Breeding Angelfish. General Info and raising fry.

	Ackerz quote	subscribe [rss]	subscribe [email]	#1	Posted 01 May 2008, 11:14 am
	The main trick to breeding angelfish is to supply clean water, find a pair(can be tricky just luck really) and a suitable breeding ground. Sexing Angels. Lots of luck sexing young angels. Except for color (which has nothing to do with sex), they all look alike. Males tend to grow a little faster and larger, so you could get lucky with this theory. Just make sure that you don’t pick out the largest ones. You’ll get all males -- no great tragedy unless you planned to breed them down the road. Start with a group of six and let them pick their own partners. Males. If they are the same age, male angelfish are larger, skinnier in the bellies, and have redder eyes. As they get older, they develop the typical cichlid bump on their foreheads. At spawning time their breeding tube looks like the writing end of a ball point pen. Anyone can sex them at this time (at least 50% of the time). Females. From the same litter, female angelfish will be a little smaller, definitely plumper in the belly, and have a smooth-sloping forehead. When spawning, her breeding tube looks like the other end of the writing part of the ball-point pen (the refill part). Most cichlids are readily sexable (when breeding) by the shape of their breeding tubes.No Guarantees. No sexing technique works 100%. Angels usually know how to pick their own pairs best. However, sometimes two female angelfish will pair off. As we said, no guarantees. Breeding Tanks. Professional angelfish breeders use row after row of 10-gallon tanks with sponge filters. They add a piece of slate leaning at a 30o angle (not angel). This makes them economical and easy to clean. Natural Breeding. In the wild, angelfish spawn on the leaves of Amazon sword plants. They carefully clean the leaves to prepare the ideal egg-laying site. The female lays rows of translucent, light amber-colored eggs. The male follows behind (on his own schedule) and fertilizes them. Both mouth and fan the eggs until they hatch. Both remove white (dead) eggs. When the eggs hatch, the parents move the fry from place to place to confuse predators (and you). Watching the pair care for their fry is one of the pleasures of fishkeeping. Practical Breeding. In a typical breeding tank, angelfish spawn on slate. Professional breeders snatch out the egg-covered slate before either parent gets hungry for a tasty caviar snack. They rear the eggs artificially in a gallon jar of water from the breeding tank. They color the water dark blue with methylene blue to retard fungus. They use a slow airstone to replace the parents. (Airstones never eat angelfish eggs.) Some critics suggest that this decreases the inherited parental breeding activities. Mostly, it decreases parental egg eating. Breeding in Community Tanks. Many angelfish spawn in community tanks to the complete surprise of their owners. More likely their owners never even see the spawns. The angels lay their eggs on the filter tube or tank wall. Good parents will drive the other fishes to the opposite end of the tank. Bad parents will help the other fishes eat the eggs. Care of the Eggs. After a few days you will have a slate full of “wigglers.” The tiny newly hatched angelfish are nothing more than eggs with wiggling tails glued to the slate at what will become their heads. They slowly turn into tiny fishes as they absorb their yolk sac over the next several days. In a tank with other fishes, the parents go berserk protecting them from the other fishes. They never do realize that the crafty plecostomus strikes at night. Take your plecos out. The plecostomus is armored enough to withstand the constant nips from the parents if he decides to “clean their nest.” Take out any snails too. Dither Fish. Angels make better parents if you have another fish in the tank while they are caring for the eggs. A slow “dither fish” makes them more protective and less likely to beat up each other. When fry become free-swimming, however, the parents have more trouble protecting them from predators. Care of the Fry. If you feed your fry commercial fry food, you will rear only a tiny fraction of the fry -- the ones tough enough to find their own food. They absolutely require newly hatched brine shrimp every day or you will lose them. Feed them several times a day for best results. These eggs are the reason angels no longer cost hundreds of dollars per pair. Don’t use the hatching instructions on the package. Don’t hatch the two teaspoons of eggs they recommend. About 1/20th of a teaspoon is plenty for your first hatch. Hatch your brine shrimp daily because the shrimp keep growing after they hatch. Older fry can easily eat the larger shrimps. Supplement with microworms. From Ackerz original post: anuary 3, 2007, 7:33 pm Ackerz Sponsored links