Breeding Pterapogon Kauderni aka Banggai Cardinalfish, Part 3

Feeding

First Stage:

At birth, the babies will eat pretty much anything that’s small and moving. The easiest food source is brine nauplii (newly hatched brine shrimp). However, brine nauplii is only nutritious for the first 24 hours, after that, they loose their yolk sack and becomes pretty much worthless. You’ll need to hatch new brine shrimp daily. For brine nauplii older than 24 hours, I use Selcon to enrich it for nutrition. Just soak the older brine nauplii in Selcon 12 hours before feeding. For the best growth, feed the babies multiple times a day. You can even set up a drip system to drip brine nauplii into the nursery so that they constantly have food. A constant food source contributes to faster growth. Visit http://www.brineshrimpdirect.com for more information on culturing brine nauplii.

Second Stage:

After about a month, you can start adding frozen Cyclop-eeze to their diet. Banggais are notoriously picky eaters. Sometimes you may need to starve them a little to get them eating non-live foods. As you increase the amount of Cyclop-eeze, you can decrease the amount of brine nauplii.

Third Stage:

At about two months old, you’ll probably notice that the tiny foods aren’t enough to fill up the bigger Banggais. At this time, you can switch to smaller mysis shrimp. Brine shrimp aren’t nutritious enough to produce healthy fish. If at this point the Banggais have not switch to frozen foods, then you’ll need to buy live adult brine shrimp and enrich them with
Selcon to feed the Banggais, but it’s best that they eat frozen mysis shrimp as early as possible.

A trick I found to switch the Banggais to frozen foods is to associate them to the pipette as food, and also feed at a regular schedule. So for example, every day, at noon, they know the pipette will come into the tank to release brine nauplii. After they get used to this schedule, I would skip one or two meals, and return at noon the next day. At this point they’re so hungry, they just swallow whatever that comes out of the pipette. Do this a few times and they will eventually all convert.

Some videos of the fry:

Day 1 - http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3915883129331382745

Day 8 - http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=590001122888216397

Important Factors

These are some important things to keep in mind when breeding Banggais:

1. Environment

In order for a pair of Banggais to breed, they need to be happy, which means a good size tank (minimum 15 gallons) without fish that would bother them, and a good hiding spot. Adult Banggais are known to hang around corals such as anemones for protection. They also like caves. Feeding good quality foods also contributes to spawning. However, keep in mind that you will need to be able to get to the male Banggai when it comes time to capture him for the babies, so trying to do this in a full size reef tank would be a pain.

2. Resting

No, it doesn’t mean you. The male Banggai needs his rest after carrying eggs for over three weeks without anything to eat! The female will be ready to spawn while the male is carrying eggs and also after he releases his batch. Being a nice guy, the male Banggai would most likely take on another batch on a growling stomach. However, in this case, he will probably end up swallowing or spitting out this batch, or if he does keep it, you would only get a few babies. The prolonged effects of not allowing the male to rest between batches may result in an early death. This is the reason some breeders have multiple males to one female and just transfer the female to a different male after spawning. Otherwise, after scooping up the male for the babies, I recommend keeping him in a separate tank to fatten him up for at least two weeks before returning him back to the female.

3. Food

Constant nutritional food source helps the babies to grow faster, which means it’s better to switch them to frozen as early as possible since frozen mysis shrmip is much more nutritious than live brine shrimp. It is also cheaper and readily available. Feed multiple times a day with nutritious foods.

Credits

I learned a ton about Banggais and breeding them thanks to these people:

Dr. Alejandro A. Vagelli

• The Reproductive Biology and Early Ontogeny of the Mouthbrooding Banggai Cardinalfish, Pterapogon Kauderni (Perciformes, Apogonidae)
• Significant Increase in Survival of Captive-bred Juvenile Banggai Cardinalfish Pterapogon kauderni with an Essential Fatty Acid-Enriched Diet
• First Comprehensive Ecological Survey of the Banggai Cardinalfish, Pterapogon Kauderni
• Reproductive Ecology of Pterapogon kauderni, an Endemic Apogonid from Indonesia with Direct Development

Dr. Frank Marini

• http://www.breedersregistry.org/Articles/v4_i4_marini/marini.htm
• http://www.reefs.org/library/article/f_marini.html

Steve Hopkins, Harry Ako, Clyde Tamaru

• http://www.soest.hawaii.edu/seagrant/communication/pdf/Banggai%20Cardinalfish-Final.pdf

Keith Clarke

• http://www.reefs.org/library/talklog/k_clarke_102499.html

Coral Dynamics Inc.

• http://www.reefobsession.com/movies/The%20Dance.wmv
• http://www.reefobsession.com/movies/bangaii_2006.wmv
• http://www.reefobsession.com/movies/baby_bangaii_0001.wmv

Brineshrimpdirect.com