Pants

They do look sort of huge in that shot without any perspective. Just normal toothpicks. Having the pictures side by side like this I can definitely tell he has grown. He might have even doubled in size already. When first released he looked like an eyeball with fins. Now he looks more like a mini version of the adult fish.

Here he is today ~9 days old.

Thanks for all the well wishes. I actually saw him eat for this first time this morning. Doing those quick exaggerated darts at food that the big guys do. I knew it had been eating since it had grown, but I was never really sure what it was eating or when. I fattened up some brine shrimp on baker's yeast and fed those to him (the smell is terrible but he seems to like them). Not great for water quality so I am testing twice a day. The light is poor because of the fog but when the sun comes out I'll try to get a new photo. Not killing each other is a good sign. When I bought mine I asked for the dominant on in the school and then one noticeably smaller. They were very small too; smaller than quarters. I QTed them in a 2.5G on my desk at work with beakers and erlenmeyer flasks to swim around. I hedged my bets by selecting the dominant one in the group of like 50 (much bigger than the others). Figured he was male. And then picked a middling one as a good guess for female (sort of like pairing clowns). They never fought much and looked a bit different, but of course I didn't know for sure until the male was holding eggs. The urchin is a piece of styrofoam with tooth picks stuck in it. I then pushed some wire through the styrofoam and through a suction cup and suction cupped it to the bottom of the tank so that it wouldn't float. He never leaves it now.

Hi everyone! This is my first post here. The only fish that was on my wife's list before we got the tank was Bangaii Cardinalfish so for her birthday last November I bought a pair of tank raised bangaii and QT'ed them secretly at work so she woke up on her birthday to surprise fish in the tank (we then went out to sushi taro). They were only ~4 months old when I got them (about the size of quarters) but by december 24 the male was holding eggs already (kids these days). On 17 January a single baby bangaii was released. I found him after lights out in the long spine sea urchin (first picture below). I thought the baby would have enough protection in the urchin, but alas by morning the baby bangaii was gone. I got the Long spine urchin from a NFS display tank at Rick's. At 2pm on February 16th I watched as the female passed the eggs to the male. She would come up alongside him and vibrate then she would move in front of him, eggs hanging out (next picture). On March 15 around 11pm I spotted a baby bangaii in the sea urchin. I fed to see if the male was done and he ate, so again just one fry. Not wanting to take chance again I used the feeding turkey baster to suck up the baby and moved it to a QT tank. I then ran around the house like a mad man trying to figure out what I had on hand to make a fake sea urchin. I guess I did alright because he has been hosting his fake urchin for the past week (next pic, day 1). I've been feeding frozen rotifers, cyclops, and freshly hatched brine but have seen no indication that it is eating other than it being bigger and not dead.