Bangaii Breeding Journal

[Myka]

I figured some of you may be interested in a journal, as well I'd like to keep a record, and what better place?!

Here's ma and pa:


So on Jan 7th I stripped the male of the fry. He had been carrying them for approximately 25 days. I didn't have an egg tumbler, so I had to wait for them to hatch in his mouth before stripping him. When I caught him in the net, he spat them all out so I didn't even have to strip him. I transfered the babies into a 10g tank, and put them into one of those "net breeders". I've been hatching brine shrimp for them that I soak in Selcon before feeding.

Day 1:


There were 14 babies, but one got squished in the strip. It was obvious within the first couple days that there were two strong babies, and all the others were runts of some sort to differing degrees. The runts just layed around on the bottom of the net and jerked around. I culled four or five that looked hopeless. Four or five died on their own accord so far. I now have five. Two look good and strong, one looks ok, and two look poor and rest on the bottom of the net most of the time and can't swim very well. The strong ones are almost twice the size of the other three, are quick swimmers, and can keep themselves suspended in the water at all times. I should probably cull the three runts, but I'm waiting to see how they turn out. I keep the tank loaded with BBS so the babies can eat anytime they're hungry. Their bellies are always full when I look at them. I've started feeding FD Cyclopeeze, but it dirties the water much quicker...not sure what to do about that.

You can see the two strong babies and the one ok baby (the really blurry one):


I'd like to know why there are so many "runts" in this batch. There is a possibility that the parents are siblings...I wonder if that may be it. I'll test them out for another few batches and see how they turn out. Hopefully this next one the male is brooding will turn out better.

Once the male was stripped I fed them heavily twice a day for a week with Piscine brand frozen mysis shrimp soaked in 3-4 drops of Selcon and 1 drop of Garlic Extreme. After the first week the male had regained most of his weight, and I dropped to my usual once a day light feeding of mysis (still with Selcon and Garlic), occasionally feeding Formula One flake, but the Bangaii's don't eat the flake much. The male ate 20 minutes after spitting the fry, although he was awkward eating and sometimes ran into the food forgetting to open his mouth. LOL.

The female started fattening up with eggs only 3 days after stripping the male. This morning the male's mouth was full of eggs once more! I couldn't believe it was only 12 days after stripping the last batch!!! I'm going to make an egg tumbler asap, and strip him as soon as it's built. I'm hoping that will be tomorrow.

I have to do a waterchange on the tanks tomorrow as the 10g has 10ppm nitrates. I need to set that tank up better for the babies as well, so it's easier to access the filter media since the filter is on the back of the tank, and the tank is on the bottom part of a metal stand below a 55g. It just has an AquaClear 100 on it that just has a sponge in it. I'm going to add carbon tomorrow and a second sponge, so I can toss out a sponge a week to keep the nitrates down. I'm wondering if there's a way to clean out the sponges well enough so I can re-use them withouth them becoming nitrate factories...? Bleach them maybe?