Please Help With Angelfish...

[saracorley2006]

my female angelfish has just laid a clutch of eggs, i would like to know what care i can give the eggs and the parents, this is their first batch and i really would like to keep the eggs with the parents if possible but to also have some of them hatch.

thanks for any information given.

 

[Canis-Equus]

Hiya

Ive done what you are wanting to do....

Sadly i suspect if you havent moved the eggs elsewhere by now and have turned the tank lights off for the night, the eggs will have been eaten already, either by the parents or by someone else.

If NOT..... you need another tank - you wont raise these in a community tank and are extremely unlikely to raise them even with just their parents.

So, another tank - i was lucky in that i had an empty 12g tank, so my eggs went in there with an air stone bubbling slowly near them to keep the water moving past them. I left the filter in at this stage (as i didnt have any anti fungal to put in the tank).

I then carefully picked off any duff eggs - these are the ones which appear white - if you leave them the fungus will spread to the neighbouring eggs - i carefully picked mine off with a saddlers awl which you probably dont have, a cocktail stick or toothpick would do, and a very steady hand.

They should hatch on day 3 ish, and become wigglers - they stick to the thing they hatched on, tank bottom and sides. And wiggle. They dont need food yet they have a yolk sac which feeds them. Now is time to start sorting out your kit for hatching brine shrimp.

Before they become free swimming, id remove any strong filters - you can use a sponge filter (i didnt have one so used the toe of a pair of tights over the filter intake and set it on its slowest setting).

By around day 5/6 they should be free swimming, they now need feeding and the best food is brine shrimp nauplii, aka baby brine shrimp/bbs. These are freshly hatched brine shrimp which are tiny and have a good food value (older ones are bigger and less nutritious).

Sadly this is where things get difficult, you have to hatch brine shrimp yourself, then you must filter out the hatched shrimp from the empty egg cases and unhatched eggs, rinse them and feed to your fry three times a day or so.

You must also do water changes regularly, twice a day is good - and be careful not to lose any fry!

You can try to feed them on fry food for egg bearers but (liquifry) its not that good, the success rate when feeding that, or even when feeding partly that, partly BBS is low (i used half and half bbs and liquifry).

They will need to eat BBS for a good two or three weeks, possibly more before you can think of introducing finely crushed flake as an addition.

By that point they should look like angels, albeit tiny ones - start looking out for deformities, cull these straighta way, they wont come right and they are taking up space you need for the decent ones.

If you are extremely lucky, you will start to need more tank space for them - angels lay around 400 eggs but even if you get just 20 to this stage you;ll need more room.

I raised to a decent size just ten - of those i have 5 left. One or two didnt hack it in the big tank back with their parents, a couple turned out to be quite deformed but that didnt show up until they were quite big (around 1.5" body size).

One of them mysteriously died today - unsure if it was ill as it seemed fine a couple of hours ago, (and no one else is ill and water quality good), possibly my plec has learned to bring down angels as ive still not managed to wrestle the body off him- greedy b.......

Raising baby angels is fun, but dont get your hopes up - i think i was unbeliveably, miraculously lucky to now have five home bred angels given i started from pretty much the exact same point you have.
Its a lot of hard work for very little return unless you have lots and lots of grow out tanks and enjoy fiddling around with brine shrimp.

Em

 

[Tolak]

Canus-Equus covered it pretty good, one thing I have to recommend strongly is that you get a bbs hatchery up & running. Everyone tries to do without at the beginning, it really is hard to have any success without it. The fry need the movement of tiny live food to trigger their feeding instinct.

I dug up a few documents I have saved;

IF THE EGGS ARE FERTILE:
Day 0: Eggs spawned in streaks, are clear or translucent.
Day 1: Some infertile eggs turn white.
Day 2: More eggs turn white, wiggling tails emerge from clear eggs. Some white eggs may get fuzzy.
Day 3: Tadpole shape forms with large yolk sack, fry remain stuck to the slate.
Day 4: Small eyes form.
Day 5: Eyes grow large, yolk sack shrinks. Start brine shrimp hatchery.
Day 6: Some fry are free swimming.
Day 7: All free swimming, time to start feeding.


You can follow these changes with a strong hand lens and strong light. If all the eggs are infertile, they will turn white and get fuzzy from fungus attack after a day or two.



I've used the following chart (off the internet) as a guide to my Mimimum stocking rates.
Newly free swimming fry 40 fry per gallon
Two week old fry 20 fry per gallon
Month old fry 10 fry per gallon
Pea size bodies 3 fish per gallon
Dime size bodies 2 fish per gallon
Nickel size bodies 1 fish per gallon
Quarter size bodies 1 fish per 2 gallons
Silver Dollar size bodies 1 fish per 3 gallons
Potential breeders 1 fish per 5 gallons
Show Specimens 1 fish per 10 gallons
One breeding pair 20 gallon high tank

If you lose this spawn don't worry; they will spawn again in 7 to 14 days. I can't think of anyone who has had a huge success with the first spawn, it usually takes a few tries to get a decent amount of survivors. One of the best things you can do is find a local club, they are always willing to share info, and will have some ideas on what works & what doesn't with your local water supply. Check out http/fins.actwin.com/dir/clubs.php

Some of the links are out of date, but if you google the club name you can usually connect with them.