Feeding cardinal fry?

[q8cyu]

When do I feed my banggai cardinal fry. I have them in an egg tumbler with a pump to keep them moving. They are about 27 days old exactly today. I have frozen rotifers and copepods and can hatch live baby brine shrimp. I can also crush TDO pellets. They still have a yolk And are swimming (somewhat)
When do I start to feed them?
thanks.

 

[souciemm]

I've never bred these myself but I'm hoping to in the future and have been reading about it. Here's some recommendations I've found.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/313841427_Mouthbrooders_-_The_Banggai_Cardinalfish

from the abstract: "Embryos need ~18–20 days before hatching. Afterwards, they remain within the male's mouth for ~5 days. Juveniles begin exogenous feeding at a larger size than other marine ornamental fishes, which prevents requiring additional egg-incubating/larvae rearing tanks, and culturing small food items. However, they are highly susceptible to a deficiency in HUFAs, and prone to suffer “shock syndrome”."

So you're looking at starting feeding around day 23 to 25. The full text recommends feeding enriched brine shrimp nauplii.

Hope this helps!

Editing to say you might as well try to feed them what you have available. I dont think they're very picky since they are so large when they start feeding.

 

[q8cyu]

I've never bred these myself but I'm hoping to in the future and have been reading about it. Here's some recommendations I've found.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/313841427_Mouthbrooders_-_The_Banggai_Cardinalfish

from the abstract: "Embryos need ~18–20 days before hatching. Afterwards, they remain within the male's mouth for ~5 days. Juveniles begin exogenous feeding at a larger size than other marine ornamental fishes, which prevents requiring additional egg-incubating/larvae rearing tanks, and culturing small food items. However, they are highly susceptible to a deficiency in HUFAs, and prone to suffer “shock syndrome”."

So you're looking at starting feeding around day 23 to 25. The full text recommends feeding enriched brine shrimp nauplii.

Hope this helps!

Thanks, i’ll stat hatching some brine shrimp today, and feed rotifers for now.

 

[sabeypets]

Within 2 days after the yolk is absorbed, you still have a few days before they will eat.

 

[Mr. Roboto]

When I bred them, they only eat live foods like baby brine and need to be fed at least 4 times a day if not more to survive. They are very hard raise. I kept them in an incubator basket with fine mesh and some cheato for cover.

Very cool but very needy little fry. They would just croak for no other reason. Out of the 15 or so I had hatch at a time only about 7 or 8 made it to maturity at a time, sometimes less.

 

[Mr. Roboto]

I wanted to add that I also would net my my male and let him hold them till he was ready to spit them out and then I would remove him or he would eat them.

 

[q8cyu]

I tried feeding them yesterday,, I do believe they tried to eat. I will start to hatch some baby brine shrimp when the yolk is a bit more absorbed.
Thanks

 

[souciemm]

How are they doing?

 

[q8cyu]

How are they doing?

They are doing well, I got them to feed on live baby brine shrimp and the adults are mating again (yesterdayI saw them doing a mating dance) I can post some pictures later today.

all 4 have mostly absorbed the egg yolk and are free swimming. they are in a separate box in the tank with some chaeto to grow out.

once they are big enough they will go into the sump which is around 10-20 gallon tank.

 

[souciemm]

Awesome!

 

[q8cyu]

Here’s the pics
Sorry if some are blurry

They will be caught and started to be raised by me November 1st

 

[DaJMasta]

27 days post spawn, or post hatch, or post release?

Until they have swim bladders and look like fully formed fish (not much of a visible yolk sack bulge), they won't be able to eat. When they can, I'd estimate around day 24-26 post spawn and within a day or two of being released from the male's mouth under normal circumstances they'll be able to eat, and I'd recommend copepods if possible. They shouldn't be that picky when it comes to live, rotifers may be accepted but are worse nutritionally and are really small for their size, so I'd probably hatch out some atemia nauplii as supplemental food if your stock of copepods isn't huge (they can eat a lot, and they benefit from fairly heavy feedings, regularly.) The feeding response should be quick - if you have them in a relatively confined space and offer up some food to fry that can eat, they should start going after it well under a minute from it being offered.

Starting from around a week from that point, I'd offer prepared foods, and my experience has the best acceptance with frozen. Something like calanus, cyclops, or frozen brine shrimp nauplii should work fine, but I've offered mine the fines of mysis shrimp and they will take to that as well. In my experience small pellets take a little more time for them to figure out (less time drifiting in the water column, I think), but a smaller pellet like TDO B1 or so could also be used around this time. Gradually larger foods can be used in the next couple of months, but at least with mine, once you get to the XSmall TDO size or so, they just don't want to eat bigger pellets, even though juveniles will gladly shove a mysis their entire body length into their mouth when given the opportunity.

 

[q8cyu]

27 days post spawn, or post hatch, or post release?

Until they have swim bladders and look like fully formed fish (not much of a visible yolk sack bulge), they won't be able to eat. When they can, I'd estimate around day 24-26 post spawn and within a day or two of being released from the male's mouth under normal circumstances they'll be able to eat, and I'd recommend copepods if possible. They shouldn't be that picky when it comes to live, rotifers may be accepted but are worse nutritionally and are really small for their size, so I'd probably hatch out some atemia nauplii as supplemental food if your stock of copepods isn't huge (they can eat a lot, and they benefit from fairly heavy feedings, regularly.) The feeding response should be quick - if you have them in a relatively confined space and offer up some food to fry that can eat, they should start going after it well under a minute from it being offered.

Starting from around a week from that point, I'd offer prepared foods, and my experience has the best acceptance with frozen. Something like calanus, cyclops, or frozen brine shrimp nauplii should work fine, but I've offered mine the fines of mysis shrimp and they will take to that as well. In my experience small pellets take a little more time for them to figure out (less time drifiting in the water column, I think), but a smaller pellet like TDO B1 or so could also be used around this time. Gradually larger foods can be used in the next couple of months, but at least with mine, once you get to the XSmall TDO size or so, they just don't want to eat bigger pellets, even though juveniles will gladly shove a mysis their entire body length into their mouth when given the opportunity.

Thanks. The older fry is eating baby brine almost immediately, I will offer some frozen pods today. And my mating cardinals leaves eggs today.