Will having a longspine urchins improve chances at having banggai cardinals breed?

[Alpha_and_Gec]

Banggai cardinals live amongst urchin spines in the wild, and as such I thought having a longspine would make them feel significantly safer and maybe have a place to deposit the kids. If I want to breed banggais(gotta make some coral and fish money back lol), is it useful to pick up an urchin?

 

[b1llvance]

I don’t think you need an urchin. They just need lots of food and warm temps in my experience. The babies take refuge in the urchins and I believe are beneficial once you have babies. Or something easier than caring for the urchin just make a fake urchin and they’ll use it.

 

[taricha]

Jay found them (or at least a fake urchin) very helpful....

Finally, do you have an urchin in the tank? I seemed to find that having an urchin made for a better release of the fry, to the point where we made fake longspine urchins for them.

 

[Jay Hemdal]

Jay found them (or at least a fake urchin) very helpful....

I gave that some more thought - it may be that the fake urchins allowed the fry to school up amongst the spines (we were having trouble with the fry going over the overflows). I guess I can't say for certain that the urchins helped with fry release, but they did help with fry survival.

Jay

 

[Jay Hemdal]

Jay found them (or at least a fake urchin) very helpful....

In looking for some other research papers, I came across this one where they made fake urchins:

ShieldSquare Captcha

This is many years after we made our own fake urchins, I should have written a paper myself (grin).


Jay

 

[ISpeakForTheSeas]

Alternatively or in addition to the urchin, an anemone or fake anemone could potentially help too (I'd love to see statistics about if either urchins or anemones actually help though):

They're certainly pretty nems - and they host Bangaii Cardinals too - it's just a pity they've got such a potent sting.

"Over the 15 survey sites, six species of anemone were recorded as hosting Pterapogon kauderni. In order of descending frequency these were: Actinodendron sp., Heteractis crispa, Entacmaea quadricolor, Stichodactyla gigantea, S. haddoni and H. aurora (Table 2). The associated P. kauderni were predominantly recent recruits and small juveniles; however, a few adults were observed close to the anemones, including brooding males."

Source:

Radware Bot Manager Captcha

 

[mfinn]

I had a breeding pair of Bangaii Cardinals in a 20 gallon tank many years ago ( 18-20) and I used fake plastic freshwater aquarium plants. The type that had the long skinny branches.