Bangaii Cardinals (1 Viewer)

[Jaypilot]

Here is a little update on my little guys. They will be 3 weeks old on Sunday. Today I noticed that some of them are starting to get their first few spots. For the most part I think they are all eating cyclops and mysis. I am still feeding BBS only once a day to try to ween them off of it.

Today I would also like to announce the birth of 9 new baby cardinal. Yesterday the male spit out three, and at that point they were not quit free swimmers but as of this morning they were swimming around and then a few hours later the male spit out 6 more. Its hard to say if this is all of them or not because the males mouth is still a little extended but I think that will go down in the next day or so. This is a small brood but like I said from earlier post this pair is a vary young and small pair from petco so I didn't expect too much. I am going to let them settle down a bit but pics will be coming soon.

 

[Jaypilot]

I missed my Sunday update on my little guys because I was out of town. Being that I was out of town for a few days I decided I would conduct a little experiment that I unfortunately knew would result in the death of some if not all of my cardinals. So that we all could learn I figured I would post my findings here.

So as of Sunday my first batch was 1 month old and my second batch was 1 week old. My first batch I had my first death on Thursday as a result of aggression. Being that I had them in a small breeder box with 20 cardinal in there I new it was only a batter of time. Unfortunately for these little guys I didn't have time to go to the store to buy another breeder box before my trip. So I figured I would drop half of them in my display tank, which is a low flow system. This tank houses a black & White pair of clowns and also the mother and father cardinals. The father is holding again so I wasn't worried about them and I wasn't too worried about the clowns, I was more worried about the female cardinal. At first I seen no aggression anywhere and sure enough as I was walking out of the house I started to see the female chase down one of the cardinals, so I assumed by the time I got home the rest would have been part of her dinner.

As I suspected I lost all but one (unless the others are in hiding) of the cardinals that I let go in the main tank. As far as the rest that were in the breeder box I lost two more of those. I was gone for 3 days so I'm not sure if it had to do with lack of food or aggression.

As for my 1 week old little guys all 9 made it through the 3 days so far.

So my take from all this, is that one month is not nearly old enough for the display tank and secondly they are never old enough to be with mommy. My second take from this is that 3 days for fish past I would guess about 10 days old with out food is a little too long. Im not sure if I lost them because of aggression or lack of fat/protein, or a combination of both. For fish less then 10 days I would say you are ok for up to 3 days being that they still have a little of their fat reserve from the yolk sack. From my understanding after 10 days is when they really start to need the high fatty foods which is why we start to enrich the brine shrimp as soon as possible.

 

[rlpardue]

I'm so sorry man. That sucks; at least now we know about not putting them back in with the parents.

 

[Jaypilot]

Just wanted to update on my Cardinals. As of today my first batch is 5 weeks old (7 cardinals) and my second batch is only 2 weeks old (still all 9). Both batches are doing great.

Just yesterday I moved my first 7 to a 10g tank that has been cycling now for about 2 weeks with live rock, bio balls, and an old filter pad from my reef tank. Those fish have been in there now for about 24 hours and all are REALLY fat and eating a lot. I am hopping that because of their increased space that they may grow a little faster.

Finally today I caught my male from the first batch because he has been holding for 21 days now in my display tank. Last time he spit them at 18 days so I wanted to make sure I gave him 21 days this time. So unfortunately the male spit the babies again once I caught him, but fortunately they are much farther along then the first batch. They are not free swimming yet because they all still have a fairly large yolk sack. Judging by their size the male should have held them for at least another 2 days, and I expect them to be free swimmers and possible eating BBS at that time as well. So next time I will let him hold for 23 days.

I caught the male this time because its still a little bit of an experiment for me in seeing how long my males hold. Cardinals hold from 20-30 days and its kind of hard to judge how long your cardinal will hold. With that being said I caught the male today because I will be out of town for the next two days and I didn't want the male to spit in the display tank.

So as of right now the cardinal count is 7 five week old cardinal, 9 two week old cardinal and 28 one hour old cardinal. I kind of like all the cardinals coming along on Sundays it makes keeping track of them a little easier.

 

[Jaypilot]

Here is a pic of the newest additions to the cardinal world. Last count I think I had 33, they are all free swimming now after spending about 36 hours in the tumbler. So far at this point there are also no deaths to write about as well. So as long as I can stay in town long enough to raise these guys I think I will be ok.

I just moved the other 16 (9 were two weeks and 7 were 5 weeks old) to a dedicated grow out tank outside of my display tank. Right now they are all doing great but I do understand I will have to keep a close eye on them because at some point I will have some aggression and then I will have to come up with some other way of growing them out.

 

[Jaypilot]

Tank o cardinals. In this bad pic I was able to count about 20 but I believe that's only about half of the. Right now the oldest cardinals are 2months old. So far everyone is getting along great and they are all eating frozen Cyclops and frozen BBS.

I guess I need to stop using my phone or tablet to take pigs and just use my SLR.