Bangaii Cardinal Early Spawning Question

[Turtilinni]

Hi there, my name is Jasper and I have run into a breeding question that I thought the fine folk here on Reef2Reef could help me with. First time breeder here, tank specs are on my profile but I do have two Bangaii Cardinals in the tank now that are the subject of this post. I have a Male Bangaii Cardinalfish holding their fertilized eggs in his mouth now for about ten to fifteen days. In preparation for his birth, I have gotten ocean plankton, cyclops, and other foods for the babies, along with a breeder box for when the babies are born. Starting yesterday the dad was looking very full in his mouth so I thought to put him in the breeder box for nightfall, hoping to catch the new babies before they disappear into my largish tank. Well, maybe I stressed him out too much and he popped a couple, maybe he thought they were ready, I am really not sure. Four unformed egg babies are now at the bottom of the breeder box each with two tiny eyes looking around, so I know they are still alive. Dad still has more eggs in his mouth guessing by the size of his mouth. Now from what I understood, Bangaii cardinals released the fertilized eggs once they were fully grown and had little fins and stripes. These are eggs with eyes, just barely starting to go from cream white to the shinier fish scale white. Two eyes each, one is somewhat peeled out of the egg but the others are not moving other than their eyes.

Now I am curious as to what is going on here, hopefully, someone here can enlighten me on that but I am assuming this is too early and they are not supposed to be out of the father's mouth at this time. My real question that I need people's help on, is how to proceed. Do I allow the father fish access to the bottom of the breeder box to pick back up the eggs he dropped? Can he do that? Is there value in it? Are the eggs outside his mouth screwed now or is there any way to take care of them? I am not sure where to go past this now having the father separate from his four eggs, let me know what you think I should do. Sorry for the bad quality photos, morning tank lights, I made that terrible diagram to try and show what is going on in the photos lol. Let me know if you have any questions, and hopefully, you will all have some advice!

 

[Daniel@R2R]

Bumping this up for you guys who know about breeding. @Peace River @Jay Hemdal @vetteguy53081 any of you guys have an answer that could help?

 

[vetteguy53081]

Hi there, my name is Jasper and I have run into a breeding question that I thought the fine folk here on Reef2Reef could help me with. First time breeder here, tank specs are on my profile but I do have two Bangaii Cardinals in the tank now that are the subject of this post. I have a Male Bangaii Cardinalfish holding their fertilized eggs in his mouth now for about ten to fifteen days. In preparation for his birth, I have gotten ocean plankton, cyclops, and other foods for the babies, along with a breeder box for when the babies are born. Starting yesterday the dad was looking very full in his mouth so I thought to put him in the breeder box for nightfall, hoping to catch the new babies before they disappear into my largish tank. Well, maybe I stressed him out too much and he popped a couple, maybe he thought they were ready, I am really not sure. Four unformed egg babies are now at the bottom of the breeder box each with two tiny eyes looking around, so I know they are still alive. Dad still has more eggs in his mouth guessing by the size of his mouth. Now from what I understood, Bangaii cardinals released the fertilized eggs once they were fully grown and had little fins and stripes. These are eggs with eyes, just barely starting to go from cream white to the shinier fish scale white. Two eyes each, one is somewhat peeled out of the egg but the others are not moving other than their eyes.

Now I am curious as to what is going on here, hopefully, someone here can enlighten me on that but I am assuming this is too early and they are not supposed to be out of the father's mouth at this time. My real question that I need people's help on, is how to proceed. Do I allow the father fish access to the bottom of the breeder box to pick back up the eggs he dropped? Can he do that? Is there value in it? Are the eggs outside his mouth screwed now or is there any way to take care of them? I am not sure where to go past this now having the father separate from his four eggs, let me know what you think I should do. Sorry for the bad quality photos, morning tank lights, I made that terrible diagram to try and show what is going on in the photos lol. Let me know if you have any questions, and hopefully, you will all have some advice!

Assure ph and temperature (77--81.) are optimum and the male will disburse the eggs over 48 hours. Have decor for the babies to hide in such as artificial urchins which are best and FIRST FOODS AFTER 48 HRS OF HATCH ARE ROTIFIERS AND TIGGER PODS.

 

[Jay Hemdal]

Hi there, my name is Jasper and I have run into a breeding question that I thought the fine folk here on Reef2Reef could help me with. First time breeder here, tank specs are on my profile but I do have two Bangaii Cardinals in the tank now that are the subject of this post. I have a Male Bangaii Cardinalfish holding their fertilized eggs in his mouth now for about ten to fifteen days. In preparation for his birth, I have gotten ocean plankton, cyclops, and other foods for the babies, along with a breeder box for when the babies are born. Starting yesterday the dad was looking very full in his mouth so I thought to put him in the breeder box for nightfall, hoping to catch the new babies before they disappear into my largish tank. Well, maybe I stressed him out too much and he popped a couple, maybe he thought they were ready, I am really not sure. Four unformed egg babies are now at the bottom of the breeder box each with two tiny eyes looking around, so I know they are still alive. Dad still has more eggs in his mouth guessing by the size of his mouth. Now from what I understood, Bangaii cardinals released the fertilized eggs once they were fully grown and had little fins and stripes. These are eggs with eyes, just barely starting to go from cream white to the shinier fish scale white. Two eyes each, one is somewhat peeled out of the egg but the others are not moving other than their eyes.

