Angel Parenting

Hi all

I have a pair of Angels that is spawning every two weeks. The the fry never got past 5 days before all being eaten up. The parents move them from place to place, and every time after the move, there is less fry, till they are all gone. The problem I think, is that I am not providing a decent spawning site,like a cone. They have to make do with filter pipes etc.

So, my wife found a vase in a flower shop, which, when turned upside down,makes a nice cone. It is plastic, so I have to keep it from floating with some rocks on top. This seemed to to the trick. The very next spawn, the Angels used this new site. Everything went the same way as before, up until the moving of the eggs started. This time round, when they moved them, they kept the eggs on the cone, but spread them much further apart. This kept going on till day five.Then I noticed the wrigglers is getting less and less. I thought, here we go again. But then I noticed that the wrigglers is in bundles. The bundles got less after every move, but bigger. Today, day seven, when I woke up, I found that all the bundles is gone and replaced by one big hive, hanging from the rock!

Can anyone tell me what is going on? I have never read anywhere of this behavior.Also, the female is not allowing them to go free swimming, which they must be doing by now. Is she a hyper disciplinarian? How does she attach them to each other? If they are not free swimming, they can not eat and will die of hunger?

 

Would you mind posting a picture of the parents?

 

Female



Male



Fry Zoomed

 

separate them and feed them hard boiled egg yellow that you squash between you fingers to spread it around a bit but don't feed to much, try taking the male out first if the female persists on eating them take her out too. they don't really need there parents

 

I took the male out on day 5. I think that might have something to do with them still surviving. I am very interested to hear about the clusters forming and the 'hive' effect. Why are they doing this. Is the mother glueing them of some sort, or do they stick together out of their own? Why not fre swimming in a school? Or am I too hasty?

Will try the egg thing. My brine shrimp is not hatching. The Sera packs you buy. Got some very fine fry food as well, but it is just wasted by putting it in now. The fry is jus huddling together and do not take notice of anything.

 

Hi Tom

This is all normal. The parents do stop the single ones from leaving this "hive".

One day they will all just take of and form a small free swimming school and the parents will just follow them around.

No idea how they stick to each other though.

If you have them in a bare bottom tank just put pieces upright all around the tank sides and they will choose a suitable one.

 

Thanks Vis. Thought I am going to win a prize on 50/50! hehe

Do you agree on the yellow of a hard boiled egg as food advice? When do I start feeding? Only when they start swimming in a school?

 

Tom I would go for BBS for fry. The growth and survival rate is so much better.

 

Hi @TomK - so nice to see that the "babies" I selected for you turned out as a pair (Like I said they would ....he,he) - This clustering behaviour is pretty common for day 5 - 6 .... Egg yellow is a "good protein source" from tomorrow for them,bur BBS or something greater would be better....

Glad to see that pair have grown so well and are actually spawning.....

 

Hi Tom. I agree with Vis on the BBS. Just DON'T over feed. Small amounts 4 times a day of BBS. I'm not keen on the Sera packets you get, out of 4 packets I bought, only one was succesful. Buy the one's that comes in those white sealed "pill" bottles (5 grams) or get yourself a 500g Tin, the from USA type, it's expensive I know, I use them, 95% hatch rate every time. I use 1/2 a teaspoon of BBS egss on 600ml of water strait from the tap, add 3 teaspoons of aquarium rock salt, 1lt Coke bottle, add all and airate strong. 16hrs to 18hrs later... 95% fresh BBS. Micro worms settle's quickly at the bottom, baby Daphnia better as they get bigger with some baby powderd fish flakes for fry. Then later some micro pellets then on to Brine Shrimp, Blood worms etc. Just remember, a little bit at a time goes a long way and daily SMALL water changes wile cleaning the tank floor works wonders. Add some algae eaters like Bristlenose Pleco's, Apple Snails and Chinese algae eaters as a clean up crew, works great! Congrats on the fry and enjoy them. Forget going on holiday though... your a daddy now! Regards. Charles.

 

azurekoi, yes, of the 4 you gave me, it seems like 3 were male. One got killed off quickly. The fight were continuing, so I separated these two who seemed to take a liking to each other and it worked. The lone male then grew like unreal. He is a monster now. I bought a smaller female for him and got them together. She is however way smaller than him, but he is patient with her, apparently he recons the wait will be worth his while!

Charles, yea, those Sera packets seem to be a waste of time. Out here in Klerksdorp is nothing to buy, so I am trying the fine fry powder and hard boiled egg. I have taken the female out as well, as the number of fry halved overnight. The few remaining now hug the bottom of the tank and does not seem to bother with any of the food I put in. So it looks like I will loose this batch. Will have to get decent BBS eggs.

