Ochre striped cardinal fish

anthony blake · Feb 1, 2024

Ochre striped cardinal fish

Hello fellow reefers, was wondering if anyone has experience with these guys, in particular does anyone have experience in establishing and determining a pair? Thank you to all who respond

vetteguy53081 · Feb 1, 2024

vetteguy53081 · Feb 1, 2024

anthony blake said:
Ochre striped cardinal fish

Hello fellow reefers, was wondering if anyone has experience with these guys, in particular does anyone have experience in establishing and determining a pair? Thank you to all who respond

I sold these at my LFS when they were available and are peaceful and easy to feed and eat all meaty foods

CO2TLEY · Feb 1, 2024

Reef Devils · Feb 1, 2024

anthony blake said:
Ochre striped cardinal fish

Hello fellow reefers, was wondering if anyone has experience with these guys, in particular does anyone have experience in establishing and determining a pair? Thank you to all who respond

Welcome!

vaguelyreeflike · Feb 1, 2024

Unfortunately Cardinals of any species are famously difficult to sex, the easiest I’ve found is Banggai cardinals as males have the tiniest differences from females in the lower jaw shape and small bumps around the anus that the female lacks.

The best way to find established pairs of any fish that’s hard to sex is to get a group of 5, and let them establish a pair and become aggressive to the others. Separate the others when you see them getting chased up into corners or just constantly hiding, and through process of elimination you usually have a pair left that will tolerate eachother’s company.

I had a group of 5 red spot cardinals in a 20gal at work, 2 sold and the remaining 3 turned out to be 2 females and 1 male, the male became apparent when he began to show he was holding clutches of eggs in his mouth and I noticed he had a slightly deeper/wider bottom jaw than the others when not holding eggs.
He would let the females stick close by, but if they became too interested in what he was holding he would chase them away.
They also will not eat for the entire holding period, so make sure to get them nice and chunky prior to breeding.

OctaviusBrine · Feb 1, 2024

Welcome to the reef!

shakacuz · Feb 2, 2024

welcome aboard the r2r board! hello from PA!

Fish Styx · Feb 2, 2024

Greetings and welcome to the reef!

FrugalReefer · Feb 2, 2024

Welcome to R2R!!!

zheka757 · Feb 2, 2024

Welcome to R2R!

jsker · Feb 2, 2024

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ISpeakForTheSeas · Feb 2, 2024

anthony blake said:
Ochre striped cardinal fish

Hello fellow reefers, was wondering if anyone has experience with these guys, in particular does anyone have experience in establishing and determining a pair?

Welcome to Reef2Reef!

I know one person who got a pair that bred, but - being in the UK - they weren't able to get small pods to use to try and rear the young.

For pairing them, adding them all and seeing if a pair forms seems to work (Edit: to add, this method doesn't generally work well with more aggressive fish, but it seems to work fine for at least some cardinals); I'm not aware of a method for sexing them, but you can also put them in breeder boxes next to each other (so they can see and smell the chemicals of the others without interacting directly) for a few days and see if a pair visibly forms (this is generally a better method than just adding them to the tank and hoping a pair forms, but it may be tricky with unsexed fish).

If you want to try rearing the larvae I've got some info that may help, but for a simple overview:

-You need a larval rearing tank; a little tank with an air stone for flow is generally all that's needed, possibly with a decent light dependent on the species.

-You need larval food cultures; in this case, that means small copepods like Parvocalanus crassirostris or similar.

-You need some small sieves/screens (like 45-50 microns or so) to feed only the tiniest pods at first, and you'll need to move up sizes to allow bigger pods as the fish grow. Eventually, you can transition them to larger foods like BBS and/or small pellets (like TDO Chromaboost or Otohime pellets).

It's definitely work to do, but attempting (succeeding can be a different story) to rear the larvae isn't too complicated if you can maintain the feed cultures (pods/rots/BBS and phyto).