Angels

A few days ago we brought home two Angelfish. They are juveniles, about the size of a quarter. Both were doing fine, actively exploring the 37 gallon tank and interacting peacefully with the three Mommy.

About 12 hours ago, yes at 3 AM, I did a water change, 11 gallons, which I estimate to be 30%. Shortly after Linda noticed on of the Angels seemed, in her words, glued to the tank's corner at the end opposite the filter. We have watched for a few hours and (s)he drifts for lack of a better word vertically up and sown the upper half of the tank. The Angel does appear to be nibbling at the corner, algae perhaps?

Test just now as follows:

Temp ----- 78F
PH 7.2
Amm --- 0
Nitrite -- 0
Nitrate - 5
GH ----- 249
KH ----- 132

The water used for the exchange was 2.5 gallons of boiled rainwater and 8.5 gallons of our well water. Our well water goes through a sediment filter, a carbon filter, and a UV bulb.

Should we have concern with this behavior or is the fish just stressed from the WC. The second Angel is swimming freely.

Oldspartan said:

A few days ago we brought home two Angelfish. They are juveniles, about the size of a quarter. Both were doing fine, actively exploring the 37 gallon tank and interacting peacefully with the three Mommy.

About 12 hours ago, yes at 3 AM, I did a water change, 11 gallons, which I estimate to be 30%. Shortly after Linda noticed on of the Angels seemed, in her words, glued to the tank's corner at the end opposite the filter. We have watched for a few hours and (s)he drifts for lack of a better word vertically up and sown the upper half of the tank. The Angel does appear to be nibbling at the corner, algae perhaps?

Test just now as follows:

Temp ----- 78F
PH 7.2
Amm --- 0
Nitrite -- 0
Nitrate - 5
GH ----- 249
KH ----- 132

The water used for the exchange was 2.5 gallons of boiled rainwater and 8.5 gallons of our well water. Our well water goes through a sediment filter, a carbon filter, and a UV bulb.

Should we have concern with this behavior or is the fish just stressed from the WC. The second Angel is swimming freely.

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That would beMolly not mommy. Back medication has loosened the tips of my fingers.

My angels always go through a minor behavior change when I do a water exchange. Often the water exchange triggers breeding behaviors, with all my clutches of fry, is that the right word, from eggs laid within 48 hours of a water change. Right now I would keep an eye on the angels but likely the angel has found a location it likes after exploring the other possibilities.

Your water seems a bit hard for angels but I doubt that is the issue at this time. I don't think the typical angels are very sensitive to water hardness like other South American cichlids. Others might disagree with my last point.

My experience with new angels has always been hit and miss. Our water parameters are great, not too much flow for them, drip acclimated etc etc. Seems like the smaller they are the more the percentage goes up that something will go wrong with them for us. They are finicky to say the least in my experience

Video of the fish?
Upload video to YouTube, then copy & paste the link here.
If you use a mobile phone to film the fish, hold the phone horizontally (landscape mode) so the footage fills the entire screen and doesn't have black bars on either end.

Were the tank lights on when you did the water change?
If not, the fish might have been asleep.

Do you aerate the water before adding it to the aquarium?
If not, it could be lacking oxygen and that can stress fish. Boiling water forces oxygen out, and well water is quite often oxygen deficient. Aerating the water for an hour before using it can get the dissolved gasses back into equilibrium so there are normal amounts of oxygen, nitrogen and carbon dioxide.

Angel left this mortal coil, was found floating on its side this morning.

I agree, my well water is O2 deficient and the boiled rainwater is as well. We add the water through a steralized, no bleach, colander which we move across the tank while adding the water. Also have two active air stones bubbling during the wc. Only run one test of time.

No light during the change but room lite was on for maybe 30 minutes prior. It casts a dawn like lite into the tank.

The only fish we have lost came from the lfs which for a couple reasons has lost our trust.

We are not accustomed to losing pets at a tender age. Our dogs cats and birds all lived long lives well past expected mortality.

I keep telling Linda the mortality is likely our ignorance but she is not having it.

You said they came in a few days ago - but it probably answers why.

Ceez said:

My experience with new angels has always been hit and miss. Our water parameters are great, not too much flow for them, drip acclimated etc etc. Seems like the smaller they are the more the percentage goes up that something will go wrong with them for us. They are finicky to say the least in my experience

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That’s been my experience with Angelfish too . If you get small young ones it’s hit or miss . They don’t seem able to tolerate being moved but the small ones that do make it are usually strong and long lived .

