My first Wrigglers today!

[Rxhart]

New to forum.  Old to fish keeping - 

Today I am excited because my very first angelfish attempt at breeding resulted in wrigglers today at day 3.  I am pretty excited!  Must be 300 of them!  Most of what I have done with my breeding pair of angels I learned on this channel, so very appreciative.  Will let you know how it goes.  Fingers crossed, water changed, fry station ready, brine ship cooking!

[xXInkedPhoenixX]

 Awesome! Welcome to the forum @Rxhart. Just so you know, we like pictures here. 🙃

[Minanora]

Welcome to the community! And yes, we LOVE pictures here. 😛 

 

Especially photos of fish, plants, and inverts. 😄 

[nabokovfan87]

Welcome! Congratulations 🙂

[EvesFishJourney]

Woohoo baby angels!! As everyone else is saying, yes, please post some pictures! 

[TheSwissAquarist]

On 11/6/2022 at 5:30 PM, Rxhart said:

New to forum.  Old to fish keeping - 

Today I am excited because my very first angelfish attempt at breeding resulted in wrigglers today at day 3.  I am pretty excited!  Must be 300 of them!  Most of what I have done with my breeding pair of angels I learned on this channel, so very appreciative.  Will let you know how it goes.  Fingers crossed, water changed, fry station ready, brine ship cooking!

What kind of angels are they?

Welcome to the forum!

[Rxhart]

Black Lace male and mostly white Koi female, I think.

[Rxhart]

These two are quite the pair.  They spawn every 10 days.  Eggs gone on day 2 every time since I got them.  This time I caught them at it and was able to move the eggs to a container.  Got to wiggler stage, but something must have happened on day 4 as I tried to move them to a fry holding system- not sure what.  I will try a new technique next spawn moving eggs to a small tank.  Determined to get it right and get these 2 some offspring.  They live in a 75 gallon community tank with a manager ie of mostly catfish, rummy nose and  danios.

I also  have a tremendous happy guppy party tank with tons of beautiful incandescent blue offspring growing happily, a puffer only tank with 8 pea puffers ( hours of fun) and my favorite the red betta “Ruby” with his very own hunting tank.  All personality plus.

rh

 

ps- I read that the fry upon becoming free swimmers must make it to the surface to get air for swim bladders immediately or they will die, hence the shallow fry system.  If I use a 2-3 gallon tank, will this not occur?  I was worried and moved them I think prematurely to the fry container from the egg container on day 4.  The methods I have seen and read about are quite different, and so getting the wiggler to free swimming stage right will be my next endeavor.  If anyone has had success, I would love to hear your techniques!

[Rxhart]

[AllFishNoBrakes]

Hey @Rxhart! Welcome to the forum! I breed some Angels. Here what I do:

-When I see my pair(s) have spawned, I’ll pull the slate/leaf/whatever they bred on once I’m sure they’re done spawning. Typically, once the pair is fanning the eggs with their fins I’ll pull it. 
-Slate/leaf/whatever goes into a 2.5 gallon tank with an air stone. This tank gets filled with half fresh water (dechlorinated) and half water from the tank the eggs were spawned in. 2 drops of Methylene Blue, a good chunk of Java moss, a couple little snails, and then I do nothing. The methylene blue helps stop fungus, and if fungus does occur it stops it from spreading. 
-Wiggler stage comes next. Again, I do nothing. Considering some eggs hatch at different rates I just keep an eye. 
-As soon as they start become free swimming I do a 50% water change to get the meth blue out of the water. I’ll also use a little pipette or turkey baster and do my best to pull out any fungused eggs, eggs that didn’t hatch, etc. 
-The yolk sac the new free swimming fry have will last them a couple of days. There is no need to feed until the yolk sac is gone. Feeding here will only foul your water. 
-Once the yolk sac is gone I feed Hikari First Bites for the first couple days. Once in the morning and once at night. A little goes a long way! I use a cut down straw by gathering some powder in the end of the straw, and then a gentle tap or two is all you need. 
-After a couple of days I’ll start feeding some baby brine shrimp. First bites in the morning, BBS at night. 
-Once I start feeding I’ll do a 50% water change every day, or at least every other day to ensure the water quality stays up for the fry. 
-I don’t have fry trays/a fry system, so once I’m ready to move the fry they either go to a 10 gallon tank, or in breeder boxes. 
-From here I just continue to feed twice a day and raise them up!

