Pregnant Bangaii cardinal?

[Kurt_Nelson]

Sorry... no picture, but a quick question.

Does a female Bangaii Cardinalfish need a male around to at least make eggs?

Reason I ask is that my ONE Bangaii stopped eating Sunday and has a noticeably swollen/distended abdomen. I've had the fish for 5 months now. The scales are still flush against the body, and there are no visible signs of distress or disease. It's swimming laps back and forth against the back of the tank. It normally does that, but not as much as it's been doing today. It's getting a heck of a workout! It's just not normal for it to not eat two days in a row. I normally feed once a day.

Water parameters are perfect: 0 ammonia/nitrites/nitrates, 0 phosphates, 8.3ish pH, 9 dkH, 1.025 salinity, and 77.5-78.5 temperature. Only other tank mate is a O.Clown, and he/she is doing just fine and acting normal.

From the swollen abdomen, I'm guessing either theres some internal blockage that's keeping it from poopin' (man... can those things poop) or it's carrying eggs. Any folks with Bangaiis see this before?

 

[blazeyreef]

my bangaii has never done that before, but I think they can "make" eggs by themselves, but without the male their to fertilize them and mouth broad them it wont do much. But it is possiable I would think

 

[roka64]

Can you QT it? There is a possibility of an internal problem. I am not sure on the eggs thing, so someone else may have experienced this.

 

[Kurt_Nelson]

QT is currently occupied by 3 green chromis that are new arrivals. They've only been in there 2 weeks.

I searched all over about the egg thing, and can find all sorts of things about how to breed them - but not anything on the basic reproduction.

 

[roka64]

Per the pic of the cardinal, it doesn't look she has a swollen abdomin:
http://www.advancedaquarist.com/issues/may2002/breeder.htm
2nd pic down....
I'll keep looking to see if I can find anything better.

 

[Kurt_Nelson]

Thanks for the link roka... I've found some videos of the female expelling their eggs, but the videos all start with a fairly substantial amount of eggs hanging out from her to start with. Soo... not sure how big she was to start with.

In my surfing around, I did manage to find this interesting little document. Seems to be the best summary I've found about everything regarding these fish... but still no answer to the original question!

http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/habitat/ead/ecosysdocs/CardinalfishAppIIproposal.pdf

Looks like the US is proposing to regulate the import of Bangaii's to make sure they're not being over harvesting. Probably a good idea after reading the paper!

I've emailed the folks at wetwebmedia to see if they have an answer, as I've just about exhausted all my Google tricks!

EDIT:

False alarm.

I got home tonight from work, and his/her belly was back to normal and it was swimming in it's normal spot alongside the clown fish, waiting for food! It just got done eating it's normal portion of food. My wife said it wasn't doing laps in the tank today, and seemed back to normal. I'll definitely keep my eye on it, but maybe it was just constipated?

Either way, my original question still has me wondering, so I'll post back here if I run into the answer!

 

[roka64]

Yeah, I did run across a bunch of document about them being over harvested. I didn't even think of the the fact that it could have just eaten and simply had a fat belly, or even constipation.

 

[cmor1701d]

I was going to suggest trying to feed it some mashed up peas. That should help if it would eat and had a blockage.

 

[Kurt_Nelson]

I received a reply from Mr. Fenner over at wetwebmedia. In a nutshell, he said that while having a male around a female is a definite trigger mechanism for getting her to produce eggs, it wasn't a requirement. When I replied that the fish was back to normal, he suggested that it could have been eggs that were just reabsorbed by the fish since there wasn't a male around. He said that this reabsorbtion can happen fairly fast. Interesting stuff!

Mushed up peas, eh? Never heard that one. I'll have to remember that.