Red Spot Cardinals

[wade]

Has anyone ever successfully kept these little beauties? I dug around on the web a little and liveaquaria seems to have managed it with heavy constant feeding in a stable (and other fish free) environment. I was wondering if anyone else has ever managed it... or know of anyone who has.

 

I'm still thinking about what to put in my tank and I used to have a large school of blue eyes cardinals (which are a lot bigger than these) which did fine for a while, but slowly vanished over the course of about a year.

 

The next question would be... do they appear on stock lists very often and in quantity?

 

 

[treesprite]

Too risky to the fish.

[overklok]

I have a school of at least 30 Ghosts, they have done well for two years. They really love to eat mysis and other shrimp based foods.

[overklok]

They need to be fed heavily and at least two times a day.

[wade]

Too risky to the fish.

 

Imagine if you could rear them well enough to breed. Being mouth brooders, most cardinals will do so very well if fed properly. Of course, the fry are probably teeny tiny and would need appropriate diets. And that would help, but not eliminate, stress during shipping. It would certainly make them less skittish than wild caught. In the end though, you'd have a selection of fish that are captive bred and further reduce wild stock capture.

 

From the accounts I read, they would seem best fitted to a species tank or at least a tank without other fast swimmers. I doubt I'd establish a 180 as a species only, though it would be very flashy. They just take some adjustment time and a safe place (overflows covered, top not jumpable).

[Matt LeBaron]

I tried to keep these for about 2 years, rather unsuccessfully.

 

First, they are jumpers. You need some kind of cover on your tank and a good one, they'll find any hole they can.

 

Second, they do better with multiple feedings, I was better able to do this since I have seahorses and feed twice a day anyhow.

 

Third, they ship poorly. I got two shipments from Dr. Fosters and Smith Divers Den and each time lost 1-2 within a day or two, I have to assume to stress. Everything I read about them before hand has commented on a similar issue. Divers Den have to have the best shipping pratices I've seen also.

 

In my case I slowly lost them to some preventable and some unpreventable ways and came to the conclusion that it wasn't fair to try and keep them any longer. I lost some mysteriously, they just dissappeared entirely, no corpse at all that I could find and I pulled my tank apart the second time it happened. I also lost two to jumping, like I said if there is a way they seem to find it out of the tank. I lost three of my last four when I moved about 7 months ago.

 

Dr. Foster and Smith can care for them well enough to breed so they obviously know what to do but I have not seen anywhere that they have really talked about or outlined how they do it. I consider myself at least a fair caretaker of my live stock as I've cared for seahorses for the past 4 years and done it well enough that they have bred fairly often over that time but Red Spot Cardinals are just out of my ability right now and there is very little information on their care out there.

[jaddc]

I tried to keep these for about 2 years, rather unsuccessfully.

 

First, they are jumpers. You need some kind of cover on your tank and a good one, they'll find any hole they can.

 

Second, they do better with multiple feedings, I was better able to do this since I have seahorses and feed twice a day anyhow.

 

Third, they ship poorly. I got two shipments from Dr. Fosters and Smith Divers Den and each time lost 1-2 within a day or two, I have to assume to stress. Everything I read about them before hand has commented on a similar issue. Divers Den have to have the best shipping pratices I've seen also.

 

In my case I slowly lost them to some preventable and some unpreventable ways and came to the conclusion that it wasn't fair to try and keep them any longer. I lost some mysteriously, they just dissappeared entirely, no corpse at all that I could find and I pulled my tank apart the second time it happened. I also lost two to jumping, like I said if there is a way they seem to find it out of the tank. I lost three of my last four when I moved about 7 months ago.

 

Dr. Foster and Smith can care for them well enough to breed so they obviously know what to do but I have not seen anywhere that they have really talked about or outlined how they do it. I consider myself at least a fair caretaker of my live stock as I've cared for seahorses for the past 4 years and done it well enough that they have bred fairly often over that time but Red Spot Cardinals are just out of my ability right now and there is very little information on their care out there.

 

This has been my experience 100%.

[L8 2 RISE]

A good article: http://blog.aquanerd.com/2010/02/redspot-cardinalfish-breeding-by-liveaquaria.html I haven't had a chance to keep them yet but have always wanted to.

[basser9]

Was at AQUARIUM ONE today they had some in stock.

[zygote2k]

These and the Blue Eyed cardinals are poor shippers. Even when they have been acclimated to a LFS tank, they tend to not eat and acclimate poorly to another tank.

