# My angelfish, just laid eggs



## Savelle (Aug 17, 2010)

What should I do? I knew it could happen- I doubt any of the fry? (is that the correct term) will survive- I don't have a tank set up to support them even if they do.

I have a 29 gallon I could ready tonight and hopefully have together/cycled by the time the angels are born. I also have a 46 which w/ a little effort/expense I could set up to house them but really- I don't want/intend to keep them... 

So, what I'm saying here is- how do I best achieve successful results in hatching this clutch and when/if I do succeed- is anyone interested in having a few? I can't provide picture at them moment.

Another thought is- should I try and insta-cycle one of my new tanks to house my other angels or smaller fish which seem to be being harassed by the proud parents? Obviously- I haven't given this much thought... it wasn't intended to happen but now that it has happened I'm just trying to do whats best...


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## mudboots (Jun 24, 2009)

Congrats! My angels spawed on Tuesday, I looked up info on how to raise them on Wednesday, and the 4 hours later the angels ate them all. It turns out that it's pretty common and any little thing that stresses them out will casue them to abandon the nest and eat the eggs. Most sites suggest simply placing whatever the eggs were laid on in a gallon betta bowl with an air stone, and then once they hatch out move them to a nursey tank, like a 10 gallon or something, or even the main tank...lots of advice online, adn some of it contradicts other advice. Good luck!!!


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## flashbang009 (Aug 6, 2009)

Mine laid eggs today too! My advice would be to put a piece of slate in the tank for them to spawn on next time that you can remove. As for this time, if you can move the eggs, i'd move them. No gravel in a nursery tank and throw in an airstone. They'll eat baby brine shrimp once they hatch. If you don't want to keep them, put up an ad on craigslist. That's how i first got mine!


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## ddavila06 (Jan 31, 2009)

+1 to mudboots! when mine laid eggs before i tried raising them on a 5.5 and i added some antifungal to the water. during the first days after they hatched, they fed on their sack of yolk or whatever and after like 4 days or so i fed them freshly hatched brine shrimp. very nice to do, but a lot of work, eventually i would miss a waterchange or something and they would all die off....i also left the parents do the work, but with other fish around tey didn't last very long...have fun!


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## asukawashere (Mar 11, 2009)

Savelle, I would move out all the other angels (or just move the pair) as quickly as possible - breeding pairs of angels can become very violent, especially toward conspecifics. I had a half dozen angels in a 55g once - two paired off and within a week had systematically killed off the other four before I could get them a space on their own.

I'd set up the 46 for all the other fish, or just move the angel pair into the 29, which is a good size for a pair with young fry. 



mudboots said:


> Most sites suggest simply placing whatever the eggs were laid on in a gallon betta bowl with an air stone, and then once they hatch out move them to a nursey tank, like a 10 gallon or something, or even the main tank...


I have a lot of issues with this, though it is the standard method for commercially breeding angels - it's a subject of some debate among angel hobbyists/TAS (The Angelfish Society) members. Some, myself included, believe that the poor parenting behavior you're experiencing is, to varying degrees, a result of the sterile and parent-free conditions angels are being raised in. They're very intelligent and social fish, and the marked increase in failed parents since they've been brought into the hobby strikes me as too significant to merely be a genetic thing. The bottom line being that some aspects of parental care (such as collecting fry and spitting them back into the nest at bedtime or if they stray too far) may be learned behavior rather than pure instinct, and eggs taken from the parents turn into fish with no knowledge of how to care for their own eggs. Two days is about the time it takes for the eggs to hatch into wrigglers (larval pre-swimming fish) - and is usually when parents eat them. It seems instinct only carries them about that far.

Anyway, it's a personal decision whether you want to continue propagating bad parents, and I'm certainly not going to try and dictate what you do with your fish, but my house rule is that the angels aren't allowed to have kids unless they take care of them on their own - and it's something I personally believe to be best for the species. Take what you will from it.


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## Savelle (Aug 17, 2010)

A lot of what I read suggested the same BUT They laid their eggs on a fake palm tree over a foot tall... maybe next time I'll be able to plan more. If what I read is true I should have a real shot at this in a month or two. With so much time to plan something out I can consider the option of breeding.

Of all the fish I have the angels where the ones I just hadn't looked into breeding.

I'd like to breed my Petitella georgiae but the difficulties involved in the task may outweigh the perks of being able to.


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## Savelle (Aug 17, 2010)

asukawashere; how big were they at the time your breeding pair took and rampaged your tank?

I have an over crowded tank- an admission I don't like to make but my fish have primarily been all re-homed to me and the pair that have decided to breed are not the two angels I'm most attached to. I'd like to protect my 'koi' angels who, before I noticed the eggs, ran the tank and now are being chased.

If I need to, could I perhaps take out 20% of the water in my tank, add nutrifin cycle, a biological aquarium cycle (I have some left over from when I rushed together my first tank a week into cycling it when a friend was going to dump his tank to start a saltwater setup) and mix in new water and continue to... I don't even know what- supplement and try to stabilize the environment as best as possible?

It may be premature to plan out drastic measures, but what would you guys do to protect your favorite fish?

(Also- I didn't really want to fiddle with either the 29 or 46 until I'd had the time to save up for new lighting fixtures and CO2 setups... but I will do whatever I need to and go to extra lengths to protect the fish I have)


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## flashbang009 (Aug 6, 2009)

asukawashere said:


> Anyway, it's a personal decision whether you want to continue propagating bad parents, and I'm certainly not going to try and dictate what you do with your fish, but my house rule is that the angels aren't allowed to have kids unless they take care of them on their own - and it's something I personally believe to be best for the species. Take what you will from it.


