# Accidental Cardinal fry!



## ed seeley (Dec 1, 2006)

This is a picture of my brood of baby cardinal tetras and the set up i used to breed them. Hope that makes things clearer Rob than my overlong e-mail and i hope everyone else enjoys looking at them too. I'm dead chuffed, even if it was more by luck than any judgement on my part!


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## trenac (Jul 16, 2004)

The pic is kinda dark, but congrats on the fry


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## ed seeley (Dec 1, 2006)

Yeah you're right, trying to get the hang of digital photos with fish!
I took some more with a flash but they're even worse, all blury and over exposed. I'll get it right one day I suppose (probably if I buy a digital SLR!)

Thanks for the congratulations. They were a pleasant accident as I was quarantining the parents. They have thrived off the infusoria that must be naturally in the tank as i didn't start feeding them until they were free swimming and then they have only had some really good quality powdered food.

Just remembered i had a spare 11W light for anew Nano cube so put that over the fry tank to illuminate them better! This looks a little clearer!


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## milalic (Aug 26, 2005)

can you share the tank parameters with us?ph, hardness, alkalinity, temperature?

thanks


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## RoseHawke (Jan 4, 2005)

I lightened it up a bit so I could see. Very cool!

Never mind . Ninja post.


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## ed seeley (Dec 1, 2006)

> can you share the tank parameters with us?ph, hardness, alkalinity, temperature?


Sure. pH 6, 0KH, 2GH, 0 nitrite, nitrate less than 12.5 and phosphate 0.25.

The eggs were spawned over a few days I think as the babies vary a lot in size. They just started appearing out of all the Java Moss after i had removed the parents from the quarantine tank. The tank is 14"x12"x12" and holds a little over 25litres. Substrate is sand, foam filter and dim lighting (5W low energy light fitting from IKEA!). Java fern and Java moss and a couple of strands of Elodea that came with some shrimps. There seem to be about 30 babies and they have been fed just powdered food from TA Aquaculture and anything that came out of the moss!

Hope that helps.


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## spdskr (Apr 24, 2006)

Ed,

Huge congrats on the cardinal fry. You are blessed with great water for breeding tetras. Interestingly enough, most cardinals sold in the states remain wild caught. How great that, without even trying, you have accomplished this feat that has eluded many breeders for years. :yo:


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## ed seeley (Dec 1, 2006)

Many thanks to all of you for the congratulations.

All the water in my tanks is RO Water with a little RO Right added to remineralise it a bit. All the fish seem to really enjoy it!

Once I move this brood out i'm going to try and repeat it with the parents again! And will probably fail miserably....


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## JanS (Apr 14, 2004)

Wow, congrats! Breeding Cardinals isn't all that common. 

If you plan to sell or relocate the fry, you'll probably need to slowly acclimate them to non-RO water, since not that many people use it regularly, and they wouldn't do well with a sudden change from what they're used to now.


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## ed seeley (Dec 1, 2006)

Thank you!




> If you plan to sell or relocate the fry, you'll probably need to slowly acclimate them to non-RO water, since not that many people use it regularly, and they wouldn't do well with a sudden change from what they're used to now.


Yeah I do that with the dwarf cichlids I breed too! But these little ones will be staying with me! I've got a tank in my class at school that is going to have a huge school of cardinal tetras now (as soon as the Spotted Krib babies are old enough to be removed from their parents!)

Maybe if I'm successful when i try to breed them again I will get round to selling some!


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## JanS (Apr 14, 2004)

That's great that your class can see how cool a big school of little fish are.
Maybe that way if any of them decides to set up their own tank, they won't want one tank buster in a little tank. 

What kind of dwarf's do you breed?


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## ed seeley (Dec 1, 2006)

Thanks JanS,
The kids love the tank! They can tell visitors all about the fact that it has soft water and that it's acidic coz our fish need that kind of water! They can also tell people all about how the yeast makes CO2 in our CO2 unit and how the CO2 bubbles dissolve into the water and you can see it coz the bubbles get smaller as they go up! And that the bubbles on the plants are oxygen coz plants produce that as waste! Better than any science lesson!

