Breeding angelsfish

[pHish_man]

I took over an angelfish breeding setup last Thursday and moved the rig and breeding pairs back from CT to somerset west. 6 days later ( wed this week ) i had my first batch of eggs. I have followed Prof Dirks advice on a previous thread about angelfish breeding and left the parents in the tank with the eggs and noted their good parental skill yesterday at removing the eggs that had gone white.

I have also left a light on in the fish room over night and this morning the eggs had hatched and the wrigglers are attached to the glass and the parents are guarding them like hawks.

What i would like to know initially is it standard that angelfish eggs hatch approximately 36 hours after being laid?

They are golden angels.

Tks

Andrew

[Vis]

Yip that is normal. After about 5 days the will become free swimming. Its great to see the angels
trying to keep them all together.
You will see that some off the wriglers will still die, not sure why, maybe just weak.
Hope you have some brineshrimp to feed when they become free swimming?

My angels never ate any of the fry even without a nightlight.
In the morning the female will stay with the group while the male went around
in the 3ft collecting all the fry that got lost during the night and bringing them back to
the swarm.

Best of luck.

[Go-Big]

back to the swarm.


Interesting collective noun, lol. nee man gerhard, self ek weet dis nie a swerm visse nie.

[Vis]

:D :D :D well if you see them you will call it a swarm too :D Geen SKOOL visse nie :)

[pHish_man]

Quick update, now have 4 pairs of angels that have spawned and was even able to watch the one female actually laying the eggs.

nature is amazing

[pHish_man]

Need some help

Day 2 for the wrigglers and there is quite a bit of white fluffy fungus aabove the majority of wrigglers. Do I try blown this away with a syringe or should I just leave it.

Also, the pair of black angels that spawned are a lot larger in size, and the size of their eggs is a lot larger too, but there are way more infertile eggs amongst them than with the golden angels. What is normally the cause of these infertile eggs? Was the male perhaps disturbed during mating?

Andrew

[mattie]

I remove the male after the spawning is completed.
He tends to fight with the female and eat the eggs.

Quote:
Originally Posted by bio_lover http://www.angelfish.net/VBulletin/images/buttons/viewpost.gif (http://www.angelfish.net/VBulletin/showthread.php?p=201151#post201151)
Nice video. BTW, did u use indian almond leaves for your tank?

I have been using Alder Cones from Europe, the dark black ones...... No fungus on any eggs since.....http://www.angelfish.net/VBulletin/images/smilies/smile.gif
http://www.tynevalleyaquatics.co.uk/#/fishkeeping-products/4546755825

[pHish_man]

mattie both parents seem protective over the eggs and fry

what do i do about the fungus?

on a previous quote @ prof dirk he says meth blue is useless.

I want to try save all my wrigglers

Andrew

[pHish_man]

Update sunday 1 may

first batch of angelfish fry are almost free swimming. 2nd batch have hatched and mother is moving her babies around. 3rd batch has more infertile eggs than fertile and loads of fungus. Fourth batch male ate eggs last night and fifth batch eggs all look healthy and parents are calm.

I still need advice about the fungus issue and what to do about it.

Tks

Andrew

[Big G]

Ok, from what you are describing, I would hazard a guess that you pH needs to be lowered? A lot of egg fungus can be attributed to the pH being out of the optimal range, and so they fungus. This could also explain why so few eggs are becoming fertile? I'm not certain, but I think water hardness can also affect the eggs? Maybe someone else could confirm this?

Can you give us the water parameters for each tank?

Cheers!
G!

[pHish_man]

Tks Gareth,

Will check the pH and hardness.

Is there anything one can do to eliminate the fungus once it has been formed? In the one batch of wrigglers the fry are mostly on the edge of the fungus so I'm hoping they will swim freely soon.

Guess it mainly boils down to optimum water quality?

Tks

Andrew

[Big G]

I cannot recommend anything for the Fungus, as I never had any issues with it on eggs? I did have one tank with Rams in that never had fertile eggs, but no fungus?

Maybe one of the others members who have done a fair bit of fish breeding may have the answer? Anyone?

If not, then I would just suggest getting the pH and hardness a little lower before the next spawn, and see if there is any improvement?

You can try using indian Almond leaves or Ketapang leaves, which are believed to have some anti fungal/bacterial properties in them, which may help? They will also help lower the pH and hardness too I believe?

I've even heard of some people using Rooibos tea, but I've never tried this!

I would think though that any treatment will be too late for this batch of eggs, but it shouldn't be long before they start laying again? I know my Apisto's would lay every two weeks like clockwork, sometimes they'd stretch it out to 3 or 4 weeks because they are tending to fry from the last batch, but then would lay again. Angels too can lay as regularly as every two weeks, but do tend not to re-lay eggs until their broods are removed form the tank.