How would you go about turning bad parents into good parents? I'd love to do it that way, by letting the parents have at it but if they usually eat the eggs then.......


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## asukawashere (Mar 11, 2009)

Savelle said:


> asukawashere; how big were they at the time your breeding pair took and rampaged your tank?
> 
> I have an over crowded tank- an admission I don't like to make but my fish have primarily been all re-homed to me and the pair that have decided to breed are not the two angels I'm most attached to. I'd like to protect my 'koi' angels who, before I noticed the eggs, ran the tank and now are being chased.
> 
> ...


The ones in that incident were mature fish at the time (and still are)... about 2yrs old, and about 3.5"-4" diameter bodies. I was using the tank as overflow space for unpaired angels at the time, hoping some would get together... wasn't quite expecting a piscicidal rampage at the time, but torn fins and lost scales are commonplace with breeding angels defending their territory. And angels are predators in the wild, with much of their diet consisting of smaller fish - I wouldn't trust any fish under 2" with mature angels, with the possible exception of cories (though many will eat otos). Why they're marketed as community fish is beyond me, though some of them are more docile than others.

I often run an extra box filter in a few of my tanks for precisely this reason - if something happens and I need to move a fish, I just set up the tank and put in an already-seeded filter and it's good to go within the hour. Of course, that presumes I have a spare tank of the correct size lying around.

If you want the 29 or 46 to be planted, why not go with a low light/no-co2 setup? I'm all in favor of planted tanks for breeding fish, but I stick to the low-maintenance plants in those tanks. Plants like guppy grass, Brazilian pennywort, and some of the Hygrophilas don't need much in the way of light or ferts, but still are good for eating up nitrates in breeding tanks (where you want nitrates to be as low as possible, since they can impair the development of young fish).



Savelle said:


> If what I read is true I should have a real shot at this in a month or two. With so much time to plan something out I can consider the option of breeding.


Why a month or two?

Angels in their prime can spawn as often as every 10 days :mrgreen: A large female can put down 600+ eggs in one batch... assuming a 90% hatch rate and an appx. 50% survival rate from hatching to dime-size juvies, that's... a lot of fish!
Which is my other motivation for making them raise their own kids... keeps some of the pairs from multiplying exponentially (I don't feel like setting up an angel factory!) 



flashbang009 said:


> How would you go about turning bad parents into good parents? I'd love to do it that way, by letting the parents have at it but if they usually eat the eggs then.......


One technique is to take a fish known to be a successful parent and pair it up with a bad parent, and cross your fingers and hope the good one is a positive influence on the other. Or, at the very least, you could just pull the bad parent and let the good one raise the kids alone. The fry still get the benefit of being parentally-raised that way.


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## Gordonrichards (Apr 28, 2009)

Parents turn into parents. Just like in real life, parents get it wrong with their children. Eventually, they get it right. Sometimes they eat the first or second batches. I say empty your tank of other fish during this spawn. The parents will either raise them or eat them.


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## Savelle (Aug 17, 2010)

I've been keeping a close eye on both the forums and my fish. The parents relaxed after I turned off the lights so I may end up leaving them off for a while but I also caught one of my Hyphessobrycon anisitsi playing the opportunist and he knocked off a couple of eggs. I observed all this using a night light.

I set up a 2.5g I have for isolation purposes w/ water from my tank and added an air stone. With my odds looking like I'll either lose the eggs with the tetras eating away at them or the parents getting stressed and devouring them... I siphoned up a few eggs and added them to the 2.5. If nothing comes of it- nothing comes of it... but from my stand point- the more methods I try the greater my chances of seeing just one of them work.

Scientifically- I'm running way to many variables to record any data so this semester will just be a pass or fail.


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## flashbang009 (Aug 6, 2009)

Sounds like a good plan. I'm just letting mine defend their eggs as of now. I noticed about 1/3 disappeared last night, but one of the angels is still defending them. I only had a few turn white, and most of those are gone. My problem is they're on the top part of a filter intake tube, so i can't take them out. 

I've always wanted more of these angel's because they're beautiful zebras, so i'm hoping they read the "Parenting for Dummies" book i put in front of the tank!


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## ddavila06 (Jan 31, 2009)

Gordonrichards said:


> Parents turn into parents. Just like in real life, parents get it wrong with their children. Eventually, they get it right. Sometimes they eat the first or second batches. I say empty your tank of other fish during this spawn. The parents will either raise them or eat them.


that is true, when mine started raising the wigglers, everytime one would fall from the leaf (the often spawned on a melon sword leaf) they would go down to pick them up, but somehow the wiggler never came out of their mouths lol  oopssss


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## Gerlisa (Aug 30, 2010)

Hi. My angelfish eggs hatched last week, now they are swimming around in the tank. But today, the parents spawned again. and doubled the amount of eggs compared to the previous time. Anyone knows if the fry will feed on the eggs? I'm not sure if i need to remove the eggs, or the fry... or just leave them alone?
ThankS


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## mudboots (Jun 24, 2009)

Gerlisa - sounds like you have some good parent fish; I'd personally leave them al alone and HOPE that some feed on the others, but you will have to decide how many fish you want or perhaps you will want to start selling them. If you're up to shipping fish then you might have pretty good luck selling them even here in the For-Sale-Or-Trade forum.


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## Gerlisa (Aug 30, 2010)

mudboots: Thanks! today i saw their tiny tails wiggling already. some was infertile. ya, i think i'll sell it off, because i can't handle too many fishes. still got a few "bloated" angels. lol


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## virgo888 (Jun 25, 2009)

should separate fry


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