Cardinalfish lovers

[jacquesPiette]

I love Cardinalfish! their angular shape, their colours, their unique behaviors.
understand my surprise when i find that there isnt a whole lot about theses guys on the internet (exept the pyjama and the bangai)

i have a 55 gallon tank with three pyjamas, 3 bangais and 3 longspine cardinalfish. if i could have more, i would had 3 yellowstripe and 3 seales cardinalfish. maybe also 3 flames.
i made a whole lot of research on their behavior and their social structures.
when i bought them i intended for them to all school together and not to segregate themselves too much, and it worked!
my 3 pyjamas are the biggest and the first CF to be in the tank. they each like to stay in their own corner of the aquarium. the longspine are pretty much always together and share their shcool with at least one other fish. this is where it gets a little complicated: my bangais are in groups 1-2. (they are also the smallest fish) they take their turns being with a pyjama or the longspines. because of this weird setup, each individual gets to be in the school at least once a day. sometimes my silver belly wrasse joins the shcool or my clown goby.

for thoses who are curious about what i feed my fish:
-flakes (no fish's favorite)
-bug bites are the pyjama's favorite.
-frozen food, reef frenzy nano (the bangai's favorite) (and my clown goby)

i also have some amphipods in my aquarium.
feed my hermit crabs, pistol shrimp and yellow watchmen goby some hermit crab pellets, similar to bug bites. also my pyjamas are getting big enough to eat them whole.

im curently looking for what the longspine cardinalfish might enjoy the most. ive seen on the internet that some have troubles feeding them. hopefully seeing the others eat diffrent foods will incite them to eat more. im also looking for something that might trigger i better feeding response for my wrasse, since i never see him eat. hes not starving though, he has a little fat belly.

all my tank mates are getting along really well. my gobies and pyjamas are a little territorial, but they dont bully any fish and at the end of the day they all come together in a corner to sleep together.

my aquarium is less than a year old.

So tell me all about your love for cardinalfish! thoses i mentioned or otherwise.
maybe someone elses has plans to have a diverse school of cardinalfish?

 

[Mark Novack]

It is certainly a fish that schools well. They stay together better than chromis or anthias. I think its their silvery resemblence to the common scalar that makes them less popular but they can add a nice grouping to the right tank.

 

[dmsc2fs]

I have a black cardinalfish on way from Dr. Reef. I have started to like these fish more and more.

 

[dennis romano]

I love them. My past experience and confirmed by LFS owners is that they just don't transport well. One store owner stopped carrying them because of high losses. What is your experience?

 

[jacquesPiette]

I love them. My past experience and confirmed by LFS owners is that they just don't transport well. One store owner stopped carrying them because of high losses. What is your experience?

yes ive seen that they ship badly on the internet.
i buy them locally in the stores. cardinalfish are somewhat popular in the surrounding lfs, they like to get them every month or so. takes 2 weeks for them to disapear. (people buy them)
sometimes clients preorder them for pickup for when the next batch comes. (so they are pretty popular, mostly the bangais)
ive only seen pajamas, bangais and bluespines. all of them in raging reef montreal. blue sipne only twice and the first time they wernt for sale.
some pajamas ive seen in reefsolution laval and planete mer montreal.
im waiting to see other kinds. will definetly buy them if i come across some <

i dont remember how transporting the pajamas went because its been a little while but it musnt have been that bad.
the bangais and the bluespine ive bought at the same time at 7:30 pm at raging reef and because of traffic we were at home 1 hour later. i acclimate my fish pretty rapidly by puting the bags in the aquarium and making a little hole in the bags by poking a little toothpick in them. each 15 minutes i make the holes a little bit bigger until the fish leaves the bags or i just pour them in the aquarium. they integrated really rapidly.

the bluespine were not very colourfull in the lfs before i bought them, it took them 2 days to colour up in my aquarium. i almost didnt recognize them when i first saw them.
the bangais were pretty colourfull in the lfs, but when i arrived home they were all white, not disimilar to cartoon charcaters in tom and jerry or looney tunes when they faint. they were almost entirely white when i put their bags in my aquarium. i bagan the toothpick acclimating process when they took back their colors.
i fed them frozen foods and bug bites and 30 minutes later i closed the lights because it was getting late.
10 pm i think.

it was a pretty stressfull addition beacause ive never added that many fish at once and also i bought berghia nudibranchs. also at the same time i added a new powerhead.
in that moment i was thankfull for beer!
there is nothing beter than looking at your aquarium with a good beer.

i wouldnt recomand buying 6 fish at once. (doubling the number of fish in my aquarium in 1 evening) that was very unwise but i knew at that moment that my fish would be alright since im ready to do anything for them.
also, i might never see the bluspines again. if i see seales and yellowstripes or flames, i would do that risky decision over and over again.
my aquarium is a little weird because it cycles more rapidly than what i see on the internet.

to this day they are healthy, colourfull and eat well. the bluespines eat less than the others but are otherwise the ok.

 

[jacquesPiette]

I have a black cardinalfish on way from Dr. Reef. I have started to like these fish more and more.

picture?

 

[Fishfreak2009]

I keep the following:
Sphaeramia nematoptera (47 gallon x2, 13.5 gallon x1)
Pterapogon kauderni (75 gallon x2)
Fowleria flammea (75 gallon x4)
Zoramia leptacantha (75 gallon x2)

I plan on adding a few more of the threadfin cardinals (Zoramia leptacantha), as well as a group of 5 yellow lined cardinals (Apogon cyanosoma), which I have kept in the past in an older tank. Just haven't seen any available recently.