What happened to the Banggai stickies?

[JellyTheory]

I saw a thread referring someone to check the sticky for raising banggai cardinal babies at the top of this forum. I don't see the sticky though. Am I not looking in the correct place?

Since I saw my Banggai cardinals doing the shakey mating dance two days ago, and my male stopped eating for the first time yesterday, I believe I have to prepare for my first set of little ones.


-Chris

[JellyTheory]

I'm basically looking for some links to any good Banggai baby raising pages. The few I had bookmarked back in 2002 are now all returning "404: page not found" errors. I searched the last 60 days in this forum and didn't see any really good threads with lots of info.

Thanks!

-Chris

[JellyTheory]

Anyone?

[ijneb]

You've got about 20 days untill you need to have the male seperated from the rest of the tank.

Between day 23-25 if the male doesnt spit the babies out, catch him in a net and expose him to air (quickly) and he should spit the babies out (if he is ready- mine held till day 30)

When he spits the babies out, put him in a refugium or something to feed him so they wont go at it again and end up with a starving male that wont hold.

After you have the babies, you need to have a supply of baby brine ship enriched with selcon or something similar, and feed the babies tank enough to have bb every 1" or so, to allow the babies to find them easily. Around day 10 start adding some frozen cyclopeez or ground krill to try and get them off live food.

Hope this helps some. I'm about 40 days ahead of you with my first attempt.

[JellyTheory]

ijneb - Thank you very much! I found the breeders registry link and was able to pull some info off of that. Where have you read most of your info? Any good threads on RC?

Thanks!

-Chris

[FMarini]

jelly -if you search for my name on google you'll fin a bunch of article on how to- for the banggais. We took the banggai sticky down whn EPARC.com decided to ditch the page w/ all the banggais articles. All the articles ar still out there, just scatterred

[JellyTheory]

Ok. Do you want me to host any of the info or links on my web-site?

Let me know.

-Chris

[FMarini]

Hi Chris- thanks for the offer. I'm all set w/ hosting the banggai info. I'm on my way to finalzing my own site w/ tons of fish breeding info.

[Undergrad]

Chris,
Scott Michael has an excellent write up on breeding and raising banggais in his book "Basslets, Dottybacks and Hawkfishes: Plus Seven More Aqarium Fish Families with Expert Captive Care Advice for the Marine Aquarist" or "Angelfishes & Butterflyfishes: Plus ten more Aquarium fish families with expert Captive Care Advice for the Marine Aquarist (Reef Fishes Series Book 3)"... I can't remember which one at the moment. Both are great books to have either way, though.

[JellyTheory]

Undergrad - Very cool. Thanks for the info.

I was looking at Brine Shrimp Direct's website and was going to purchase one of the 2L bottle set ups they have. Is this one of the better set ups available, or should I look elsewhere? Also, is one set up enough to keep the correct size brine shrimp in supply for feeding the babies? Or do I need to purchase more than one? Also, is raising the brine shrimp really messy or unusually smelly? Just trying to plan where in the house I'm going to set up the hatchery.


Thanks!

-Chris

[km133688]

tag

[Undergrad]

Chris,
Don't waste your money buying a brine shrimp hatchery. Setting up your own is so very easy to do.

All you need is a two liter soda bottle, an air pump, airline tubing, and a rigid piece of tubing that you can attach the airline tubing to (preferential but not required).

First cut about the bottom four inches of the 2 liter soda bottle off (in one straight cut). Screw on the lid of the soda bottle and turn it upside down. Put the upside down soda bottle into the bottom four inches you just cut off. Seal it off with tape. Fill with saltwater and eggs. Insert your air line or rigid tubing (works better with rigid tubing) into the very bottom of the upside down bottle (should touch the screw on cap) and turn on. And there you go, a cheap and effective brine shrimp hatchery. You'll want to make sure there is complete mixture of the eggs and that they are not accumulating anywhere in the bottle. If they are, you may need to increase the air flow or adjust the position of the tubing.

To collect the bbs, turn off the air pump, wait 10 minutes, suck the bbs from the bottom of the hatchery (near the cap) with a turkey baster, and filter through a baby brine shrimp net (you don't want to add the bbs water to your tanks!). I usually then resuspend the filtered bbs in about a cupful of tank water and feed as needed throughout the day.

You'll probably want to have two or three hatcheries and set them up one or two days apart. The garage or bathroom is usually the best place to set them up. The bubbling can be bit noisy and distracting to those people not used to it. HTH .

[km133688]

Undergrad, good description. I have been using just one of these for a while, they work great, and it was easy to make, just like you say.

[JellyTheory]

Undergrad - Thanks for the write up!

To everyone else, please let me know if this will work:

I bought two of the Lee's Breeders Fish Nets I plan on putting in an area in my refugium. I plan on catching the male from the 180 and putting him in one of the breeders on the 23rd day. After he releases all of the fry, I plan on moving him to the second breeder for 3 days to fatten him up again before moving him back into the main tank.

Questions:

A) Does this plan sound as if it will work?
B) Are the breeders large enough to raise the fry in? If so, for how long?
C) Because the nets allow water to pass through, and will isolate the fry, are these a good alternative to using a separate tank?
D) Will the male be ok in the Breeder net for few days while he releases the fry and is then fattened back up? I wouldn't put any other fish in a breeder net, but thought it would work with a single Banggai since they don't swim around a lot.

Please let me know if there are any inherent faults with my plan.

Thanks!

-Chris

[JellyTheory]

Anyone have some input?

Thanks!

-Chris

[ijneb]

The only thing I dont see working with the breeder nets is if the baby brine shrimp are smaller than the netting. Thats why most people use a small 2.5-5 gallon tank to grow them out untill they can eat frozen food, because hatching out enough baby brine to have one ever .5"-1" in the tank would be a task.

[JellyTheory]

Interesting idea about the baby brine being small enough to fit through the netting. I'm not sure exactly how small baby brine are, I should probably start a batch as a practice run to see how big they are. The space between the mesh nets is very small though.

Anyone other input from anyone would be greatly appreciated.

-Chris

[rsman]

they work fine, you can keep the density high and drip slowly new tank water into the baskets to increase water quality

they do however wear out faster than in FW, but you will get 6m to a year out of them, at $5 each its not bad.

[JellyTheory]

Here are a few pics for those following this thread.

First one is of the parents. This was taken on day 21 and shows the mom and dad. The dad is in the background.



The second one was taken this morning. The father let the batch go sometime last night. I have found and caught 7 babies so far. I'm really hoping to catch more if I can find them. Try to find the little guy in the picture! These little guys are sooo small!




-Chris

[JellyTheory]

For those following this thread. Another pic.

I got home from work last night to find a huge Turbo Snail (we call him "Monstro") had decided to crawl onto the breeders net that was holding the Banggai babies. His weighed enough to tilt the side of it over enough to submerge it. The Banggai were out and about. Here is a picture of three of them that decide to find a home in a real RBTA that has a GSM hosting in it.

-Chris

[JellyTheory]

Here is one more pic. The baby banggais are a little out of focus, but the GSM is in this picture too.

-Chris