Hope that helps?

Regards
G!

[Marco]

pHish_man

Fungus grows on dead eggs. The lower bacteria count you have in the water, the longer this process will take. Nonetheless it will happen unless parents remove the dead eggs before then.
Dead eggs result from infertility or unsuitable water parameters. However as most of the other eggs hatched, lets presume its not the water, unless you got it right in 4 tanks and wrong in one.

If I read correctly the black angels have the low fertility rate and thus fungal problem.
Many times you have a male with low fertility, and among black angel this seem to be even more so.
There is nothing you can add at this stage to stop the fungus. Just hope the fry doesnt get caught up in it and by the time they are free swimming it doesnt matter anymore, the parents will eat those eggs then.

This will be a nice experiment as all these angels are similar aged. You will note, if you have puqe black angel fry that they will grow much slower than the other angels. Altum recently told me about an additive to 'load' brine shrimp that also enriches them vitamin and mineral wise. Maybe you should chat to him as anything to help with those blacks wilk be a bonus!

Hope you have good success with them.

Marco

[pHish_man]

Marco

Tks, these are the first angel spawn I've had so another learning curve. I think the problem is more than likely related to water conditions than anything else, as I had only placed the fish in these holding tanks while I was moving the breeding set up.

So I will chalk whatever happens with these batches down to experience. I've finished moving the setup from ct to somerset and will now start assembly of the rig and move the adults back to the original breeding tanks in about two weeks. This gives me time to make sure water conditions are good and also any surviving fry will be old enough to remove the parents.

Tks for the valuable information and apologies for hijacking your discus thread. Hadn't received notification that there was your reply here and I was getting anxious for the fry mixed up in the fungus.

As it so happens there are quite a bit of the fry that are on the edge of the ball of fungus and I'm sure these will swim free soon. Have my bbs available for them and see their yolk sacs are getting smaller and eyes larger.

Regards
Andrew

[Vis]

Hi Phish_man

The fungus can be a problem sometimes. I noticed with my angels if they do not clean the eggs and they go fungal the parents will after about 2 days move the fry to a completely new location.
Do not know if your setup allows them to do this?

Interesting on the black fry. My male is not black but MUCH darker then the female. I noticed that 40% of the fry are a lot darker then the rest and that the lighter fry grow a lot faster.

[pHish_man]

Vis,

The one set of parents have moved their fry from the back glass panel to a piece of upright slate and then again to the top of the sponge filter. No fungus.

The pair where the heavy fungus is, the parents haven't moved the fry at all.

As for the growth rate of the black angel fry, at what stage could you differentiate that there were dark fry and light fry? Roughly what day?

Regards

Andrew

[Marco]

pHish_man

NO PROBLEM about the discus thread man, its just better to keep things in orderly fashion otherwise it really gets derailed sometimes.

I havent bred Angels in over a decade so someone else should tell you when they start colouring up. If i remember correctly its from about day 21 onwards, but I might be completely mistaken.
Fungus is a problem and will always be. Some parents move the fry as Vis indicated, but I had the same problem with the Discus recently, so it doesnt always happen. It does seem however that the fungus doesnt affect the fry more than "trapping" them in it. If that happens, as soon as the rest are free swimming, I'd squirt the fungal growth with some water in an attempt to release them. You are going to lose them anyway so its worth taking the risk. Thats what I did with the discus and it worked fine.

Angels nowadays are really not that set as far as water conditions are concerned. I think if you can get them in a ph of anywhere between 6.5 and 7.5 with gh below 10dh and kh below 10dh you should have high fertility rates and the eggs should hatch without problem.

Black angels, and other dark angels grow slower as their bodies use huge amounts of protein (also needed for growth) for pigment formation. That how I understand it. . . So they need more feedings of high quality protein to ensure they dont sit with growth problems at a later stage.
You'd do well if you can feed them every two hours of the day and do two 10% water changes a day, one first thing in the morning, and one before lights out. Remember to get water to correct temperature before doing the changes.
I'm not sure if it would help, but it could even be beneficial to use "Trace Elements" sold in LPS to add minerals to the water.
Maybe Altum, Dirk Bellstedt or Gert Combrink can help with that.

You should go chat to Gert sometime. He has been breeding angels for ages I understand. Altum will also give you some sound advice.

