Pajama Cardinals

Mielo · May 11, 2021

Discovered on the weekend that one of my 6 pajama cardinals is holding eggs. I am not even going to attempt to catch the male as the display tank is a 300g octagon with over 200kgs of live rock with lots of nooks and crannies.

Anyone have any luck leaving the fry in the display tank to fend for themselves and survive?

Nick Steele · May 11, 2021

Going to be very unlikely as they need copepods/rotifers and artimeia to grow up. They aren’t like Bengai cardinals which come out as miniature adults. Pj’s will be a larval fish that needs to go through metamorphosis.

You can usually chase the fish and it should spit out the eggs if you wanted to try and raise them in a separate tank. Turn off all flow so you can then catch the eggs. They will be in a little ball ranging from 50-500 eggs.

Mielo · May 12, 2021

Thank you For the info Nick.

ThRoewer · May 13, 2021

Mielo said:
Discovered on the weekend that one of my 6 pajama cardinals is holding eggs. I am not even going to attempt to catch the male as the display tank is a 300g octagon with over 200kgs of live rock with lots of nooks and crannies.

Anyone have any luck leaving the fry in the display tank to fend for themselves and survive?

They gonna be food. You would need a larvae catcher/collector to get the larvae out and into a suitable larvae tank. And you will need suitable larvae feeds like copepod nauplii...
But in a reef tank they will just be food for corals and fish.

Mielo · May 16, 2021

It appears that the male no longer has the eggs in his mouth.

I have heaps of copepods in my DT and my sump/refugium. My mandarin dragonet is keeping their population at bay. Highly unlikely, but lets hope I get a surprise down the track and see one or two extra Pajama cardinals in the DT.