Now I am curious as to what is going on here, hopefully, someone here can enlighten me on that but I am assuming this is too early and they are not supposed to be out of the father's mouth at this time. My real question that I need people's help on, is how to proceed. Do I allow the father fish access to the bottom of the breeder box to pick back up the eggs he dropped? Can he do that? Is there value in it? Are the eggs outside his mouth screwed now or is there any way to take care of them? I am not sure where to go past this now having the father separate from his four eggs, let me know what you think I should do. Sorry for the bad quality photos, morning tank lights, I made that terrible diagram to try and show what is going on in the photos lol. Let me know if you have any questions, and hopefully, you will all have some advice!

I’ve used “egg tumblers” to incubate eggs and yolk sac stage fry from African cichlids - they are very similar in size to Bangaii eggs/fry. You can get designs for egg tumblers online. Easiest might be a hanging net with the eggs on the bottom and a gentle boil of air bubbles hitting the net below to keep the eggs turning.

To be honest, I would not try to manipulate the male at this point - it may spit more babies. You don’t want to risk the whole clutch to save these for fish.

 

[DaJMasta]

Some spit out early is normal, especially if he hasn't done this much before. A sign the egg is dead is if it appears cloudy, if it's still clear, then fertilized and alive. Make sure there is some very gentle water movement in there, or get an egg tumbler (definitely on very low) and they should manage if they were going to. He basically holds the eggs, keeps water over them, and houses them briefly after hatching, so they can absolutely hatch and grow if he spits them out.

Mine usually started hatching around day 19, so you may have some time before they do, and that earliest stage looks like an egg with stubby little fins - he'll normally hold them until their swim bladder is working and they can eat, so these early stragglers may spend a lot of time at the bottom of the tank and not eat anything, but this is normal.

One of my early hatchlings:

Then later:

And both still 'premature' and without a working digestive system or swim bladder.


FWIW, they absolutely don't need urchins or fake urchins. He won't try to eat any for a bit (maybe 12 hours) after they hatch, so don't disturb him (big movements could batter the babies) and get him out when everything has been spit out (his behavior should change too), and then start feeding them as heavily as you can. Mine usually would gladly take small frozen food in week 2, but live foods are the best for acceptance and very early on. Copepods are great, but newly hatched artemia nauplii can help get the quantity of food up too.

 

[Turtilinni]

Bumping this up for you guys who know about breeding. @Peace River @Jay Hemdal @vetteguy53081 any of you guys have an answer that could help?

I've got to thank you first, I went to bed last night with no replies a little bit sad that I may not get an answer, but woke up to this which appears to have gotten some great responses to my post. Thank you so much for the bump, these replies have been amazing!

 

[Turtilinni]

I’ve used “egg tumblers” to incubate eggs and yolk sac stage fry from African cichlids - they are very similar in size to Bangaii eggs/fry. You can get designs for egg tumblers online. Easiest might be a hanging net with the eggs on the bottom and a gentle boil of air bubbles hitting the net below to keep the eggs turning.

To be honest, I would not try to manipulate the male at this point - it may spit more babies. You don’t want to risk the whole clutch to save these for fish.

This is an incredibly useful recommendation, I have set up the hanging net egg tumbler as you described. I really appreciate the design, this is a great alternative until I can get an actual egg tumbler for the future, plus it uses aquarium equipment I already own.

 

[Turtilinni]

Some spit out early is normal, especially if he hasn't done this much before. A sign the egg is dead is if it appears cloudy, if it's still clear, then fertilized and alive. Make sure there is some very gentle water movement in there, or get an egg tumbler (definitely on very low) and they should manage if they were going to. He basically holds the eggs, keeps water over them, and houses them briefly after hatching, so they can absolutely hatch and grow if he spits them out.

Mine usually started hatching around day 19, so you may have some time before they do, and that earliest stage looks like an egg with stubby little fins - he'll normally hold them until their swim bladder is working and they can eat, so these early stragglers may spend a lot of time at the bottom of the tank and not eat anything, but this is normal.

One of my early hatchlings:

Then later:

And both still 'premature' and without a working digestive system or swim bladder.


FWIW, they absolutely don't need urchins or fake urchins. He won't try to eat any for a bit (maybe 12 hours) after they hatch, so don't disturb him (big movements could batter the babies) and get him out when everything has been spit out (his behavior should change too), and then start feeding them as heavily as you can. Mine usually would gladly take small frozen food in week 2, but live foods are the best for acceptance and very early on. Copepods are great, but newly hatched artemia nauplii can help get the quantity of food up too

This is good information. First time pregnant, so good to know it can happen. Last night he spat up 13 eggs, still appears to be holding more. 12 Babies still have eyes and are clear, one is white and pale as you described. One also seemingly has a tiny dot of redish blood on it, idk what that is about but it is wriggling. They appear to be trying to leave the white parts of the egg but none have escaped yet. Since the father isn't eating food still I am going to put him back in the breeder box tonight in case he lets more eggs out, and in the meantime with the eggs I have I am setting them up in the hanging net suggestion by Jay Hemdall. I will keep an eye on them for today, but as of right now they're all mostly unhatched, just looking around with those tiny eyes in the eggs.

 

[Peace River]

When the male has the eggs in his mouth he is moving them around which accomplishes several things including reducing the chance of fungus. As Jay alluded to, this is very similar to some freshwater fish that I have worked with such as mouth brooding cichlids, certain mouth brooding wild bettas, and more. When I have focused on Banggai's in the past, I typically was keeping them in species-specific 10-gallon tanks so it was a matter of removing the female when the male started holding and then removing the male once the fry hatched and were spit out. A resource that I recommend if you plan to continue to work with this neat species of fish is the book "Bangaii Cardinalfish: A guide to captive care, breeding, and natural history" by Talbot et al. Good luck!