Help Raising Angel Fry

[Uberhoust]

When I got my fish I had no plans on breeding them, but the few Angels I have seem to have other plans. I have been leaving the fry in the aquarium with the parents but within about 10 days all the fry are gone. Two batches of eggs ago I transferred about 30 fry from the parent's tank to a 10 gallon tank with some shrimp in it. Of that batch one survived, Junior, who is now living with 8 embers in another 10 gallon tank. My wife fell in love with the little angel and I have permission to fully try an raise a batch (I have taken over the kitchen with two tanks, infusoria cultures, and the microscope, with COVID we are the only people in the house).

With the last batch of fry I removed about 50% of the fry from the parents tank when they just started swimming and moved them into a cycled 10 gallon tank, bare bottomed but with established plants and substrate in bowls and pots. I had started culturing infusoria prior to this transfer but all I seem to be able to raise in large numbers is a smallish cilliate<sp> about 0.05 mm long which I have been giving to the fry, I have been trying to get rotifers growing, but that hasn't been successful. The fry seem to eat them but were not thriving and the last died last night after 2 weeks.

I will have another batch starting in about 10 to 20 days if the trend continues and I would like to successfully raise a number of these and am looking for the reasonable way to do so and hoping some people on the forum have the expertise to help with some guidance, below is what I have discovered so far:

1. First Bites doesn't seem to work. Junior will eat it now but the younger fry ignore it.
2. Ground flakes don't seem to work. Primarily fouls the tank. I do use this with Junior and the Embers
3. Infusoria seemed to help at first, got better survival than the ones left with the parents but after a while they were all just scooting along the bottom.
4. Read that Brine shrimp Nauplii are a good source of food
5. Read that Vinegar Eels (nematodes?) are good
6. Read that Micro Worms are good
7. Read boiled egg yolk is good

Each seems to have some issue and some benefit. I am looking for a reasonable method not necessarily the absolute best, as well as some tips and hints. I have brine shrimp eggs on order and I am willing to order starting cultures for anything else if it might work better. If I don't make this round of fry then the next one would be ok.

Tanks and Parameters:
Parents Tank

1. 37 Gal.
2. 78 F
3. dKH and dGH < 2
4. pH 6.6
5. Ammonia / Nitrite 0.0
6. Nitrate 15 ppm

Fry's Tank

1. 10 Gal
2. 80 F
3. dKH and dGH < 2
4. pH 6.8
5. Ammonia / Nitrite 0.0
6. Nitrate 5 ppm

 

[Colin_T]

If the fry lasted 10 days in the adult's tank and then disappeared, they probably got eaten by the other fish or shrimp in the tank when the babies started exploring.

If the babies survive to 10 days, they should take newly hatched brineshrimp and will thrive on that.

Don't separate baby cichlids from their parents because they need to learn things like parental care from their parents.

The following link has information on culturing live foods for baby fish. You can try green water and infusoria for the first two weeks. Add newly hatched brineshrimp after a week. If that fails then use boiled egg yolk for the first 2 weeks and add newly hatched brineshrimp after 1 week.

Make sure you keep the water clean and warm.
Don't make the rearing tank too deep during the first few weeks because the fry have to use energy to find food in large volumes of water.
Feed the babies 3-5 times per day.
(261) Back to Basics when Breeding Fish | Tropical Fish Forums

 

[ghyti]

Congratulations on the parent raisers, relatively rare these days. If you really want to raise the young siphon them out into a small tank. If the 10 gallon is all you have, leave it bare bottom and about half full of water. A 2-1/2 gallon tank is an ideal size for baby Angels if you have one. Get some brine shrimp eggs and hatch your own baby brine shrimp. That is the only food that they will eat consistently. They need the movement to trigger the eat response. Feed them twice a day at most, they will overeat and harm themselves if fed too often. Make sure you feed the parents well. Weak parents make weak babies.

 

[Uberhoust]

Thanks all for the replies. In the parents tank we have a female blue stream goby who does seem to like to take a nibble on the young ones. She is going to be hard to put into one of the other tanks, but I might give it a go. I find with the Angels in general if I change something I get a number of behavioral issues, so when things work out I tend to leave them, I don't think moving the Goby will cause an issue but I will have to be cautious.

Here is what I plan to do with the next batch, which should be soon (I will be splitting the young between staying with the parents and moving them to a separate tank):

1. Continue to culture the protozoans, I still have some time here, but I will have to make the cultures larger, and try to change the population to a larger type of protozoan
2. Make changes to the big tank to support moving the Goby to that tank, primarily hiding/digging areas.
3. Start a green water culture, I may have to do this indoors, I have lily ponds outside but they are habitat for things like dragonfly larva and giant water beetles. I was considering just upping the lights in the parents aquarium to start an algae bloom, but I think that would be hard to control.
4. Setup and practice raising brine shrimp Nauplii.
5. Setup smaller new tank for 50% of the young ones.

I have two questions:

1. For a rearing tank should I be looking at a shallow large surface area tank or a more common form factor factor tank.
2. My one surviving baby angel seems to be doing quite well with the embers but he seems to rest on the bottom of the tank, sleeping?, every evening, first time I saw this I thought he was dying. Is this normal behavior?

