Angelfish Breeding

[Jeremy_fishguy]

Hey everyone, I'm setting up this thread to document and share my journey with my beautiful angelfish - Angel (f/ Silver with black bands) and Patches (m/Koi).

The story starts (accidentally) here on another thread I had asking about the fins on Angel.

Angel was gifted to me by my best friend who knows literally nothing about fish I'd had her for about 8 mnths before I confirmed she was a female, when she lay eggs! My girlfriend and I were SO surprised and excited! As detailed on the other thread we found her a boyfriend and the rest is history.

We've had 5 spawns so far in the 4ft community tank:

1. Eggs eaten by fish

2. Eggs eaten by fish/falling do to flow

3. developed to wriggler stage but were eaten

4. developed to fry but we were away to the weekend and came back to no fry

Spawn five is the current project. With a Covid Lockdown in Melbourne Australia, my girlfriend and I headed back to her family house, however, couldnt bare to neglect another spawn. Whilst the spawn was not completely off their egg sacks we pulled most but not all from the 4ft and took them with us. Its been so cool to watch them, and even over the curse of today they have developed so much. They had their first meal today (a powder, cant remember what brand) and the BBS are on their way, cant wait to see them smash their first BBS meal tomorrow.  

My girlfriend and I are so stoked and really really loving the breeding project :))

Hope youre all doing well - pictures and updates to come

[Fish Folk]

Best wishes! If you’ve not come by it before, here’s an older thread on our Angelfish breeding BAP submission.

 

[anewbie]

There is little chance of the parents guarding once the frys become free swimming ( a few days after wriggler) so if you want to raise them you need to either isolate the parents or take them while wrigglers and raise them yourself. I have parents in a large community tank that can routinely get them to free swimming but can't keep up with them after that. Also it helps them a lot if you leave the light on in the room. It doesn't need to be bright just not pitch black.

[Jeremy_fishguy]

5 hours ago, anewbie said:

There is little chance of the parents guarding once the frys become free swimming ( a few days after wriggler) so if you want to raise them you need to either isolate the parents or take them while wrigglers and raise them yourself. I have parents in a large community tank that can routinely get them to free swimming but can't keep up with them after that. Also it helps them a lot if you leave the light on in the room. It doesn't need to be bright just not pitch black.

Ah, I havent heard about having light on for them? Whats the rationale behind that?

Yeah, I think it would be so cool to have the parents raise the fry all by themselves, but I think it could only really feasibly be done if they were in a tank by themselves. Maybe Ill give it a crack one day.

5 hours ago, Fish Folk said:

Best wishes! If you’ve not come by it before, here’s an older thread on our Angelfish breeding BAP submission.

 

Thanks for this, ill have a squiz

[anewbie]

My guess is that the light  makes them see potential predators a bit better. They can probably sense movement in the water but I'm guessing the light gives them a chance to react faster. My tank has a lot of potential predators with tetra and loaches. Fishes have fairly good vision - just hold your hand up and move it from right to left when outside the tank. 

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This is my tank and you can see some of the potential predators but hte loaches like to hide during the day and there are a lot of loaches in this tank:

 

 

[Jeremy_fishguy]

2 hours ago, anewbie said:

My guess is that the light  makes them see potential predators a bit better. They can probably sense movement in the water but I'm guessing the light gives them a chance to react faster. My tank has a lot of potential predators with tetra and loaches. Fishes have fairly good vision - just hold your hand up and move it from right to left when outside the tank. 

-

This is my tank and you can see some of the potential predators but hte loaches like to hide during the day and there are a lot of loaches in this tank:

 

 

WOW i LOVE your tank! That is serious so gorgeous! I love how dense it is, your fish must thrive

[Jeremy_fishguy]

The little babies got their first meal of BBS today.

Unfortunately, due to me spilling a completed batch of bbs the day before they were off their yolks (GRRRRR), they had to wait a day before getting on the bbs, eating a powder instead. I notices SUCH a difference with feeding the BBS though they LOVED it!

My sieve came in the mail today so I'm very excited to be churning out BBS and feeding to my babies :)) 

PS. Excuse the reflections in the photo ://

[Jeremy_fishguy]

Alrighty crew,

Ive just changed from the ocean nutrition brine shrimp eggs mixed with salt to the ones not mixed with salt. Ive also scaled up my operation to hatch out a lot more BBS.

BUT, my issue is that I dont feel as though the shells are separating very well from the BBS. Im wondering if anyone else has had similar issues and how they overcame them.

Cheers!

[anewbie]

I use this device which has no issue with shells:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B079C6BN2B

[Jeremy_fishguy]

Thanks @anewbie. How much bbs do you get from that because theyre kinda small arent they?

[anewbie]

More than enough for 50 frys for a week. Thing is that the bbs is only good for about 48 hours unless you refridge it (as the bbs grow they consume their egg sack reducing the nutrient). Since I never refridge it i only used a fraction of a scoop which easily lasted 48 hours - but yes it is small. We feed bbs because we need something small that fry can eat - but a lot of hatcher can be used for raising adult brine shrimp for larger fishes.

[Jeremy_fishguy]

So the eggs seem to the falling and collecting at the bottom, does this mean that they haven’t hatched??

Ive let the bottle settle and the waters almost clear now with all the eggs in the cap 😕