Baby Banggais This is something of a mystery to me. Directly after release, the babies seemed very tolerant of each other and often ӭassed" around the plastic plants. They would all come out to eat at once and quickly dashed back to the protection of the plant. The mystery is that they would all do fine for the first week with no problems and like clockwork in the middle of the second week (day 10) I would loose 2 or 3 babies. As the weeks progressed the larger banggai babies would out compete their siblings, and fish would die due to starvation, this was a common problem which I would remedy by removing the larger babies. For the first 3 months the fishes body size remain between 1/3 and 3/4 of an inch. It would get slightly thicker in body, and would take on the adult coloration. During the next three month period, the babies would almost double in length each month, with the babies reaching 6-8 months being around 0.75-1.25 inches snout vent length (SVL). This is the most common size of fish available on the commercial market, and represents a juvenile animal which is not sexually mature. At this point all the babies can peacefully coexist, and often I see grouping in my aquariums. I cannot reliably --- these animals at this point, so to me a group represented fish which "got along (as compared to hierarchies, or harems). When the animals reached the one year point the animals would be about 1.0-1.5 inches SVL, and start to take on sexual characteristics, i.e., males having larger banner fins, squaring off of the jawline, and the problems in my holding tanks would begin. As these fish reached sexual maturity they would pair off in the holding tanks and really start problems. As mentioned earlier these fish become quite aggressive towards other banggai cardinals when paired. Now let me clarify, that this experience has been in my aquarium, the conditions and feeding from wild caught animals will be different, meaning that it is possible in the ocean, that these fish grow quicker, and reach sexual maturity earlier, and therefore using a "size to determine age maybe incorrect.
Feeding babies As reported in the original article I fed the baby banggai with brine shrimp nauplii (artemia). This is still one of the best, and easiest food source for baby cardinal fish. It is an absolute must to Selacon enrich the nauplii, and additionally I recommend feeding the nauplii with scraped algae (from the tank) and other vitamins/mineral or lipid complexes, such as Aquafarms Rotirich liquid food, and Vita-chem. I would feed the babies a minimum of 5 times a day, and would feed as much as would be eaten in a few minutes, and then a little added more to the breeding station. My brine shrimp hatcheries where nothing more than 1 gallon milk jugs with the tops cutoff, filled with 3/4gallon of used tank water. I added O.S.I. brine shrimp eggs and aerated heavily for 2-3 days. I had 6-8 milk jugs of baby brine shrimp bubbling away, and always kept extras on hand in case of emergency. I would try to stagger the hatching of the brine shrimp over a few day period, as each culture would supply about 2 to 3 days of brine shrimp nauplii to the banggais. For the past years I did not attempt any more rotifer culture as they became more time consuming, and would crash far more frequently than the brine shrimp. However it is an excellent food source, and one that I would recommend to any seasoned aquarist. I believe that better and different food sources are the key to increased banggai production, this is an area where more research is desperately needed.
Lastly, about longevity of these fish. I currently have the original male from the article still doing well, and still able to carry young (he bred last Nov). I would suspect that when I purchased him he was 8-10 months of age and therefore he would be 4.25-4.5 yrs old (he is about 3-3.5inches SVL). The females seem to be less hardy as most of them have only survived about 2 yrs, however I have never kept a female alone, and therefore this shortened life span maybe due to breeding.
[TANK NOTE: my breeding stations were 10 gal aquariums (and kept babies up until 3-6 months), my holding stations were 20 tall aquariums (up until 6-8 months), the original tank is a 65long Oceanic reef-ready with 5 dividers.]
