Banggai Cardinals-- what did I do wrong?

[zonkers]

Last week I picked up a few fish & added them to my 20g QT. pH 8.3, SG 1.026, 0 ammonia/nitrite, a Whisper filter for main filtration with some Polyfilter in it & an above tank homemade bioballs filter for some extra ammonia filtration. A couple T's of PVC for hiding spots. Small population of amphipods, mainly established in the bioballs bucket.

4 Green Chromis, 1 Citron Goby, 1 small Skunk cleaner shrimp, & 2 Banggai cardinals. Everybody acclimated fine. Chromis were chipper & sociable, Citron would perch himself anywhere he could, cleaner was itching to clean anybody who'd let him, & the cardinals were pecking at the amphipods.

Feeding them assortment of flake & granular foods, & little bits of frozen (strained/thawed) mysis shrimp. Everyone seemed to be eating, but on the 2nd day one of the cardinals didn't seem that interested. He died the following day, sitting on the bottom of the tank, labored breathing, & trouble holding himself up. No changes in pH or Ammonia/nitrites. Chromis, goby, & cleaner all fine. The other cardinal seemed otherwise healthy, until this morning. When I left for work this morning he was doing the same thing as the other, & my wife just message me that he's passed now too.

I'd like to keep a couple of these guys, I'm going for fish of passive nature & everything I read about them tells me they're perfect candidates for me. I'd love to know other peoples' experience with Banggais & other cardinals in general. What am I missing here?

 

[Anonymous]

This is becomming common for wild caught Banggai.

 

[Anonymous]

Did this all happen in a 20g QT? Seems kinda small for 5 fish with two of them being banggai and a skunk cleaner to boot.

My banggai is just fine in my 55g. amazing how big a peice of squid he can scarf down in one gulp. and he doesn't tank any guff from my 4-5" yellow tang. Just flicks his tail back at him.

But then Guy is the banggai expert.

 

[zonkers]

Did this all happen in a 20g QT? Seems kinda small for 5 fish with two of them being banggai and a skunk cleaner to boot.

Well, the 20 is actually a recent upgrade from the 10 gallon that was serving as my quaratine before. For what its worth though, everybody else was really small in comparison to the Banggai-- they were actually the largest fish in the batch. The chromis, citron & cleaner were all very small in comparison, & I am careful about ammonia in an admittedly small environment. Hence the Polyfilter & the bioballs bucket. There didn't seem to be any impression that the banggai were pressed for space. The chromis were inquisitive of them, & the banggai were tolerant, but there was no bickering.

The banggais did seem a bit standoffish to the prepared foods, & were only lukewarm to the mysis. Did they starve? How long would it take them to die from a hunger strike if that were the case?

 

[Anonymous]

It is my expeience that banggai can go a long time without food, but who knows how long they went without before you got them. If your fish store only fed flake it might be they didn't eat at all while they were there, I have a hard time switching them to flake food.

I have bred several batches and ended up with more than I could give away, so I often had them stuck places like skimmer tanks and other hidey holes hoping someone would come along and want them. They often did not get near the attention they deserved but kept on thriving, (until I took them to the fish store!).

They can be touchy about eating new foods. I have found mysis to be usually appreciated, as is finely chopped raw table shrimp. With time you can wean them over to other foods.

You should try again with them. Sometimes you just can't say why a fish died. Make an effort to find tank raised ones. These are usually smaller ones for sale at the store than the wild caught ones. I have heard the wild ones are very touchy at first.

 

[Anonymous]

How long would it take them to die from a hunger strike if that were the case?

45 - 60 days but the clock often starts when they're pulled from the ocean.

 

[zonkers]

Considering this, I am less inclined to think they died of starvation. They defintely did not appear sunken or emaciated at all. I did not see my LFS feed this particular tank, but I have seen him feed his tanks in the past & he usually sticks to frozen shrimp & the like.

The labored breathing behavior also doesn't seem a starvation symptom to me, but then I wonder, what would it signify? There is ample circulation in the tank from the Whipser filter-- its a larger model & is a bit oversized for the 20g. There is plenty of surface circulaiton & I am relatively confident that it wasn't oxygen deprivation. The tank has been unstocked for the last months, except for some incidental pods, which I have 'fed' infrequently by throwing a little splash of Cyclopeeze (thawed/strained) when I feed my corals. I keep a chunk of a macro algae I can't ID (long, stiff, springy filaments that coil up into balls like steel wool), & there's a little coralline & brown algae, & a little cyano. Nuisance algae aside, I would think this tank is 'alive' & hospitible to life.

