Ochre striped cardinal fish
Hello fellow reefers, was wondering if anyone has experience with these guys, in particular does anyone have experience in establishing and determining a pair?
Welcome to Reef2Reef!
I know one person who got a pair that bred, but - being in the UK - they weren't able to get small pods to use to try and rear the young.
For pairing them, adding them all and seeing if a pair forms seems to work (Edit: to add, this method doesn't generally work well with more aggressive fish, but it seems to work fine for at least some cardinals); I'm not aware of a method for sexing them, but you can also put them in breeder boxes next to each other (so they can see and smell the chemicals of the others without interacting directly) for a few days and see if a pair visibly forms (this is generally a better method than just adding them to the tank and hoping a pair forms, but it may be tricky with unsexed fish).
If you want to try rearing the larvae I've got some info that may help, but for a simple overview:
-You need a larval rearing tank; a little tank with an air stone for flow is generally all that's needed, possibly with a decent light dependent on the species.
-You need larval food cultures; in this case, that means small copepods like
Parvocalanus crassirostris or similar.
-You need some small sieves/screens (like 45-50 microns or so) to feed only the tiniest pods at first, and you'll need to move up sizes to allow bigger pods as the fish grow. Eventually, you can transition them to larger foods like BBS and/or small pellets (like TDO Chromaboost or Otohime pellets).
It's definitely work to do, but
attempting (succeeding can be a different story) to rear the larvae isn't too complicated if you can maintain the feed cultures (pods/rots/BBS and phyto).
