Bangaii Cardinals (1 Viewer)

[rlpardue]

I'm unable to watch the video from my office computer, but I'll see it when I get home. Enrichment is still a puzzle for me. I haven't bothered to enrich my BBS very often, although I do own some Selcon and enrich whenever I happen to have a batch of BBS which is older than I usually keep them. I believe BBS don't have a working digestive tract for some time, but I'm not sure how long it takes them to reach 'instar 2', when they obtain that ability. (OK, I just spent 10 mins looking up the answer) In the link I'll post below, Matt Pederson seems to suggest adding Selcon 6 hours post-hatch and harvesting the BBS 14-16 hours post-hatch. The problem I usually run into is that I feed one 2-liter-bottle-batch of BBS to the fry per day (at 7pm or so). I am 99% sure this is not optimal, but I haven't had any deaths since the first week, knock on wood. I imagine my fry might be larger by now if I'd been enriching. I'll start doing so now I think, although it may require the introduction of a 3rd 2-liter bottle into my food chain

How do I enrich baby brine shrimp to feed my baby clowns? | Features | Practical Fishkeeping

 

[Jaypilot]

Thanks mike for that video. I spent too much on my hatchery kit, so I think I will be doing it that way on my next kit. I thought you would want to drill the cap and then silicon the airline in it but the rigid airline seems to work just as good.

 

[Jaypilot]

Mike,,,
Sorry for the second post. but what do you do as far as enrichment of your BBS.

Thanks

 

[mike13oy]

Mike,,,
Sorry for the second post. but what do you do as far as enrichment of your BBS.

Thanks

I either use a coffee filter or rotifers sieve to catch bbs out of the old hatchery then on another new diy hatchery, i add new salt mix water or tank water. Once the water is drain from the coffee filter/sieve, I place bbs in the new hatchery and add rotigrow plus to enrich them.

 

[Jaypilot]

I either use a coffee filter or rotifers sieve to catch bbs out of the old hatchery then on another new diy hatchery, i add new salt mix water or tank water. Once the water is drain from the coffee filter/sieve, I place bbs in the new hatchery and add rotigrow plus to enrich them.

Right now I plan on enriching with Kent's Zoecon witch has a lot of the fats and some of the vitamins needed but what it doesn't have is any of the algae. Do you know if there is somewhere in Houston that has anything similar too rotigrow plus.

 

[rlpardue]

Woah cool, I didn't know roti-grow would work for BBS.

Jay, Donnie at CP can order you some roti-grow. Selcon is nice b/c it's easy and contains HUFAs. Algae is a plus. I never thought about using a coffee filter. I've been using a brine shrimp net, which has holes that are a little too big I think.

 

[mike13oy]

Woah cool, I didn't know roti-grow would work for BBS.

Jay, Donnie at CP can order you some roti-grow. Selcon is nice b/c it's easy and contains HUFAs. Algae is a plus. I never thought about using a coffee filter. I've been using a brine shrimp net, which has holes that are a little too big I think.

Rotigrow is food for BBS so If u ever want to raise BBS, use it. I raised bbs with it to adult size in the past.
Donnie at CP orders rotigrow for me too.

 

[Jaypilot]

No new updates at this point except I am on day 13 now of the male holding. His mouth is still large and extended but no more then it was on day one, so I'm guess the eggs have not hatched yet but Im sure they are getting close

 

[rlpardue]

He'll carry them to term this time I bet. I put some RotiGrow and Selcon into my BBS today, I figure 12 hours is too short a time for a culture to crash? By the way, I think I may have posted earlier that the male spits babies at day 25. I've been reading some threads on RC and they report that it's day 20-21 or so. I don't know if my male maybe holds longer than the usual term. Maybe he just wants to show off

EDIT- I just found a guy saying he catches the male somewhere b/t 21 and 25 days.

 

[Jaypilot]

He'll carry them to term this time I bet. I put some RotiGrow and Selcon into my BBS today, I figure 12 hours is too short a time for a culture to crash? By the way, I think I may have posted earlier that the male spits babies at day 25. I've been reading some threads on RC and they report that it's day 20-21 or so. I don't know if my male maybe holds longer than the usual term. Maybe he just wants to show off

EDIT- I just found a guy saying he catches the male somewhere b/t 21 and 25 days.

Thats interesting. What is your water tempurate? I know for most fish the warmer the temp the faster the eggs will hatch and possible the less time the male will hold the eggs. My water temp is at 82f

 

[TiAg]

This is a really interesting thread. I can't wait for my wife to read it and set up a BBS hatchery in the kitchen. It'll be fun keeping the cats out of it!

