Bangaii Breeding Journal

[Myka]

Nothing overly interesting going on...

The runt Bangaii's are starting to swim around more, but are still way smaller than the others.

The eggs in my tumbler went from sinking to floating a few days ago. Not sure why. Now they aren't "tumbling" they are all pushed up against the top screen. I hope that will be ok. They seem to be growing. I am wondering about light though. The ones one the top of the ball of eggs are whitish, and the ones at the bottom of the clump are pink/orange. I'm wondering if the light is causing them to go white...I don't think they'd normally get light in the mouth of the male. None of the eggs seem to be dead...maybe I'm naive though. lol

[fishmaster]

Originally Posted by Myka

Nothing overly interesting going on...

The runt Bangaii's are starting to swim around more, but are still way smaller than the others.

The eggs in my tumbler went from sinking to floating a few days ago. Not sure why. Now they aren't "tumbling" they are all pushed up against the top screen. I hope that will be ok. They seem to be growing. I am wondering about light though. The ones one the top of the ball of eggs are whitish, and the ones at the bottom of the clump are pink/orange. I'm wondering if the light is causing them to go white...I don't think they'd normally get light in the mouth of the male. None of the eggs seem to be dead...maybe I'm naive though. lol

I don't know much about these fish or their eggs. I did however do some work in a small salmon hatchery years back. One of the critical daily duties was "dead picking". You would pick out any eggs starting to cloud or turn white. Whitening eggs are generally a sign of fungal infection. If they are infected, they will die or are already dying. If this is the case, you will need to remove them or the fungus will spread to the live ones. My clownfish will constantly pick at their eggs and pick off any that die. Just my 2 cents....

[Myka]

Originally Posted by fishmaster

I don't know much about these fish or their eggs. I did however do some work in a small salmon hatchery years back. One of the critical daily duties was "dead picking". You would pick out any eggs starting to cloud or turn white. Whitening eggs are generally a sign of fungal infection. If they are infected, they will die or are already dying. If this is the case, you will need to remove them or the fungus will spread to the live ones. My clownfish will constantly pick at their eggs and pick off any that die. Just my 2 cents....

Ya, this is what I thought too, but these eggs still seemed to be developing normally. I just took a closer look, and it seems like the white ones are actually disintegrating, so I think you are right. I'm gonna pull all the white ones out right now. Also, upon close inspection, I see there are eyes developing in the orange eggs. COOL!

[Myka]

Aw...there are only 7 orange eggs. I guess I should have removed the white ones much earlier!!! The water quality in that little tank isn't the best, so I'm guessing that isn't helping either. The eggs aren't buoyant anymore, so I guess that's a sign that there are fungus infected eggs if they go buoyant.

[Myka]

So...all the eggs in the tumbler ended up turning white and dying. I think the water isn't clean enough in there.

Mr Bangaii has his mouth full of eggs again as of yesterday. I think I'm going to let him hold them until they hatch. I don't think I'm really set up right to use my tumbler...unless I want to put that ugly thing in my display tank...which I just might do.

The babies are now 7 weeks old, and the only ones to survive are the two that looked good from the start. I figured that would happen. They are now eating only FD Cyclopeze, and seem to be doing quite well. I'm going to start mixing in some finely ground Formula One flake.

[Myka]

The two remaining babies went belly up a few days ago. Both on the the same day...I don't know why.

The male Banger is still holding eggs. I'll leave them in there until they hatch.

[mark]

Originally Posted by Myka

The two remaining babies went belly up a few days ago. Both on the the same day...I don't know why.

That's too bad, appreciate the journal though.

[Myka]

I'll keep up on the journal for sure.

That little 10g mysteriously kills fish after some time I've found. I used to use it for a QT, but fish would mysteriously die in it if they were in it for very long, so I quit QTing, and haven't lost a fish since (until this morning when I lost new fish...28 hours in the bag is likely to blame though).

So...I'm going to try raising the fry in the display. I'm going to have to rig something up that is horrendous to look at though...so that should be quite the challenge...not sure how that's going to work. When I get my cube, I'm going to plumb a Banger tank into the system, so that will be nice.

[Myka]

I went to strip the male yesterday at 24 days holding the eggs, and they are still eggs! Ooops! They are almost fully developed, but definately still in the egg. Luckily he didn't spit them all out when I opened his mouth to take a peek, but one egg did come out.

I put the one stray egg into a net and just let it sit propped on the edge of my display tank. This morning the egg was gone, so someone must have sucked it through the net.

This time I'm going to put the breeding net right into my display tank, and try raising them in there instead of that 10g tank. Hopefully it will work better.

Originally Posted by Myka

So on Jan 7th I stripped the male of the fry. He had been carrying them for approximately 25 days last time. I didn't have an egg tumbler, so I had to wait for them to hatch in his mouth before stripping him.

Hmmm, ya so I guess he was carrying the eggs for longer than 25 days last time...

[Myka]

Today is day 28 since the male first received the eggs on the latest batch.

I just stripped the male a half hour ago. Lots of babies! I counted somewhere around 28-30...they won't stay still long enough! I think it was perfect timing for stripping as the babies are almost all swimming very well, but still have a bit of the egg sack. There are 4 that are swimming jerky, and may have swim bladder issues as I suspect the first batch did. I think this batch of babies is much stronger than the first batch I tried to raise.

I decided to try something a bit different with them this time in hopes it will work better. I put them into the display tank. I have one of those old "livebearer" breeding traps, and is plastic instead of netting, which I decided to use in hopes that none of the critters in the display tank can suck them out as I've heard this is possible. I'm hoping they'll be ok. I'd feel awful bad if they all got sucked out by some critter! They're so cute, all huddling in the fake plant, which is that best I can do for a fake urchin.