[npaden]

First off I would like to thank Frank Marini for all the help he gives everyone on the fish breeding forum at ReefCentral! Also I would like to thank Guy Comstock for shipping me some frozen prawn eggs to make life much easier than having to hatch baby brine the entire time they are growing up! Thanks for all the help guys!

Ok now for the good stuff - here are a few pics of the latest batch of baby banggai's. For size perspective, the little hang on refugium that they are in is about 7" square and the suction cups are 1 1/4" diameter.

These guys were released at day 18 and 19 (about 3 days earlier than the last batch) and today would have been day 20.

If you want to do me a favor you can try to count them. There are 2 sets of fins hanging down at the top of the very first pic that you might not notice, and when I try to count them I get 50 or so. It's hard to tell which fins go with which baby, but you can tell that some of the babies are hiding another one behind them in the pic because there are 2 sets of fins.

Ok - here are the pics:




Just wanted to share with everyone! I'm very happy that the banggai's are doing so well! This is just my 2nd batch and am very happy. I have 14 out of 22 of the 1st batch doing great in a 15 gallon refugium at just over a month old. They are eating like pigs and growing like weeds. The ones that I lost were stupid errors on my part and hopefully wont be repeated again!

Good luck to everyone else trying to breed these guys and patience will pay off. I've had this pair for right around a year now and these are my first successful batches after 5 aborted attempts by the male.

I'm planning to give/trade/sell the first batch to local reefers and possibly trade any extras to the local fish stores (3) for credit when the 2nd batch gets big enough. I really don't want to go through the hassle of shipping but in the spring when the weather warms up if I still have some left I might try it a few times.

FWIW, Nathan

[myreef]

Congratulations Nathan. Must be proud to know you are doing something right to have so many little ones in your system. Keep us posted on the progress of the first batch as well as these.

[Elmo18]

Thanks for posting this Nathan. I've been away from the boards for awhile......and will be again for another 2 weeks because of college finals.....engineering rocks, though.

I've heard that if you make a makeshift sea urchin with pins, these guys will go around it and feel safer. It looks like they are doing fine staying together. My brain is too cluttered to try to count them. My eyes hurt today.......had to look through diffraction gratings with the lights off and write in the dark.....not fun.

I might try do this someday. Where did you get your bangghai pair??

Regards,

Ilham

[rededteck]

That is a very cool thing!!!! Too bad we cannot breed more fish in captivity.

[Biomanjcs72]

That's awesome man, that's really great. Keep it going.

[organicreefer]

it looks like youre getting the hang of it,this time next year youll be writing the book .

[Rin]

Baby fish are so cool. Good job.

[Ninong]

Great!!!

Ninong

[npaden]

Thanks for the comments guys! The new batch is already eating the frozen prawn eggs and I haven't lost any of them yet! I printed out a few pics of them and counted them by numbering them and counted 49 in one pic and 51 in the other pic but there was some guesswork involved in determining which fins went with which head, etc. so I'm just stick with my count at around 50!

FWIW, Nathan