Another problem I foresee, is the vacuuming of the tank floor. With them scattered all over and hugging the bottom, it is going to be pretty difficult to not suck them up with the waste! It was much easier when the female had them clustering together in the mid level of the tank. Then again, I think it was when I vacuumed the tank, that she got too exited and threatened, and swallowed a few fry.

Actually, I do not know why I bother. What am I going to do with a lot of Angels? It is just the challenge and the wife's enthusiasm for the young ones that make you try. Otherwise, I think it is a waste of time, effort and money to try and raise the little buggers. It is amazing though, to think that something this small can grow up to be a lovely Angel.

 

Hi Tom,

Let me give you some advice here please.

Feeding baby angels boiled egg is inadequate as far as the nutritional aspects are concerned and the pollution you will cause with this will kill most of the fry in any case. You need to feed small angel fry freshly hatched bs and bs only for the first week at least. You have fairly advanced angel hybrids which tend to have poor parenting properties. I would consider taking the fry away when they are close to going freeswimming and putting them into a 2 litre ice cream bakkie with an airstone bubbling mildly and then feeding them freshly hatched bs a couple of times per day. You can add some ramshorn snails to eat the excess of bs, but you can change water in such a bakkie with ease and you should be able to manage the water quality issue in this way. My experience with all of these small packs of bs is that they are highly unreliable and that you need to invest in a small amount of high quality bs eggs that will hatch properly. I can supply a smaller amount of these.

Then this issue of adding a number of teaspoons of salt is also a ticket for disaster. You need to buy a hygrometer which is something that looks similar to a floating thermometer. It floats in the water and depending on the amount of salt it will float higher or less high, but you can measure the salinity accurately and this takes the guessing out of the whole salt adding procedure. If the water is too saline, add more tap water, if it is not saline enough, add more salt, it is as simple as that. The salinity should be 1.020 to 1.022 and then the eggs will hatch perfectly if they are fresh. Many of the attempts at hatching bs are not successful because the salinity is not right and not because of the quality of the eggs. A hygrometer will cost you R40 and after that you will have no more problems ever in getting the salinity right so I would advise everyone to buy such a thing, the cost of the hygrometer is cheap in relation to the cost of bs eggs. You just cannot afford the stuff not to hatch any more.

If you apply these principles raising angel fry is easy and gives you a lot of pleasure, so do not be put off Tom, you can do this!

Kind regards,

Dirk

 

Thanks Prof!

Brilliant advise that makes sense! I like the ice cream bakkie idea a lot! Just as feedback, I took the female out with about 50 fry left. I put 9 Apple unmentionables in the tank and had 6 fry left the next morning... Took the unmentionables out and I still have 5 fry left in 90lt of water! What a nightmare. So ice cream bakkie, here they come! Unfortunately I only have Sera Micron growth food to give them.

I will mail you for the bs eggs. Thank you for offering.

I will surely invest in a hygrometer.

@azurekoi

Remember the lone male I told you about, waiting for the female to grow up? To my surprise she started spawning two days ago. She is very small still. The male did not even pay attention. She laid the normal amount of eggs, but the male did not fertilize them. They all turned white and woolly in a day. I fed them to my community fish this afternoon. My question. Is the male a loss, or did he knew he will be wasting his time in fertilizing the eggs?

 

This is the pair I am talking about in #13 above. I have put them in this small holding tank as a temp. measure while the other pair went to their community tank. They were in this tank for about a day when the small female started spawning.

 

So there is hope for mine! Yours are a teeny bit larger than mine but at least it's not that long then

 

OK, I am still waiting for BBS eggs, but my current batch of fry is surviving on Sera Micron. I mix about 20ml water with the food and then squirt it with a siringe to where the fry is. The fry is now over 2 weeks and over half of them still alive. I have no idea how many there is.

 

Fry still going strong! Doing 20% water change daily and feed Sera Micron.

 

OK, fry survived up to now on Sera Micron. But I just received Ocean Nutrition Instant Baby Brine Shrimp. Did a small amount in the water and the fry is going for it. Especially the bigger ones. Now to start my own hatchery and learn to do it myself. Got a tin of BBS eggs, Ocean Nutrition as well.

 

http://www.oceannutrition.eu/products.aspx?Product=instant-baby-brine-shrimp

The site does not mention that you must use within six weeks of opening the bottle. Refrigerated of course. It is mentioned on the card.

 

Jay! I have never seen my fry with such huge tummies! Now they are going to grow. If I now just can convince the bank manager I need a better camera. It is a nightmare to photograph fry wit an AL-cheapo HP camera.