I'd also just like to mention this. Methylene Blue has been used extensively over decades in Aquaria. Many people swear by it and others condemn its use. I know for a fact that some very well established Discus breeders use it almost ongoing, not only for fungal prevention, but also as calming agent in breeding tanks, as it darkens the water making the fish feel safer. MB only fights fungus in that it blocks light needed for fungal growth. It is however an oxidant and does have some benefits. I would say one need to KNOW how to use it correctly, know its limitations and risks and take appropriate planning in order for it to be used problem free. I had a similar discussion about its use with Altum recently as it is still extensively used by Discus breeders worldwide.

Rgds

Marco

[Vis]

Hi phish_man

Not sure why some of the fry is darker coloured, if it is an actual indication of
Color or something else but it was visible 3 days after becomming free swimming.
Day 7 today and they are just under a cm big. The darker ones getting a little darker
and the light ones staying that way.

Gerhard

[pHish_man]

Ok, the batch of fry that I was worried about because of all the fungus is now free swimming in the tank and the fungus has only a couple of dead eggs and hardly any fry trapped in it.

Now my concern is the parents. They seem to be sucking the fry in and spitting them out again but not sure if they aren't swallowing the odd fry. I've fed the first batch of bs and the fry are swimming strongly so ill wait and see.

mattie

You suggested removing the male. Is this standard practice with angels? When my convicts spawn its the male that looks after the fry and I always need to separate the male and female.

Marco

Guess this is all good practice in anticipation for that elusive discus spawn........

Regards

[Vis]

The parents will try and keep the fry together by sucking them up and
spitting them out again. I think once in a while maybe one might get swollowed.
The group of fry will get a little smaller as some of the weak die off.

[pHish_man]

Vis

I've got my night light on as per prof Dirk, so hopefully the parents won't eat the fry.
At what stage am I assured the parents are safe with the fry and I should stop worrying they may be eaten?

Andrew

[Vis]

Hi Andrew

I think this may differ from pair to pair. Only by seeing what yours do will you know how they behave with
their fry. The biggest problem is feeding the adults without the fry getting in the way.

Even if they do eat the fry now, they would in any case lay eggs again within 2 weeks. So you do not have to stress to much about your first batch as there are many more to come :)
So keep a eye on them, sleep tight and remove the parents if you actually see them actively eating the fry on purpose.

Gerhard

[pHish_man]

Tks Gerhard

Been keeping a log of all the happenings as I have 5 pairs spawning concurrently, and everyone is different.

Was quite impressed with the black pair as, although their ratio of fertile/infertile eggs was the lowest, they have moved all their wrigglers to a new site and seem to have eaten the infertile eggs and fungus.

Andrew

[Vis]

I wonder if there is any correlation between angel color and parenting?
My darker almost black male is definitely a better parent than his lighter
counter part. She is not bad in any way but he shows better instinct at
caring for them.

My pairs 3rd spawn also had a dismal fertility rate. This was just after I moved
them to their own 3FT. I removed that clutch of eggs and 9 days later I got
a almost 100% fertile spawn. So maybe its because they moved recently?

Those black angels are beautiful and I am looking at maybe getting a pair myself.
Are yours completely black?

Gerhard

[Big G]

Now my concern is the parents. They seem to be sucking the fry in and spitting them out again


Sorry for the late reply, but this is normal behaviour. Apistos also do this, and I believe one of the reason (other than to move them or gather them up) is to clean them. Its very interesting to watch, I don't know with the Angels so much, but the Apisto's would suck a few in, then kind of 'chew' for a bit, then spit them back out. Its cool to see these little balls pop out and unfold into a little fry which just carries on with whatever it was previously doing.

As Vis mentioned, the odd one or three may dissapear in the process, but thats nature I guess?

Cheers
G!

[pHish_man]

Tks Gareth

Back in the office this morning ( where my fishroom is ) and definatley a lot less fry this morning than there were last night but still heaps swimming around. Both parents swimming with the fry and seem to be quite protective so im only popping in to feed.

Andrew

[Big G]

How many fry would you have guessed where hatched originally? I've believe that Angels can have in excess of 200 fry at a time!! I was glad that my Apisto's where more like 30-50 a go! Less chaos!

Regards
G!

[pHish_man]

Yeah id go with about 200, and cant believe the amount as these parents are small compared to the size I believe angels can grow.

[Big G]

Yer, its quite amazing! I got a 'pair' of Apistogramma SP. 'Steel Blues' a while back, and the female was tiny! She was at best 3-4cm, and I thought how on earth can this be a pair?

2 Days later, she had laid around 30 eggs. I was amazed! The pile of eggs was bigger than she was! It left me thinking 'how on earth did she manage to hide all those?'

There is nothing quite like Breeding Cichlids!! Its an impressive spectacle!!