We just ordered 12 Blue Eyes from Sustainable Aquatics and all of them made the QT process of a month and then they all made the acclimation process to the client tank. They eat well and will accept pellets and cyclopeeze.

I recommend getting these fish from SA.

[treesprite]

I had bad experience with blue eyes due to poor shipping tolerance. I will never order them again.

 

 

[wade]

Very good discussion, thanks all. It does seem like it would be best to press a breeder into going after these. Typically, once tank reared they are hardier. I'll probably skip these for now, especially considering they like to leap.

 

Cheers,

[Matt LeBaron]

That is part of the problem, the ones from Divers Den are I believe tank reared but still ship badly. I can't imagine how Divers Den has them on such a regular basis otherwise.

[zygote2k]

Buy them from Sustainable Aquatics. No shipping issues, very hardy.

[Matt LeBaron]

I doubt the ones from Sustainable Aquatics are any hardier than the ones anywhere else unless Sustainable Aquatics has some special shipping method that no one else knows about.

[Gadgets]

I could be wrong but I'm pretty sure the ones at Live Aquaria are wild caught. Regardless they don't ship well.

[zygote2k]

I doubt the ones from Sustainable Aquatics are any hardier than the ones anywhere else unless Sustainable Aquatics has some special shipping method that no one else knows about.

So you don't really know what SA is about then. It has nothing to do with shipping. Read up on SA before you just assume that it's like DD or LA.

[yauger]

Wow rob your like a living breathing version of google... I guess years of building award winning tanks have taught you everything in this hobby. Hats off to you sir. Cheers.

[Gadgets]

Wow rob your like a living breathing version of google... I guess years of building award winning tanks have taught you everything in this hobby. Hats off to you sir. Cheers.

 

[Matt LeBaron]

Took a look at the SA webpage, looks like a good company but I see *nothing* that would make me think that Red Spots from them would be any hardier than from anyone else. If you can provide some information beyond what I am able to read on their webpage please do. Further education that could lead to successfully keeping these fish would greatly benefit the community.

 

Seahorses used to be considered much the same until we learned how to care for them.

[zygote2k]

Ok-

Sustainable aquatics catches fish at juvenile stages and raises them in captivity. They wean them to eat artificial foods like their Hatchery Diet pelleted food.

As a result, you get very hardy fish that don't have the associated shipping problems or the habit of not wanting to eat artificial foods.

We buy lots of fish from various wholesalers and without a doubt, SA fish have the lowest mortality rate of them all.

 

LA and DD and other wholesalers buy and sell adult fish which tend to ship poorly and don't take the time that SA does to fully acclimate the fish to captivity.

[zygote2k]

From SA-

 

Sustainability

 

 

 

What does “sustainability” mean to us?

a) When we think of sustainability, we ask ourselves:

• Can it be done over very long periods of time in the same way with the same results without negatively impacting the subject practice or other processes?
  
• Does it have a very high yield, approaching 100% would be good, for if the yield is low, the impact on sustainability will be more stressful, and the carbon foot print is increased by yield losses?
  
• Does the process bring partners into sustainable practices? For example, are natives given economical and practical ways of investing in and maintaining sustainable hatching and growing practices?
  
• Can the practice improve sustainability in the subject practice and in other processes?
  

b) When we think of tank-raised or bred at SA, we think of disease-free healthy systems that can run long-term without use of copper, antibiotics or other systemic methods destructive to, or contrary to the methods used by the hobbyist.

This means if one is truly engaging in tank-raised or bred practices, one must be able to sustain healthy animals in healthy systems over a long term. Animals simply cannot survive long in systems that lack probiotic cultures and are being treated with copper or antibiotics or other systemics.

c) We have concluded that we are all engaged in “process” (I was trained as a process engineer in the semiconductor industry so I tend to think as a process engineer, which has been of great value to Matthew who while degreed in EEB, Molecular Biology and Marine Biology (and French) has been working more as a process engineer in biology) and this means one has to benchmark, and work towards definable measurable and constant process improvements. Whether it is tank raised or tank bred, there are measurable metrics on a continuum where process improvement should be achieved. So for instance in tank raised, we struggle with collectors and get in animals from post larval to pre reproductive, and we “raise” them to improve the process while we work with the collectors to optimize. In many cases we are re-educating collectors who have been collecting for 20 or more years.

How is Sustainable Aquatics engaging in and learning about sustainable practices?

1) We are traveling a lot, diving many remote locations and learning a lot. We have learned from travel and diving the ecology and geography of the Indo Pacific Oceans, and they are wondrous! For instance, once one travels in remote areas of the Indo Pacific away from development, where the land is more or less completely undeveloped, on sees in the density, diversity and health of the reefs that reef health is almost completely related to land development. In such areas the fecundity of the reef is shocking!