 

[rlpardue]

Thats interesting. What is your water tempurate? I know for most fish the warmer the temp the faster the eggs will hatch and possible the less time the male will hold the eggs. My water temp is at 82f

My water is indeed on the cooler side. My temp swings between ~75.5 to 79.5 (this is the extreme range though- usually it's b/t 76 and 79). I hadn't thought about that. Snag them babies early then!

 

[rlpardue]

This is a really interesting thread. I can't wait for my wife to read it and set up a BBS hatchery in the kitchen. It'll be fun keeping the cats out of it!

Lol, my wife is not particularly fond of the bubbling 2-liters on the kitchen counter, especially when company is over! Guest: "So, umm, what is that?" Me: "Oh, that's err zooplankton...." Lol.

This week I found out that adding phytoplankton (the frozen Roti-Grow stuff) does add a slightly noticeable odor to the culture... I wish I had an outlet in the "fish closet".

I'm beginning to get worried about my male. He seems like he hasn't eaten in a long, long time. I was planning on not catching him this term since he carried the last batch all the way. I thought he'd eat the babies, but it looks like he ate all but a couple of them and now won't spit those ones out. I might catch him, strip the babies and try to get him eating.

Jay, how's yo daddy lookin?

 

[Jaypilot]

My daddy believe it or not still looks vary good, He still seems to have a fair amount of meet on his bones so I'm still hopeful that my cardinal will hold. Today is day 15, and im still not sure which day I plan to catch the male but when ever I try I will have some brine shrimp hatching the day before. His mouth did seem to shrink a little from day 12-13 so I do think he consumed a few but I guess time will only tell how many I am left with.

 

[LSUFireGal]

I feel like a dork bc I am so excited about that.

 

[Jaypilot]

Well I was cleaning my fish tank with morning and I must have startled my male cardinal. I believe today was 18 or 19 but either way he spit the eggs. I was able to siphon out the clump of eggs and now they are tumbling. The last time I tried to tumble the eggs they were only a few days old so I lost them all. This time they all have eyes and nice yolk sacs and all seem to be wiggling.

I read on one of the breeding forums that between 15-18 the eggs should not be in a clump and if they are they will get fungus on them. With that being said I tried to break up the clump of eggs a little and as of right now I have 12 little wigglers going up and down in the tumbler. The remaining eggs in the clump seem to be more eggs then wigglers which I think is the reason why they are a little tougher to remove from the clump.

Now I plan to tumble these guys for about a week and if all goes well I will put them in a breeding net inside of the parent tank and start brine shrimp then.

Still a long road ahead of us... wish me luck

 

[Jaypilot]

This is pretty cool. It has only been about 6 hours or so in the tumbler and I can already see signs of growth that I did not see this morning. First off the clump turned out to be pretty much unhatched eggs. Once the cardinals hatched from the eggs they broke away from the clump of eggs. Its extremely hard to see the actual shell because its pretty much translucent. The only way you can tell if they are still in the shell of the egg or not is by looking at their shape. If they are still in a ball with eyes looking out then they are still in the egg. If their tail is out and their yoke sake hanging then they hatched. As of right now I think I only have about 4 or 5 that have not hatched yet. Once they all hatch it seems like they will leave behind a small clump of what was the egg shells that were all attached together.

The other cool thing that I noticed is this morning when I siphoned the eggs/wigglers they were all translucent with zero signs of color. But this afternoon when I checked on them I started to see spots and I was getting worried that they were starting to get a fungus. After a few more hours the spots began to turn into lines. As of right now it looks like they are starting to develop their first and maybe even second black lines.

But I have to say the coolest thing that I was able to notice today was their little heart beat. At first I thought it was a little red thing hanging from the top of their yoke sack, after closer inspection I noticed they all had the same thing in the same spot. After even close inspection I realized it was actually expanding and contracting and then it hit me that it was actually their heart beating.

So even though I was pretty upset about the male spitting the eggs early because of my cleaning I have actually learned a lot. So even if I kill them all I think there is a lot gained from this and if I am able to keep them a live in the tumbler I have learned something there as well.

As of now I do have a batch of brine shrimp going because I really don't know how long they eat off their yoke sack after they have hatched. Even if the brine shrimp arent used for the cardinals I have a bunch of other fish both fresh and salt that would like the enriched brine.

 

[Jaypilot]

Lets see if I can post a pic from this morning.

 

[TiAg]

Really cool Jay!

 

[Jaypilot]

Day two and my tumbler still seems to be working. I don't have any dead ones yet, and all seem to be wiggling a littler stronger. I'm a little worried though, the mother cardinal is already trying to hook up with the father again and its only been a day. I hope I can fatten him up in time.