At the minute the 3ft tank in my class (100l) has already 5 cardinals, 5 glowlights and a pair of _Pelvicachromis suboccelatus_ 'Matadi' with about 60+ babies. They love watching the little ones being escorted about the tank! They're not so keen on the parents killing some of the tetras that get too close!

The spotted kribs are going to move to another class in the entrance of the school soon, that has 4 wild angels, _Corydoras napoensis_, Congo tetras and _Rineloricaria_ sp. L10A (Red lizard whiptails).

This will give me the opportunity to add the extra cardinals (though i'm thinking 30 might be too many!) and to put a spare pair of _Nanochromis sabinae_ in that tank. I've got another brood of 80+ _Pelvicachromis suboccelatus_ 'Matadi' at home growing on and a male of_Apistogramma eremnopyge_ in the large tank with the _N.sabinae_ (the female _Apistogramma_ just died and i'm going to try and get replacements!).

I've also bred _Apistogramma nijsenni_, Ordinary Kribs and _Benitochromis finleyi_ 'Mungo' as well as the Tanganyikan cichlids _Neolamprologus brichardi_, _N. occelatus_ 'Gold' and _N. multifasciatus_. I've kept a couple of other _Apistogramma_ too and _Nanochromis transvestitus_ (though the latter's male killed the female in about 3 days unfortunately).

Think dwarf cichlids are the best kind of fish in planted tanks - as far as I'm concerned they add large fish character with small fish niceties!


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## dawntwister (Sep 29, 2007)

ed seeley said:


> Sure. pH 6, 0KH, 2GH, 0 nitrite, nitrate less than 12.5 and phosphate 0.25.
> 
> The eggs were spawned over a few days I think as the babies vary a lot in size. They just started appearing out of all the Java Moss after i had removed the parents from the quarantine tank. The tank is 14"x12"x12" and holds a little over 25litres. Substrate is sand, foam filter and dim lighting (5W low energy light fitting from IKEA!). Java fern and Java moss and a couple of strands of Elodea that came with some shrimps. There seem to be about 30 babies and they have been fed just powdered food from TA Aquaculture and anything that came out of the moss!
> 
> Hope that helps.


Was it hard raising the tetra? How often did you feed them? Did you have to do a lot of water changes? I want to breed betta. Keep reading you have to do a lot of water changes, which I don't have time to do.


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## ed seeley (Dec 1, 2006)

dawntwister said:


> Was it hard raising the tetra? How often did you feed them? Did you have to do a lot of water changes? I want to breed betta. Keep reading you have to do a lot of water changes, which I don't have time to do.


I won't say it was easy, but it certainly wasn't that hard either. They got to about 5mm without me even knowing they were really there and those first weeks are the critical ones IME of raising fry. After that they simply had BBS and Microworms and a high quality dried, powdered food.
Water changes were weekly, but more would have probably improved the growth rate (though they are all fully grown adults now and looking great with their parents in a big shoal!) I believe bettas are recommended to have more water changes than many as they are usually raised in smaller containers. I try to change the small containers I have killis in daily, but don't always manage to!


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## houseofcards (Feb 16, 2005)

Congrats Ed. Cardinal fry that's amazing!


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## BryceM (Nov 6, 2005)

Wow. Congrats. An "accidental" succesful cardinal spawning is the sort of thing that drives people crazy who have been attempting such things for years.


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## ed seeley (Dec 1, 2006)

Cheers guys. They look great now they're fully grown. Never got round to trying to breed them as I never had the room, and, as I was trying, it probably would have failed miserably!!!


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## rs79 (Dec 7, 2004)

Two things: breeding cardinals is neither difficult not uncommon. There's a myth that both are true. They simpy require zero hardness and dark as the eggs are light sensitive. The McKinnery book "All About Tropical Fish" published in the 50s mentions the authors had bred 10's of thousands of of them. I know a few locals that have bred congos, cardinals, empereors and the like - 20 and 30 years ago. Zero hardness, and dark. A bit of peat in the water helps too because of the hormone gonadatropine which stimulates spawnine.

Also, Scheel ("Rivulins of the old world", TFH press, 1969) observes that fish can go from soft to hard water instantly, but the reverse is fatal aand must be done slowly. Fish are similarly unaffectd by instant and drastic changes in pH. They simply don't notice or care.


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