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Help with Angelfish hatchings.


RobertE
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Hey guys,

So I have a mated pair of angelfish that produce eggs every 8 days or so. The problem is that I am having a difficult time getting the fry to survive past wiggler stage. I have had one successful spawn by keeping the eggs with the parents, but they ate the fry after laying another clutch of eggs and have eaten two other clutches when I tried to replicate that. They have had roughly 20 spawns so far, and I have tried various things to keep them alive including but not limited to: switching from methylene blue to peroxide, aerating at different rates, varying sizes of water changes, keeping them in a glass jar in the fish tank to keep the temperature the same.

I am getting discouraged but I don't want to give up yet. Any help or tips would be appreciated.

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I would let the parents keep trying. Eventually they get it right!

If you don't want to, I would make sure that you have flow in the tank or container that has the eggs.

If they are struggling after the wiggler stage, it is probably a lack of food. Maybe try feeding small foods, and often?

Hope that helps

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On 10/26/2020 at 7:28 PM, RobertE said:

Hey guys,

So I have a mated pair of angelfish that produce eggs every 8 days or so. The problem is that I am having a difficult time getting the fry to survive past wiggler stage. I have had one successful spawn by keeping the eggs with the parents, but they ate the fry after laying another clutch of eggs and have eaten two other clutches when I tried to replicate that. They have had roughly 20 spawns so far, and I have tried various things to keep them alive including but not limited to: switching from methylene blue to peroxide, aerating at different rates, varying sizes of water changes, keeping them in a glass jar in the fish tank to keep the temperature the same.

I am getting discouraged but I don't want to give up yet. Any help or tips would be appreciated.

@RobertE if you truly want to breed these angelfish then hang in there! By the sounds of it you have tried the most widely recommended approaches.  I think at this point you just have to be patient.  This sounds exactly like what I am going through with a pair of Tiger Turquoise.  I am doing my best to remain patient and let theses fish do their thing.  I am also keeping myself distracted with other fish breeding projects, fish room upgrades and staying organized with all the stuff I have accumulated in what seems like a short time.  

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I would say that if you are losing babies at the wiggler stage, then there is a lack of food. Feed them plenty of fresh hatch baby brine shrimp, you can also mix in some of the small micron dry foods such as Sera first bites. When you're feeding lots of food, you will also have to make sure to change the water and siphon out any leftover food, as it will quickly foul up the water.

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Adding to what Andy says, to me it seems as well potential lack of feed. Besides baby brine, if you have algae in one or more of your tanks, drop it in as its perfect for wigglers to feed on in my experience. Whilst not looking the best, having algae in breeding tanks usually ups the success rate in my experience.

Hope you will figure it out, would love to see the results here in photos!

 

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@RobertE are you saying that you see wiggling, then it just stops, with no sign of starting to free swim (like briefly lifting off whatever they are on)? I've only been through a couple of spawns, and I have given them freshly hatched baby brine shrimp, but only when they started to lift up and swim, not while they were still wiggling. I assume in that state they still have the yolk sack. 

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16 hours ago, Randy said:

@RobertE if you truly want to breed these angelfish then hang in there! By the sounds of it you have tried the most widely recommended approaches.  I think at this point you just have to be patient.  This sounds exactly like what I am going through with a pair of Tiger Turquoise.  I am doing my best to remain patient and let theses fish do their thing.  I am also keeping myself distracted with other fish breeding projects, fish room upgrades and staying organized with all the stuff I have accumulated in what seems like a short time.  

Hey Randy, big fan of the podcast. I have several other breeding projects, namely guppies, keyhole cichlids, and dwarf rainbows. Its all just a big waiting game for them to reach maturity.

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@Bill Several times I get them to be free swimming but they all die before taking in food. I have brine shrimp and I am now prepping infusoria for them. I understand that the young stay attached to the yolk sac for the first day or so and I try to wait around a day to start feeding them it. Thats what worked with my only successful spawn.

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@RobertE, I'm really interested in this, and what works for you because I may have a similar problem. A new pair of koi spawned in my quarantine tank, raised the fry, and luckily everything worked the first time. But I also have a pair that was in a community tank. For two spawns I was not in a position to do anything, and the cloud of free swimming fry disappeared overnight both times. I assumed the other fish in the tank ate them. Next spawn, I moved all the other fish out of the tank. Parents seemed to be raising them, and they even started eating baby brine shrimp and Hikari first bites. This was a small spawn, and slowly they started disappearing. I had a gravel bottom (worst size possible for trapping fry), so I wasn't sure how many died that way. Every instance I observed the parents (both male and female) collecting fry in their mouths it was to spit them back out with the group. Last time I saw like 20 left when I went to sleep, and the next morning they were all gone. 

I removed the gravel after that and they spawned again (very small spawn maybe 50), but the same thing happened again. Only this time it took them longer to go free swimming, and they were gone two days after that. Again, I saw the parents collecting them and spitting them out, so either they just died, or they ate them when I wasn't looking, but it wasn't because they laid a new batch of eggs. Did you observe yours taking care of the fry (spitting them out) and then suddenly eating them?

Next time they spawn I'm going to pull the eggs so that I can determine if they're dying on their own or not. 

Edited by Bill
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I’d say if you’re losing the fry after they hatched but still have a yoke sack in the wiggler stage And your feeding bbs. I’d highly recommend keeping a close eye on the water parameters. I had the same issue for months. And i was sure it wasn’t the water because I did weekly water changes every week and I was hatching Bristlenose fry in the same tank. It wasn’t till I lost a spawn of the rams the same way in the same tank. That I started really breaking down what was going on. I thought I had some sort of bacteria in the water. but nope I just had high no3.

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14 hours ago, RobertE said:

@Andy's Fish Den @Randy Would you know if the Aquarium Co-op baby fish food is a good replacement or supplement for brine?

 

The co-op's fry food is probably a little big for a first food. With angelfish, I never had success without giving baby brine as a first food, I think it's a combination of having movement and also the nutrition from them. I would even notice a big difference in growth rate if I would stop feeding baby brine too soon, they wouldn't grow as fast. Just like Cory has shown in videos, even baby brine is relished by adult fish as well, so when I have fry I hatch extra and feed to all my tanks.

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