2) The current industry practice is to collect mature fish and bring them quickly to market. Most of the wholesalers are using systems being treated with copper or anti biotics or both and their goals is to move the fish as quickly as possible through the system before they die and get them to a retailer who moves them just as fast. The yield in this case is often 10% or less. We own the Coral Reef in Knoxville, and we bought it and operate it for years now for the sole purpose of learning. When we bought it we did business just as everyone else, but over time it taught us that we had to do the Sustainable Islands Project, and now our yields are very high, but we do run probiotic systems and supply them with SA and SI fish. So, in this case to promote the trade’s interest and promote the hobbyists success, the first thing we have to do is fix this problem. This is a major aim of SA and SI.

3) So the first level of tank-bred, means a 100% healthy fish, disease free, strong, eating prepared foods and completely prepared to transition to a social environment with the retail and hobbyists. In this sense SA runs probiotic systems and we do not treat our systems with systemics, we prepare their foods, which are full of really important ingredients, and we will begin marketing this hatchery feed later this month.

4) And the first level of tank raised is a fish that has lived in a probiotic system for an extended length of time, acclimated to a social environment, this almost always means large populations of various fish in the same tank eating prepared foods, socialized, adapted, healthy, and ready to adapt to the retail and hobbyists environment. In doing so we increase the yield and retail and hobbyists success by large margins. In most cases there are very significant increases in body mass during this grow out and socialization and acclimation period.

5) One rule we follow is to avoid collecting reproductively mature specimens. I attend the cod farming conference every year in February in Norway, as we hope someday to take our technology to such farming as well and I like to tell the story of the cod. When it is two years old it begins to reproduce, so at that point most of its energy goes to its gonads to fuel reproduction and if you are farming it is really time to harvest it. At that point it makes a few thousand eggs a year. When it is 15 years old it may make 15 million eggs a year. From post WWII through 1994 we took about 200 million tons of cod a year from the Western North Atlantic and the fishery has been closed since then, with no sign of restarting. We killed the brood stock! So we believe that the first level of work in sustainable tank raised is to collect post larval or juvenile fish and leave the brood stock completely alone. However, for the most part, the industry does not want such small fish and as we learn to collect smaller fish, we find that it takes various times to raise the fish. For instance last spring there was a drop of clown triggers and now 7 months later we are selling nice looking animals 3-4 inches long, it took that long to raise them. Blue tangs can take three to four months. Small damsels can take as little as a month! Some animals we have not been able to get in the earliest juvenile form yet, we get older juveniles, but still pre reproductive stage, and we are still working with the collectors, but we believe by keeping them for a month to six week and acclimating them to aquarium life in probiotic systems and teaching them to eat prepared foods we still increase yield and sustainability. The yellow tang from Hawaii is such an example.

6) Sustainability also means the folk doing the collector can sustain, by all the definitions above, and this means they make a living. For instance, we raise clown fish, and we do it as well or better than anyone we know of worldwide. Our costs are very attractive, our yields very high, disease free, it runs very well. However, we buy a certain amount of juvenile clown fish from the Indo Pacific and raise them as tank raised not tank bred, under the SI banner instead of the SA banner. One would wonder, why in the world is SA doing this?!!! Well, in most all cases I have been diving the range of the clown fish, which is an enormous range, extending from the east coast of Africa, up to Oman, the Gulf and Red Sea, north in the Indo Pacific to the far reaches of the Southern Oceans as far south as Lord Howe Island, one almost always finds a pair of bonded clowns in residence, but also a collection of juveniles in attendance around the anemone. The collection of these juveniles is easy and sustainable, they reappear all the time in short time if you leave all the reproductive pairs alone! So our collectors fill out their collection with a certain amount of juvenile clown fish and to keep them making a living we buy some of them, not many, but some. (We gently discourage it because we don’t “need” them, but some always come along!) So, taking care that the natives are making a sustainable living is important too!

7) Shipping smaller fish is very much a process improvement in sustainability in several ways:

1. Smaller fish have very low survival rates on the reef compared to the reproductively mature animals;
   
2. Smaller fish require much less water for shipping and have a much lower carbon foot print for shipping;
   
3. Smaller animals have MUCH higher survival rates in shipping and acclimation;
   
4. We are able to raise smaller fish with very high yields, often in the high 90% range from collection through shipment;
   
5. Collecting smaller fish instead of reproductively mature animals assures that the brood stock remains in place, avoiding the cod story referenced above!
   