GaryE said:

You said they came in a few days ago - but it probably answers why.

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We waited about a week after they arrived at the store to take them.

I understand mortality and accept they had a rough journey. Linda has a more difficult time with it and her reaction often clouds my reaction.

As long as we did things right it is what it is, whispered out of Linda’s earshot.

Losses with new fish are upsetting, and are the dark side of the hobby. Most stores are happy to blame you, and to want those water readings. Meanwhile, the main morning activity of a well run store is removing the "deads" before they open their doors. They know what fish are suffering the effects of being too tightly packed to save money on shipping.
Badly run stores don't even bother.

@MuddyWaters … had a thread about receiving a group of small angels, and he had good success… I think his process was a little anal, but he had great success…

My experience, has been, when I had bad water ( alkaline ) I could get them to last a couple months, about half the time, but now that I have neutral RO water, I can pretty much just plop them in, with good results…

It’s nice to know what the water is like where they came from… your local fish shop might have similar water to you, unless they are using RO, or have tried to lower the ph of the tanks they were in like wild fish would need…

So if your water is significantly different than what the fish were used to either at the wholesaler, or LFS, it likely requires more work to acclimate them…

Smaller fish typically travel better than big fish, as they use less oxygen, and pollute the bag water less

A good trick is to test the water the fish came from, versus your tank water... It gives a good idea on how long and how tough on the fish it will be. It tells you how to acclimate them before introduction.

I always introduce young fish and invertebrates with my Patent pending "Drip-a-Fish" It has heat, aeration and flow control. So you can take your time.

I used it every time I introduced something since I restarted aquaria and suffered no loss and stressed behaviors at introduction.

Dripping some Nerites:

I got my fish from Angelmania.net. They have a very prescriptive method of acclimating the fish. They ship their fish about nickel size and say that juveniles require certain care after shipping, so they are adamant that you follow their process. See it here if you're interested.

When my fish arrived, they had taken an extra day in shipping and were ALL laying on their sides, looking dang near dead.

I emailed the seller and they told me to follow the method regardless. I did - I had prepared a 10 gallon quarantine tank for them (went and bought it- didn't have one prior).

For the first few days they looked horrible. I literally started wrapping a towel around the tank so they wouldn't see movement etc, and the seller told me to turn the light off in the tank too until the stress of shipment wore off.

It worked, though, and I can happily say that those fish are thriving today. They're growing well, and I think by July or August I'll end up having to re-home some of them (the seller sent me double the fish that I paid for!).

This is a link to post in my journal where the fish arrived describing how it went - I have pictures there also.

OH! One thing I forgot- they mentioned that the juvenile angels are especially susceptible to pathogens in the water that may not be a problem for any other fish- that's why they have the long (IMHO) quarantine period.

And extra day in shipping can be a problem. Heat packs, if used, can run out. Ammoina and co2 build up during shipping.

I do not need to read the directions from your seller. I would not follow them anyway. Most fish cannot be acclimated to anything in a matter of hours or even days. it actually can take a couple of weeks for acclimation to occur. If you tak to peole who import fish, most will tell you the best thing to do when they arrive is to plop and drop. that mean out of the bag and into the tank. Notrmally, that should be a quarantine tank.

I read a loy of research papers dealing with fish related issues. Quie often they start out by telling from where the fish weacquired and then mentions that they were acclimated for a few weeks or a month before the experiment began. Here is a perfect example (underlining is by me).

MATERIALS AND METHODS​

Animals.​

Zebrafish (Danio rerio) were purchased from a local pet supply store (PetsMart, Canada) and housed in two 40-liter aquaria in dechlorinated Hamilton tap water, which is considered moderately hard (Na+ 927 ± 16 μM, Ca2+ 946 ± 11 μM, Mg2+ 422 ± 17 μM, Cu2+ 2.1 ± 0.7 μg/l, pH 8.3), maintained at 28°C (hard water). The fish were allowed 1 wk to acclimate to the new tanks before experimentation.

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And here is a part of the Abstract from that study:

Craig, P.M., Wood, C.M. and McClelland, G.B., 2007. Gill membrane remodeling with soft-water acclimation in zebrafish (Danio rerio). Physiological genomics, 30(1), pp.53-60.

