In case you've never seen banjo catfish (Bunocephalus coracoideus) courtship on video

[bekateen]

EDIT: I've added a newer video in one of the later posts to this thread that shows a more complete picture of the banjo catfish courtship... (still without successful egg laying, though). That video is here: http://www.planetcatfish.com/forum/view ... 36#p292036. Cheers, Eric

Hi All,

Recently, I caught two of my banjo cats involved in courtship behavior just after lights on in their tank, a 36-gallon Aqueon bowfront community tank. The video shows a gravid female repeatedly approach a male, trying to coax him into spawning. At around 25-30 seconds into the video, the male shows some positive response, but in the end nothing happened during my observation.

I frequently catch these fish in the act when the lights first turn on in the morning, between about 5:30 - 6:00 AM. I assume that they have been doing this for a while during the night, but I'm not sure. This happened on a workday, so I didn't have time to check the spawning mop and plants for eggs before work. On days when they do spawn, if I don't remove the eggs within an hour or so, they are all eaten by the other tankmates.

The circling behavior along the glass is rather common, even when they aren't courting. The courtship behavior is the part where the female targets the male when she settles down and she tries to coax him to follow her back up into the water. I've witnessed actual spawning only once before, as the male followed the female and she explosively released her eggs; hopefully I can catch that on video for you in the future - it's pretty cool.

Enjoy!

Cheers, Eric

Here's the link in case the video doesn't display: Female banjo catfish (Bunocephalus coracoideus) courts a male (unsuccessfully)

[jac]

That is quite cool Eric! I haven't seen anything like this before with Banjo cats.
I have two, male and female but never seen this behavior.
Have you ever had fry from them?

[bekateen]

Hi Jac,

Thank you; that compliment means a lot, coming from you with all your experience.

Yes, our banjos have spawned at least a dozen times over the last three years. We've sold about 100 or more juveniles to our local fish stores. Most of the time, we recover just 3-5 eggs stuck to plants. The hatch rate and survival rate of fry is excellent. The one time I witnessed spawning, I managed to recover a lot of eggs, and we raised about 45 banjos to sellable size from that one spawn (but note: that number, while high for our yield, was still a small fraction of all the eggs the mother expelled into the tank - I couldn't even track them all, as they drifted everywhere very quickly on the strong current in the tank). If you really want to raise lots of banjos, you can't breed them in a community tank like we do; the parents need their own tank, without egg eaters as tankmates.

I think we have 5-6 adults currently; I don't honestly know because we almost never see them all at once.

The eggs are tiny and green colored. They drift down from mom and stick to anything they contact, including mom and dad. Sometimes eggs are stuck to the fish, but not on purpose and not on stalks, as is the case for some other banjo and related species.

I feed the parents lots of live blood worms / Tubifex worms for a few days, then do a big water change. Wake up early, around 5:30 AM, and turn on their tank light (well, actually, it's on a timer, so I just make sure I'm in the room when the timer activates the light ). If the adults are spawning, they will continue to do so for a few minutes, and then they'll rapidly dive into the sand. If they're not spawning when lights go on, they'll stop and freeze in place for a bit, then dive into sand to hide.

Cheers, Eric

P.S., I believe I've posted it here somewhere before, so I won't post the video in a frame, but if you haven't seen it, here is a video of a banjo egg at the moment of hatching: Banjo catfish (Bunocephalus coracoideus) egg hatches.

[bekateen]

Also, it is my impression that when eggs get covered to sand, they are much less likely to hatch. So I have the best success recovering and hatching eggs when the eggs are stuck to objects that I can simply lift out of the tank and transfer to a hatchery. For example, I cover the bottom of the tank with lots of small potted plants, small tank decorations, spawning mops, etc. I don't like to try to pick or scrape the eggs off objects - just move the whole object into the hatchery. Unlike cory eggs, these don't lift off the glass safely if that's where they're stuck.

Cheers, Eric

[smitty]

Thanks for treating the forum to the video. You must be doing something right because even though they are a mating pair. They can only do it if cared for properly. Keep up the good work.

[bekateen]

Thank you, Smitty. Honestly, I had no idea, expectation, or plan to spawn those fish. I didn't even think it was possible!

Cheers, Eric

[Narwhal72]

Thanks for sharing the video. I have been half heartedly trying to spawn banjos for awhile now. I think you have just rekindled my interest in them!

Andy

[bekateen]

Go for it! The babies are really neat.

Cheers, Eric

[catfishchaos]

I'll be vigilant about this behaviour with my

Amaralia hypsiura

although I would be surprised if it was similar given the different genus and all.

Great to see actual footage of what it looks like though, keep up the good work Eric!

[bekateen]

Oh my goodness. Thursday morning I awoke to THREE banjos trying to spawn - two big gravid females and a male. This male is the same male which suffered from a cyst of aquarium sand in its gill cavity (Help! Sick banjo catfish with cyst or growth); at some moments in the video you can see a residual reddened scar and bulge on the male's right ventral gill area where I performed the surgery to remove the sand.

This video was filmed over a 15 minute period. Surprisingly, the behaviors observed continued for over a half hour after I stopped filming... probably closer to an hour. Usually the behaviors stop within minutes of the lights coming on. And yet, still no eggs released throughout this whole time... Doh!

Coincidentally (or actually not, I suspect), the corys were going crazy in the tank at the same time, and about 2 hours after this activity my C. aeneus laid hundreds of eggs around the tank, and my C. trilineatus were busy too. I suspect that some fish (probably the female banjos) were releasing sex pheromones in the water and the pheromones were getting all the corys excited too.

Hopefully in the coming days I'll actually get to video egg release.... I can't imagine that this will go on much longer before something happens! LOL

Cheers, Eric

P.S., At around 45 seconds, you can see two other banjo cats buried in the gravel, completely disinterested in the frenzy going on above them. Why aren't they participating?!?

Two female banjo catfish (Bunocephalus coracoideus) court a male (unsuccessfully)

[Narwhal72]

Fascinating. Can't wait to try it myself.

[Creamsicle]

This is unbelievably neat. I've never even seen Banjo cats on footage, look at them go!
Very beautiful fish and the tank is very nice as well. Good luck with the babies!

[pleconut]

Some, however, describe them as boring staying hidden in the sand most of the time, they should watch this, good luck if you continue to save some eggs from the community tank, and have a chance at raising more fry.

[coelacanth]

There some more footage on the CSG Facebook page last night of a couple of our display fish getting jiggy.

[bekateen]

I see your photos of eggs on the CSG page. Again, congratulations! Good luck with the eggs.

Myself, I've had mediocre success hatching eggs coated with any substrate (sand in my case), but really excellent hatching with clean eggs stuck to leaves and tank decorations. Please let us know your hatching rate.

Cheers, Eric

[coelacanth]

There has been hatching in all three vessels we set up. One was a clump of floating plants covered in eggs (including some Echinodorus plantlets with fibrous roots), one contained those eggs we'd removed individually from the plants at the bottom, the third contained all the substrate with eggs mixed in. I'd say we have at least a hundred, which probably represents a small fraction of the spawn.

[bekateen]

Wow, awesome job! (both to you and to your banjos).