8 ) We are also working on sustainable coral farming. In this case we are setting up micro farms with dozens of native villages who are also collecting juvenile fish for us. We set up racks, provide them with masks, tools, expendables and identify and locate “broodstock” in suitable locations. This farming is done in situ in the reef areas and works really well. They use cement to make plugs, they cut very small frags and tie them down to the racks, grow them till ready to ship and ship them to us for us to finish growing in probiotic systems under lights as they will be in the hobbyists environment. This is very sustainable and we believe it works really well. Again, we could locate broodstock here, but then the economic value of the animals is taken from the natives and they have no economic interest in our sustainability processes. In this way we ask them to protect the ecosystem and “Farm” like this in a limited way and we promise to buy so many pieces from them a month and they can plan on income. The space required for these micro-farms is very small and believe it or not, these racks often attract schools of our juvenile fish.

9) One of the things that amuses us as professionals who have observed many species of clown fish in the wild is the subject of designer clowns. Except for those species in remote areas at the extremes of the range, for instance Oman, Lord Howe Island, Darwin, there are many species of clowns living together and interbreeding as a practice. Many of the designer clowns being raised are found in the wild, and we have just focused some breeding selection on these. We understand that 25,000 years ago, just before the sea starting rising at the end of the peak of the last ice age about 22,000 years ago, there might have been one common clown fish. As the sea rose populations were isolated as reefs were subsumed and the clown fish evolved in this isolation. In this perspective, we should recognize that most species on the reefs are evolving fairly rapidly, (one could call the dramatic rising of water levels in 21,000 years by 100 meters a kind of Stephen Jay Gould extinction event, that opened up the rapid evolution of so many clown and other speciation developments) and there is a great diversity.

10) A clown fish on the reef may not live so long and live only long enough to reproduce itself. In our environment they can live for decades and produce hundreds of thousands of successful offspring. This lack of genetic diversity is one of the strongest arguments against repopulating reefs with tank bred animals. So we do not see reintroduction as a viable plan nor do we believe we should put ourselves in such a place ever!

11) Another reason for our approach to tank raising fish, and focusing on yield, sustainable connection to practices and economic interest by the native, and collection and grow out of juvenile animals is that there are quite a number of animals we are not able to tank breed just yet and it could be a very long time before we do. We just do not have suitable live feeds of sufficiently small size to feed the larval species for the first few weeks! In such a case, improving sustainability by these practices could be a very important ecological measure to assure we do no harm, and still serve the markets responsibly.

So, to conclude, from our side:

i) Why do tank raised or bred? To make improvements in all aspects of the process, from reef to hobbyists tanks, create a strong industry based on sustainable practices in all aspects of the process and definition of sustainability, from reef management to hobbyists success.

ii) A major factor in sustainability is yield: if the yield is not very high, it is not sustainable. Look to the yield at every stage of the process.

iii) Sustainable also means sustainable for our business, the hobbyist’s loyalty and the retailer’s commercial success; so yield also means sustainable practices that constantly improve the processes and is sustainable profitably and makes the hobbyists a success.

iv) Protect the brood stock in nature at all costs;

v) Reduce the carbon foot print;

vi) Create an economic interest for natives who own and or control the ecosystem in sustainable practices, while recognizing that reef health may be more tied to what is happening above the beach than below;

vii) Do good and do no wrong!

I hope this is a helpful sharing of perspectives.

Sincerely, SA

[zygote2k]

Wow rob your like a living breathing version of google... I guess years of building award winning tanks have taught you everything in this hobby. Hats off to you sir. Cheers.

 

Thanks! I knew I had some rabid fans out there.

[yauger]

Thanks! I knew I had some rabid fans out there.

 

just busting your chops Rob... someone has to do it time to time...

[Matt LeBaron]

DD has kept Red Spot Cardinals to the point where they have bred. (Go a google search for Red Spot Cardinal Breeding, about the only useful articles mentioning much on it are in reference to DD) So while SA does look like a good company, with a good philosophy and excellent practices I don't necessarily think that they have found some magic bullet to keeping this species.

 

The results DD got with their Red Spots was from feeding 10 times a day with a wide variety of foods. Most hobbyists are unable to replicate that type of care schedule so until we know more about the Red Spot Cardinal fish or develop new techniques to care for them they should be (in my opinion) left to experts; who are willing to put a lot of effort and long years of experience into caring for them.

 

Saying just order them from SA and everything will be fine seems to be unrealistic to me.