Angelfish are not Necessarily Monogamous

[Uberhoust]

I have read many articles on angelfish that state they are monogamous when given the choice, especially when they choose their mates. My personal experience is outside this norm, I have one actively breeding male in a tank of 8 angels, who has been spawning with one of two females. He has spawned three times, the first two times with one female and the third time with a different female. All spawnings have occurred during a period of time, 3.5 months, without any major interruption in the tank or a change in the fish living in the tank. After the first spawning with the first female, the two breeding females started competing with each other, mostly with chasing behaviors where each female would try to keep the other female away from the breeding male.

Junior (leucistic? - gold tan overtone missing but has solid black stripes, bluish iridescence) - Goldilocks (Standard smoke with the normal silver background, ie slight gold tan color)

Junior - Goldilocks

Junior - Benita (Wild form - striped silver)

Junior is from the first batch of fry I got from my currently spawning angels, Ben (Wild form) and Bluet (Blue smoke). Goldilocks and Benita are from the third batch of fry I got from the same parents.

In all cases the eggs were fertilized but did not survive past the initial wiggler stage due to predation in the community tank. As well Junior tended to treat the two females similarly, and did not show preference from one to the other. Additionally none of the females showed any interest in the other breeding male angel even though he is larger.

All spawnings were personally witnessed.

Has anyone else seen behavior such as this outside of isolating the spawning pair?

Edited due to sentence fragment.

 

[Byron]

I have read much the same. I believe this is common with other cichlid species too. Even a bonded pair can suddenly divorce.

 

[itiwhetu]

I have never believed in the bonded pair statements with Cichlids. We used to select the Angel's we wanted to spawn together and they would just spawn.

 

[ghyti]

Not unusual at all. The female picks when to spawn and who she wants to do it with. The males will spawn with anybody. I have three females spawning with the same male right now.

 

[Uberhoust]

Thanks for the responses. I was surprised when it occurred but now I know it isn't unusual behavior.

 

[dhjaksu]

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I have read many articles on angelfish that state they are monogamous when given the choice, especially when they choose their mates. My personal experience is outside this norm, I have one actively breeding male in a tank of 8 angels, who has been spawning with one of two females. He has spawned three times, the first two times with one female and the third time with a different female. All spawnings have occurred during a period of time, 3.5 months, without any major interruption in the tank or a change in the fish living in the tank. After the first spawning with the first female, the two breeding females started competing with each other, mostly with chasing behaviors where each female would try to keep the other female away from the breeding male.

Junior (leucistic? - gold tan overtone missing but has solid black stripes, bluish iridescence) - Goldilocks (Standard smoke with the normal silver background, ie slight gold tan color)

Junior - Goldilocks

Junior - Benita (Wild form - striped silver)

Junior is from the first batch of fry I got from my currently spawning angels, Ben (Wild form) and Bluet (Blue smoke). Goldilocks and Benita are from the third batch of fry I got from the same parents.

In all cases the eggs were fertilized but did not survive past the initial wiggler stage due to predation in the community tank. As well Junior tended to treat the two females similarly, and did not show preference from one to the other. Additionally none of the females showed any interest in the other breeding male angel even though he is larger.

All spawnings were personally witnessed.

Has anyone else seen behavior such as this outside of isolating the spawning pair?

Edited due to sentence fragment.

well I have 1 male and 5 females. he has a favourite female he spends most of his time with but he never spawns with the same female twice in a row. every spawn is with a different female than the spawn before. he likes to spawn weekly and it takes longer than that for a female to fill up with eggs again so he just spawns with whatever female is full of the most eggs at the time. I can tell this because its always whatever female has the largest bulge where the eggs are stored inside the body.

there are 2 females that seem to regenerate their eggs faster though so generally he alternates between them and occasionally spawns with one of the other 3. he seems to favour the pearlscale females. he's a blue chocolate smokey. his favourite female is like a golden marble pearlsale. his second favourite is a platinum pearlscale.

they are in a heavily stocked community tank so the eggs only ever make it to wrigglers before being eaten.