Almondkc
Active Member
In my first clutch of Banggai Cardinal fry I started out the conventional route of going through the process of raising baby brine shrimp and then feeding them to the fry 4 or 5 times a day. Unfortunately, I started to read about the 'sudden fright syndrome' for fry that are fed exclusively on BBS - and then I experienced my first losses bringing my clutch count from 15 down to 10. So I was desperate to try and improve the odds, if not for this clutch for the next.
I can't say enough about the terrific people on R2R (pdisner, Chad @ Reef Nutrition and saybepets) who really reach out and share their insights and experiences. I learned that there is an alternative and that at least one breeder has had great success with feeding TDO to the banggai cardinal fry. That is when my journey on the right size began. Instead of doing my typical read-read-read more before jumping in, I just ordered X-Small TDO thinking that would be the right thing for the fry. I got it quickly and when I saw the size I thought - well it certainly should work. But I was wrong. Through a lot of great help and support from Chad @ ReefNutrition and SaybeyPets I discovered that I should be trying the B1 size. The B1 is a bit more like tiny granules and the X-Small was more like tiny pellets.
So far the transition to the B1 has been going well and I have not fed BBS for a few days now. I do believe that the fry have grown considerably in this short time span. I also wasn't sure if you drop the B1 on the surface and let the water movement drag in under for the fish to eat...but I use a water baster to disturb the water tension and it gets the B1 into the water column straight away and the fry seem to really like it. I have a thread in the breeding section showing the feeding response to the B1.
Hope this is of some use to someone trying to figure out the right size of food for their banggai cardinals. I am going to start my next batch of fry out with the TDO B1 and no brine shrimp and see how that works.
Here is a size comparison on a few of the other sizes.
I use the large size for my LPS and they love it and have gotten beautiful color-up on my acan collection.
I can't say enough about the terrific people on R2R (pdisner, Chad @ Reef Nutrition and saybepets) who really reach out and share their insights and experiences. I learned that there is an alternative and that at least one breeder has had great success with feeding TDO to the banggai cardinal fry. That is when my journey on the right size began. Instead of doing my typical read-read-read more before jumping in, I just ordered X-Small TDO thinking that would be the right thing for the fry. I got it quickly and when I saw the size I thought - well it certainly should work. But I was wrong. Through a lot of great help and support from Chad @ ReefNutrition and SaybeyPets I discovered that I should be trying the B1 size. The B1 is a bit more like tiny granules and the X-Small was more like tiny pellets.
So far the transition to the B1 has been going well and I have not fed BBS for a few days now. I do believe that the fry have grown considerably in this short time span. I also wasn't sure if you drop the B1 on the surface and let the water movement drag in under for the fish to eat...but I use a water baster to disturb the water tension and it gets the B1 into the water column straight away and the fry seem to really like it. I have a thread in the breeding section showing the feeding response to the B1.
Hope this is of some use to someone trying to figure out the right size of food for their banggai cardinals. I am going to start my next batch of fry out with the TDO B1 and no brine shrimp and see how that works.
Here is a size comparison on a few of the other sizes.
I use the large size for my LPS and they love it and have gotten beautiful color-up on my acan collection.