Abstract​

Little is known regarding the ionoregulatory abilities of zebrafish exposed to soft water despite the popularity of this model organism for physiology and aquatic toxicology. We examined genomic and nongenomic changes to gills of zebrafish as they were progressively acclimated from moderately hard freshwater to typical soft water over 7 days and held in soft water for another 7 days. Gills were sampled daily and mRNA expression levels of gill Na+-K+-ATPase (NKA) α1a subunit, epithelium calcium channel (ECaC), carbonic anhydrase-1 and 2 (CA-1, CA-2), Na+/H+ exchanger (NHE-2), V-type proton (H+)-ATPase, and copper transport protein (CTR-1) were quantified by real-time PCR. Changes in enzyme activities of gill NKA were determined and protein levels of NKA and ECaC were quantified by Western blotting. Levels of mRNA for ECaC increased fourfold after day 6, with an associated increase in ECaC protein levels after 1 wk in soft water. CA-1 and CA-2 exhibited a 1.5- and 6-fold increase in gene expression on days 6 and 5, respectively. Likewise, there was a fivefold increase in NHE-2 expression after day 6. Surprisingly, CTR-1 mRNA showed a large transient increase (over threefold) on day 6, while H+-ATPase mRNA did not change.......

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from https://journals.physiology.org/doi/full/10.1152/physiolgenomics.00195.2006

Acclimation in terms of weeks not hours and no dripping just being there. And here is another example"

Chung, K.S. Critical thermal maxima and acclimation rate of the tropical guppy Poecilla reticulata.
Hydrobiologia 462, 253–257 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1013158904036

Abstract​

Tropical guppies, Poecilia reticulata, collected from the canal of La Laguna Los Patos were acclimated over a four-week period at local water temperatures of 24–33 °C to determine their critical thermal maxima (CTM) and death points (DP), as criteria of thermal tolerance. In addition, individual thermal tolerance times at a lethal temperature of 38.5 °C were measured over 12 days for upward acclimation from 24 to 30 °C and over 16 days for downward acclimation from 30 to 24 °C to determine acclimation rate just before and after changing the acclimation temperatures. The CTM ranged from 38.95 to 40.61 °C and the average DP varied from 41.22 to 42.86 °C. Positive relationships were apparent between thermal tolerance and acclimation temperatures, and thus heat tolerance criteria (CTM and DP) were significantly different among acclimation temperatures. Individual heat tolerance times increased most rapidly during the first 6 hours of upward acclimation after transfer from 24 to 30 °C, continued to increase another 5 days and fluctuated after initial acclimation was completed. The heat tolerance times of fish transferred from 30 to 24 °C declined steadily over times, reaching a minimum at 14–16 days after transfer.

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from https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1013158904036

So science thinks of acclimation in a lot longer terms than most in the hobby think about. And the scientist actually have the equipment to measure it all in terms of physiological changes. And they are willing to euthanize fish to obtain the results in many cases.

Every time I read about people trying to acclimate fish in 30 minutes or a few hours my eyes start to spin. I know this to be the case for FW fish, I cannot say if it is similar for SW fish. They may need acclimation?

This kind academic stuff is beyond my ability to understand. Do not misunderstand, I appreciate the effort the effort, but in all honesty it is simply outside my knowledge base. I do not have the background. I also hope it is not necessary.

I do see here there are many of fishkeepers who have taken this way beyond the hobby stage, or maybe the hobby is simply an accoutrement to their educational background. I surely respect that and hope to lean on the knowledge base, but within parameters that meet my goals.

We love the idea of the fish room. We are excited for the process and finished product we envision. We are also aware we must expand what little we know into knowing a little more. I look at it in the same way I look at this machine I am pecking at. I have learned to use it within my needs. I keep it clean, protected, and upgrade as needed. I do not know how it works and only care that it does. I am learning to cycle a tank, both with and without fish. I have learned the very basics of the nitrogen cycle, water changes, gravel vacuuming, and am studying filtration and isolation as they are both a part of process.

Linda and I love animals, quite literally. They enhance our lives and give us something to care for. With that in mind our primary goals for this dining room becoming fish room is:

1. To have a resonable unified system that gives the finned creatures a safe and comfortable place to live in captivity. Linda says we will be fish herders, but she is more poetic than I am.
2. To make their living space our living space. The room is still a human room and needs to address the visual aesthetics of our comfort as well as the fishes.

We are hobbyists and have no pretense at being anything else.