brilliant and didicated and if there were more of you we wouldn't be killing our oceans like we are!

I breed seahorses so I love a good challange!

I wanted to jump in and mention -getting rich off of selling any fish, nevermind banggais. While you will get some money for these fish, in very small batches the chances of breaking even are slim.

Please don't let this discourage you, just understand that trading your offspring, or selling them to an LFS will bring you the best feeling in the world. Its even better if you can cover your costs thru store credit or in a swap for new broodstock or equipment, thats just as perfect.

For prespective, a wild caught banggais comes in around 3.00-5.00 US. Pretty cheap.
After all costs are figured in, a captive raised banggai will come in anywhere from 18-25/fish. I know a large commercial marine aquaculture facility are breeding banggais but their price is between 15-18/ea. The prices havn't gotten competative w/ WC fish yet. Also a new Asian-produced banggai has hit the market w/ a price around 15.00/ea. So for a home breeder try to get between 8-10/fish, once your numbers increase and you can produce a few hundred every month, then you charge the big bucks
Whats the old joke in marine aquaculture. "How do you make a million dollars in aquaculture"?---Start off w/ 2 million

[QUOTE]"How do you make a million dollars in aquaculture"?---Start off w/ 2 million[/QUOTE]

Great thread! keep it going!

Love that quote!!

So true and yes I have heard that quote before - its a great one!

I for one am begining to only purchase " home grown " fish. macro, coral etc... when available... even if it cost more.

As far as the LSF go our local one is recieveing more and more request for captive bred animals. They have less disease and eat frozen foods better and people are starting to see it. Of course there will always be those who want it cheap ... but look what people are willing to pay for good lines of pure bred dogs - OUT OF CONTROL!!!

Seacraze--
i fully agree w/ you on the purebred dog thing. However, its not the case w/ fish. WE united states folks have had plentiful cheap fish for years. So we have a terrible mind set that cheap is better. While the few thousand folks on RC potentially understand why its worth paying more for CB/CR critters, the other 1.8million folks do not.
I can tell yuo w/o hesitation, if you put a 12.99 WC banggai next to a 29.00 CB banggai the WC fish will sell out everytime and people will complain about why the other fish is 3 times more.

Now if we were in Japan it would be different, their mindset is different and they have become accustom to paying top dollar for their fish.

I have been hammering this point going on 10yrs CB is the way, and its slowly making progress
frank

Keep hammering away at it - and I will join you in making the noise!

So what do we charge for our tank raised Bangaiis when they are still small? The last few I sold I charged 5 bucks when they were like 15 days old and 8 bucks when they were like 20 days old and eating frozen baby brine. Is that a fair price or should I charge less or more? I dont have any cost in them really just some time. I bought a vial of those cheap eggs from the LFS and I also bought a 3.50 pack of frozen baby brine.

Never Less than they will pay... this I know for sure!

Sell for the highest price that will leave you with 0 babies at the end of the month.

rcypert--
as mentioned above sell for whatever you can get for them.
15 days old banggais are too young, were they weaned and regularly eating prepared foods? at that size they just won't do wellin a large aquarium (as they are food) or w/ alot of fast tankmates, even 20 days still too small. I've seen commercial firms sell their banggais around 30-45 days. When the fish are large enough to competeyet still sexually immature (ie not infighting)

However, if you really can get money for 20 days old fish- power to you.
I can tell you around here, most people get between 5-8 for their captive bred banggais

How old are they before they start breeding ?

IME they are sexually mature by 6months.
However in the home aquarium, the presence of dominant males will supress reproduction in other males, so you gotta segregate them. In the wild, Dr vagelli has isolated mature oocytes in 4 month old females (IIRC)

I have to admit I am facinated and so impressed at how determined and knowledgable all of you are, its great to be able to learn like this -

this is my most popular thread ever! sweet!

Update: last night (christmas day evening!) my male release 31 new baby bangaii cardinals which are now in a brand new 10 gallon tank with a homemade sponge filter and a fake urchin. They're eating bbs and seem to be just as healthy as the last batch. I was amazed when i caught them, b/c I didnt realize how much my first batch had grown! They're about 1/6th the size at least! Another excellent development is that I have been setup with a local marine wholesaler who has said that he will take as many bangaii's as i can produce!!! awesome!

here's a pic of bangaii cardinal fry annex #2, located in my new fishroom ;)

[IMG]http://reefcentral.com/gallery/data/500/63692Untitled-1.jpg[/IMG]

zoom in of the urchin:

[IMG]http://reefcentral.com/gallery/data/500/63692Untitled-2.jpg[/IMG]

They are so cute, do they stay hidden most of the time?

and congrats on the wholesaler!

If I could only capture my pair from my large tank and seperate them I would be set. As long as they are happy I stick with my clownfish. Great thread and keep up the great work.

-Ian

this thread is great...cant wait for more updates...:)

X4, or whatever where at... excellent thread!! Very inspiring to go through with it myself. My buddy and I are getting started on breeding, where going to breed ocelaris(sp?) clowns and bangaii's.
Anyone know of some good breeding books with this info for a quick look up guide?
Also, acropora, since you are having great success, I have a couple ?s for you. what size tank is the breeding pair in?
are you going to completely grow the fry in the 10 gal until they are size? and when trying to find a pair or 2, would you reccomend buying 4-6 fish and let them find there mates?
o yea, should I worry about imbreeding them? instead of buying all "horn dogs" from same LFS, buy all from different ones?

ok good book for clown breeding (i got it for xmas) is called Conditioning, spawning and rearing of fish with emphasis on marine clownfish by Hoff.

My breeding pair is in a full mixed reef 72 gallon. The fry will definately be moved from the 10 gallon into 40 gallon grow out tanks when agression starts.

I would definitely not recommend inbreeding. As crappy as it is, i recommend getting wild caught bangaii's or to do what you said, get from a variety of sources. That way they're genetically diverse. As i mentioned above the best method (which worked again for me today when i bought my second pair) is to put a bunch of medium sized bangaii's in a tank (be it 5 or 20 bangaii's) and wait for pairs to move off from the group. Then scoop and separate. This doesnt take long, pairs will start moving off in a few hours if they're the right age.

Currently--- the best book on marine fish breeding is
Matt Wittenrich "Complete illustrated guide to Marine Fish breeding. (Microcosom/TFH) you can find it at Amazon.com

He covers, clowns, gobies, blennys, cardinals, angels and a whole bunch more, its quite outstanding.

If you want a clownfish species book, Joyce wilkersons book- Clownfish, covers every aspect of clownfish breeding in a non technical way.

Frank Hoffs book above is also excellent, but its more of his journal when he started a clownfish breeding facility back in the day, plus his expertise is in microcultures which I feel is the strong part of the book

weaning problems
 

yo...

ok so my first batch of bangaii cardinals are on day 34 or 35 and they are still utterly refusing everything but live baby brine shrimp. I've tried frozen baby brine and this week i tried frozen cyclopeze twice, after starving them for 36 hours each time, and they didnt take it. So about 25 mins ago i broke down and fed them a very large meal of fresh live bbs. So...how the heck does one go about actually doing this? I need to start getting them a more varied diet so i can get these things up to retail size, so i can get them out, and make room for batch #3(which i beleive will come soon as the parents are doing the dance again)...

ok nm i missed FMarini's earlier post about mixing bbs with shaved...is this shaved with a chees grater or something finer?