Regards
G!

[Dirk Bellstedt]

Hi Guys,

I wanted to make a few comments on this thread before heading off to a heavy lecture yet again. In general I would agree with most of the comments made here but I want to add a few things:

Andrew, you have moved these fishes and their tanks less than two weeks ago and as a result these tanks are not stable yet, their biological filtration may be a little upset and not run in properly again. Under such circumstances you can expect greater bacterial decay of eggs firstly and secondly the fishes have not settled in properly and the males may as a result not be fertilizing properly, so this may explain why you have quite a few fungused eggs.

Secondly, Somerset West water is absolutely perfect for angels, I have bred literally thousands of them over the past 25 years. The pH should not be an issue and it usually drops too low because of the low carbonate hardness, but this is not a problem for angels.

In principle, I believe that angels should be able to raise their young as pairs and they normally do so. They are excellent pairs in general and I would not consider removing the one or the other parent. My wild type angels are excellent parents and if you put your hand in the tank if they have eggs or fry they will launch an all out attack on you and bite you flat out. However, this is where man has upset nature again. Some domestic angels that have been selected for fancy colours have poor parenting properties and it is in these fishes that the parents will fight with each other and where you should consider removing one of the fishes if the other parent is attacking it. However as soon as you do this the fry that you produce will also have these poor parenting properties, so you will be contributing to the problem. However, I actually do not believe that this cannot be fixed, I try only to use pairs that work together well.

Then on the black angel genetics, I can inform you that Marco is quite correct that the black pigment formation requires the fish to put a tremendous amount of its reserves into the black pigment formation, both in terms of energy from the food and in terms of protein, so they need to be fed more carefully or else they will not grow out properly, and they will be poor parents. Inherently because of this problem apparently, black angels are also a lot more aggressive than other angels so this is an additional problem.

The genetics of black angels is a quite simple dominant Mendelian gene as we call it. Angels with a normal gene and a black gene will therefore be black, but this is not then a completely jet black fish. Such a halfway fish, we call it a heterozygote, will be a more smoky than black fish when adult and you will be able to see the stripes that normal angels have under the black colouration. Because these fishes actually produce less black pigment, they will grow better and be stronger fry. If you an angel that has two black genes, then it will be jet black as an adult, but it will grow more slowly as described above. Often the black angels that are sold consist of fully black and heterozygous black youngsters and then you have both when they grow bigger (these are the black fry and the grey fry, you describe Vis). Black angels are also inbred and as a result they are more difficult to breed and raise the fry. If you have a pair consisting of two heterozygous fishes, in other words smokies, they will have 25% of their offspring being a combination of two normal genes (one from each parent), 50% smokies, and 25% full black. However, because the black offspring are not so healthy, such spawns often result in 50% of the offspring being normal angels. These normal angels are also mostly goldens because they do not have normal pigment as wild types do.

There are also strains of black angels that have different genetics and are actually marble angels that are completely black. They have a different inheritance. I currently have both types of blacks (normal and Marble type) and I am trying to get them to mate with my wild types to get some decent genes back into them, but they just keep on breeding to their black mates for reasons which I do not quite understand. However, I have a good wild type male in a tank with some black females and I want to see if I can get them to spawn.

A lot has been written on angelfish genetics if you go and have a look at the international Finarama website, where I am the scientific advisor.

Kind regards,

Dirk

[arcky1]

Excellet read Prof, thanks for taking the time to type it out......

[pHish_man]

Dirk

Thanks for the informative read.

An update on my spawning pairs. Only 2 of the five pairs have not eaten all their fry/eggs. And in 2 pairs I lost the females. I am assuming they were killed by the male??

I am happy though to use the parenting behaviour of the adults as a selective criteria and only breed with fish that 'look after' their offspring and thus giving future keepers of these offspring a better chance of succesfully breeding their own angelfish.

So do I return these 2 males to my batch of about 30 similar sized angels and see if they are able to pair off, or does one "cull" these males?

Andrew

[Dirk Bellstedt]

Hi Andrew,

Unless you specifically saw that the males were attacking and damaging the females you cannot assume that the males killed the females. Also, if these fishes are not good balanced pairs then you can have aggression between the males and the females so I do not know if these were fishes that were paired off before. What I would suggest is that you return the males to the group and they may pair off with other females and then they may look after the young with the new female, but I would not cull them, that is a bit unfair.

I also want to reiterate that I think a lot of your egg and fry losses are because of your move and new setup. You can see how I would suggest this is done when you come to visit this evening.

Kind regards,

Dirk

[pHish_man]

Thanks Dirk

Look forward to seeing your set up this evening.

Andrew