Feel free to ask any questions! I love helping other hobbyists!

[Rxhart]

Gorgeous results!!!! Your black angel looks like my male.  I hope to get such gorgeous results.

one question. I suppose I was misinformed on 1 thing- that the new fry have to be in shallow water to go to the surface and gulp air at free swim stage.  Fascinating that you use 1/2 fresh and 1/2 tank water-  makes perfect sense.  I think what happened with my wrigglers is the water change was too early in development for them to handle.  Not sure.  But it seems like hands off approach is best.  Have you ever had any luck with them being parents themselves?  Mine seem so interested in the eggs and I wonder if in a tank by themselves they could give it a go.  The male is so full of bravado!  Maybe I will experiment by doing next spawn myself and the next one after that let them try to raise them in a breeder tank.  Thanks for the great advice!!!!!!!!

Love this forum.  Doesn’t make me feel like such a fish nerd when there are kindred spirits out there in the world.  

just set up 4 more tanks to cure for future projects- or just more angels.  Such fun.  See below- my garage with new tank setup.

-Rh

 

l

[Rxhart]

Here is the 75

[AllFishNoBrakes]

@Rxhart The first spawn or two I let tank become the thunder dome. It was pretty neat to see the parents fan the eggs, move the wigglers around, and protect the newly free swimming fry, but ultimately I wasn’t set up to raise them at that time and I was hoping the fry would be eaten and that’s what ended up happening. 
 

These days I’ll pull the spawns, and raise just a handful of babies as it’s much easier to hit up my LFS with say 20 Angels than to try and move 200 of them. Here’s some pics from when I let the parents try to raise the fry with other predators in the tank 

[Rxhart]

Thanks- sounds like a reasonable plan.

[Rxhart]

On 11/11/2022 at 10:48 PM, AllFishNoBrakes said:

On 11/11/2022 at 10:48 PM, AllFishNoBrakes said:

@Rxhart The first spawn or two I let tank become the thunder dome. It was pretty neat to see the parents fan the eggs, move the wigglers around, and protect the newly free swimming fry, but ultimately I wasn’t set up to raise them at that time and I was hoping the fry would be eaten and that’s what ended up happening. 
 

These days I’ll pull the spawns, and raise just a handful of babies as it’s much easier to hit up my LFS with say 20 Angels than to try and move 200 of them. Here’s some pics from when I let the parents try to raise the fry with other predators in the tank 

 

 

Update:  have had a couple of spawns since I last talked to you.  Last one jan6 th -so they are baking in methylene blue. 

Spawn before that was Dec 27 th and they made it up to 13 days.  So success moved from 4 days to 10 days to 13 days survival.  I tried the tray system , but they just didn’t seem to have enough strength to make it to free swimming.  I am puzzled as to what I am doing wrong.  Also , most people say 7 days to free swimming and mine weren’t even

at least they continue to spawn every 2 weeks and if my male can take all the aggression of them female, they will probably continue.

even tried 2x a day water changes for the last one which got them to 13 days.  Maybe I shouldn’t have moved them to the Dean tray system.

I read it is a lot of trial and error, so I am patient, but it breaks my heart each time they succumb.

Any help would be appreciated as I would love to be successful.

Have thought about moving parents to their own tank but I only have 10 gallon tanks  available and spawning is not this issue.

 

rebecca

 

[AllFishNoBrakes]

Hey @Rxhart. While I can’t say for sure why you’re having issues, I can definitely provide my thoughts and what I do. 
 

I’ve often wished I had the space to try the tray system! Strange that it’s not working for you. 
 

I guess my first question is, what are you feeding the fry, and how often? I feed waaaay below what people say you “have to do” or even “should do” and have pretty good success. 
 

Let’s start there and see where we go!

 

Also, apologies for the delay in my response. I’m usually much quicker; work has been insane.