I don't mean to go on, but I'm just wracking my brain (& yours, if possible ) on what I could do to prevent this the next time.

 

[Anonymous]

I'm just wracking my brain (& yours, if possible ) on what I could do to prevent this the next time.

Search for aquacultured Banggai. They are hardier and buying them does not decrease the already decimated wild population of Banggai.

 

[KensReef]

I think 8 is too many fish to be adding to a 20gal tank in one go. You need to let the tank adapt to the bioload.

 

[Anonymous]

Agreed. IMO 2 is the max. That's not what killed the Banggai though. The Goby should have been the first to suffer followed by the Chromis. I think it was some type of infection or intestinal parasite.

 

[Unarce]

I came across this last week. The following statement is from Inland Aquatics:

This is the first time that we have offered (TR) Banggias in a couple of years. This is due to the same nematode infection that has been killing nearly 100% of wild caught Banggai for several years. Some wild caught broodstock transferred this affliction to our culture tanks before is it was identified, killing 90% of our cultured Banggai in late 2001. WE HAVE NOT SEEN WILD CAUGHT BANGGAI THAT SURVIVE MORE THAN ABOUT 10 DAYS AFTER IMPORT SINCE THAT TIME. (WE STRONGLY RECOMMEND AGAINST PURCHASING WILD CAUGHT BANGGAI CARDINALS FOR THIS REASON) As such, it took a very long time to build our numbers up.

 

[Anonymous]

Whoa!

 

[Anonymous]

My banggai ignores flake food as well.

And I do appreciate and have read the posts on the wild caught infection. So that could be an explaination also.

But the symptoms are classic bio overload symptoms. Especially with new tanks, new fish, heavy bioload, limited plant life, and added non live food from day one. IME it usually takes a 3-4 days but the only other difference is the larger amount of fish for the tank size. And the reason I don't add non live food for a week under those conditions. I have just found that fish survive better in new setups with plant life and a week of not adding non live food.

but then it could be the infection also. But a day after being introduced to a new environment to me points to the new environment.

 

[zonkers]

Tanks to everyone for their responses, its given me much food for thought. I guess I'm going to have to start looking for other LFS's if my current guy can't get CB banngai. There's no shortage of pet & 'fish' stores around my area, but unfortunately the conditions at most of these are simply apalling & I refuse to buy from them.

I guess I was just lucky/spoiled with the other fish that I've successfully QT'ed in that they accepted the prepared & frozen foods more readily. do have a separate 10g fuge that I keep just to cultivate some macroalgae & pods in, but that's currenty in use with a mandarin that I'm quarantining until I'm convinced he's ready to go into the main tank.

I will wait until the latest batch goes into the main & then I will see if I can find some CB banggai, & be sure to feed them from the fuge. Thanks again everyone!

 

[HClH2OFish]

Not to be an alarmist, but is your mandarin going into the 20?
If so, be aware that in most cases these guys need a much larger matured tank with a very healthy population of pods, otherwish he'll slowly starve.

In a 20, he's going to go through any pods pretty quickly. Do you have some way of providing a large amount of pods to keep him fat and happy?

Just my .02 from what I've heard from others re:mandarins

 

[KensReef]

Zonkers, I think you really need to do more research and reading while your fish are in the quarantine tank. At the moment I don't believe you have the knowledge to succesfully keep a marin tank.

 

[zonkers]

Not to be an alarmist, but is your mandarin going into the 20?

Nononono The 20 gallon is strictly a quarantine tank. My main tank is a 72 gallon with a 10g refugium, been running for over a year now. About 80lbs of live rock between the two, & utterly crawling with pods of all sorts. I actually just lost a mandarin I had for about 8 months, but whatever it was she died from, it wasn't starvation-- that fish was fat Actually, my suspicion is that her eyes were bigger than her stomach (or esophagus, as the case may be), & she got something stuck she couldn't get out one way or the other Anyone know how to give a fish a heimlich?

At the moment I don't believe you have the knowledge to succesfully keep a marin tank.

Kensreef, thank you for your concern, but I think you're being a bit judgemental. I don't know how you get from one thread what research I have & haven't done on marine tanks. I'm not claiming I know everything (obviously, or I wouldn't have posted here to begin with), but I'm certainly not ignorant either. Who of us here didn't learn as we went?