 

[Guyb93]

Agreed with a live if a cichlids keeps fry for more than 2 days in my experience they intended to keep them and there deaths are other fish , I’d with take the fry (if you want 100 fish) and raise them yourself or put the pair in there own tank but again your going to have surviving fry , honestly if you have no plan for fry and don’t want them just leave them where they are , I’m in a similar situation with my electric blue acara they breed keep them two weeks then lose them over again , I raised a few for a experience and kept one but only once lol

 

[ghyti]

Green water doesn't work for Angel fry, the cleaner the water the better.. Better to spend your efforts on raising baby brine shrimp. A common tank is fine for rearing. The 10 would work if you start out half full and gradually increase the volume as they grow. Depends on how many there are in the batch. !0 or 20 will do well in a 10 gallon for a couple months before they will need a bigger tank. 2 or 3 hundred will crowd a 10 gallon pretty quickly.

 

[Uberhoust]

If I am successful with the raising of Angel fry I will setup another large tank(s) to house them, it would be nice to have a tank of fish I raised. I am still planning on attempting to raise them with the parents and without, more for my experience than any other reason. I have no intensions of keeping the Angels in a little 10 for any length of time.

 

[Uberhoust]

Things are moving along on the angel raising front. The parents have already laid eggs again, I have started raising some brine shrimp. I don't know why I never raised brine shrimp before so far it seems pretty easy, it took less than 1.5 hours to build and setup the hatching mechanism. The most expensive part was the brine shrimp cysts, they are more expensive in Canada, I am using the 2 litre soda water bottles. Tonight I will reduce the water volume in the tank for raising some of the Angels on their own. I also have a much larger culture of protozoans ready. Keeping my fingers crossed.

 

[kribensis12]

Keep us updated! Love to see pictures of baby fish and their proud parents!

 

[ghyti]

You don't need the baby brine shrimp yet. Eggs take three days to hatch, and an additional 5 days to go free swimming. You don't feed until they are all free swimming. Consider this batch of baby brine shrimp as a practice run and feed them to other fish.

 

[Uberhoust]

I will try to take some pictures this evening. In regards to the brine shrimp now I am working things out on how the timing will work for me. I have 4 tanks of fish so I have a lot of potential use for shrimp hatched before the Angels are ready. The embers would like to have a treat .

 

[Uberhoust]

Took some pictures this afternoon. A lot of issues with reflections. The shrimp hatched up fast with the first being available 18 hours after starting the hatch. The embers and junior had a big feed this morning.

The fry have mostly hatched and are now stuck to their driftwood piece that they parents always use. The banded Angel is the male and the blue gray angel is the female, she wasn't as cooperative. I built the stand for the shrimp hatchery in great haste but it seems to be working well.

 

[Uberhoust]

Well I am down to two fry. I know what is killing them in the parent's tank and that is the Goby, once they started free swimming the Goby would swim around the fringes and eat the ones furthest from the parents, once down to 10 or so the parents gave up. The parents have already started prepping another site to lay more eggs, it seems like they start a new batch every 3 to 5 weeks.

I also transferred about 75 fry to a 5 gallon tank and have been feeding them recently hatched brine shrimp, I start a new batch of shrimp every day and end up with nauplii within 18 hours, feed the excess to my embers and other tetras. I have seen the fry catching nauplii, and eating them. I have also seen the bellies of the fry orange with the small shrimp in their stomachs. Unfortunately they are still dying off some with full bellies, I am being as careful as possible to ensure I don't get the capsules in the water.

The specs on the tank are:

1. Temp 77 degrees
2. pH 7.4 - This is really high and I wasn't expecting this. I suspect it is my fault for not properly rinsing the brine shrimp nauplii.
3. NH3 - 0 ppm
4. NO2 - 0 ppm
5. NO3 - < 5 ppm

I initially started with a Fluval UH1 filter in the tank but it has way too much flow, the sides were guarded with a 200 mesh fabric so that the fry wouldn't get sucked in. I now am running without a filter but doing daily water changes 40 to 50%, easy enough for 5 gallons.

For the next batch I am going to do the following again 1/2 the fry with the parents and 1/2 in a separate aquarium:

1. Move the Goby to the main tank and hope she doesn't entirely re-landscape the tank. This will mean only the parents are in the tank.
2. Purchase a small sponge filter and another air pump to run it. Had to get permission from the missus on that one because she hates the sound of air pumps and the tanks are spread between our kitchen and family room.
3. Thoroughly rinse the nauplii before introducing them to the tank.

The fry seem to slow down become less active then just die. I am surprised how poor my success is with these fry , I seem to do good with the adult and juvenile fish but not so good with the fry.

 

[Uberhoust]

Unfortunately the last two fry are no longer . Mom and Dad Angels have started prep for their next batch and I am too by am building a "digging" area for when I move the Goby to the main tank. Junior the one survivor from three batches ago is now larger than my embers and enjoyed the left over nauplii.

 

[ghyti]

A real conundrum as to why they are dying off. You seem to be doing everything right. Two thoughts. 1- could be too much food. They will overeat themselves to death, they don't know when to stop. Usually when they start eating(ie: orange bellies) they are on the road to survival. If they still have orange bellies before the second feeding of the day, don't feed them as much. 2- could possibly be lack of oxygen. Without a filter to agitate the surface there is not much gas exchange to get oxygen into the water. The sponge filter should help but remember it won't be cycled for several weeks.