Strikingthematch Breeding Angels!

First topic message reminder :

Well I picked up a pair of breeding Angels. The owner bought some angels and these two paired off and then went on to kill all the other fish in the tank once they laid eggs. Since they did not want to have to get more tanks and since the fish where spawning so rapidly they needed a place to go. SO they found their way to one of my 55's Here are some pictures of the beautiful fish.
Not the same color and have no idea what their fry will turn out like but as of right now the female is holding what looks to be a ton of eggs. It would be amazing if it was a black and yellow mix or even a silver and black mix! SO I will be expecting some fry in the up and coming weeks here I hope!

I got this batch from bring shrimp direct. I'll have to take a picture of my hactery setup.
To describe it quickly though it is three 2L soda bottles with the bottoms cut off. Air line tube ran through the cap at the bottom. They are held upright by 1inch PVC pipe. The top portion of the bottle snugly fits in a T fitting for the pipe. Then each bottle is connected to a port on my air splitter. I then put the whole thing in a Tote and fill it partially with water. I stuck a 300watt heater in the tote keep it at 81 degrees. It heats all the bottles evenly and the brine hatch in about 18 hours.
I add about 1.5L of water and 2Tbs of regular non ionized salt to the mix and 1/4Tsp of baking soda to up the PH. Then I just use the little scoop they provide with the shrimp.

My First batch has 29 Fry. I would say about half the wigglers made it to be free swimming but most got hit with fungus. I was not really ready for them and should have moved the eggs to a smaller tank to treat for fungus rather then the large tank. This new batch did much better with fungus and since I wanted to see what the parents would do I let the eggs sit with them this time. They ate all the fungus eggs and moved only the healthy ones so that answered my questions on that from now on.

I personally am going to wait till they are swimmers and move them to my little feeding tank and by the the other fry will be big enough to go in one of my 10gallons.

I figure that until the free swimming point the parents don't have to do much but keep track of them and they can do that 24/7 I on the other hand have to sleep and work... haha

Best way I could come up with to heat 3 bottles at once ( I could make it 4 if need be.) and also provide light to them. I stagger the time a little for overlap. I almost always will have shrimp less then 12-18 hours old to feed.

that is a nifty little set up for the hatchery. i like the pvc idea to hold more than one bottle instead of just a tipsy can/bottle for them to sit in.

guess if i do have 20-40 make it that far i will need more than one jar of brine hatching.

my "helpful" toddler won't leave my tanks alone so they have to be a little bit sturdy when bumped accidentally.

what does your baby swimmer tank set up look like?

did you treat for fungus this time or just do things differently?

i was going to move parents and babies to a 10 gal, but seems like the parents will have a hard time with temptation at that point.

The swimmer tank is just a small 2 gallon hexagon tank I had. It is small enough that when they are first swimming they can find the shrimp easily and cleaning it is very easy. I just take water from the parents tank that is cycled and add it to swimmer tank. Then add more water to the parents tank. I did treat for fungus on the current wigglers because I left them with the parents and they are taking care of any eggs that got it.
So far "fingers crossed" I had no more loss from fungus this time then when I treated with methylene blue... it could be a didn't dose high enough but since at the time I only had the eggs and parents separated in the same 55 gallon tank I didn't want to go that high.
I would separate the free swimmers from the parents no matter what because from what I have heard after 3 or so weeks the fry can start picking on their parents scales and stress them out and even kill them from infection. Not to mention that at this point a smaller tank makes it MUCH easier to feed them.

Yeah I would setup at least two to three hatcheries for the first week after that it won't be as big of deal since they will quickly get to the point where they can eat older brine shrimp. When the are first free swimming I really doubt they could eat anything much bigger then fresh hatching shrimp they are just so small. After a week as you can kind of see in a few of my pictures they are already 1/4 inch long and can eat shrimp that is a day old or more... Of course the nutritional value of older shrimp is less so I try to only feed them shrimp that is less then 18 hours old.

Might sound a little tedious but I make up a new batch of shrimp each night and the next days after noon (18 hours later) they are ready to feed. Easy to keep them all going and so far my fry are growing like nuts haha.

Auction item auction item... Ohhh..

if you have time, can you post a pic of ur swimmers tank?

Nothing much at the moment. I keep it in the tote with the brine shrimp so it stays heated but the temp stay a little lower in the swimmer tank about 78-79 since some heat is lost through the tank walls. Which is perfect for the swimmers.

Once they start eating flake food OR once my other fry start swimming these will go to a 10 gallon with a sponge filter. For the time being I do a 90ish% water change daily with cycled water from parents tank and it seems to keep the water very fresh.

omgosh they are still so tiny. yikes i guess i will need a smaller tank for the fry.

how old are they right now? 3 weeks ish?

They will be two weeks old tomorrow at noon haha. Compared to the size they where when they first started free swimming they are big now! I can now see little stripes, eyes, a mouth, little fins, and of course their stomach. Amazing how fast they are now though.

Yeah I would just suggest something small to start because when they first start eating they don't swim very fast or far so you can always squirt in the brine shrimp next to a pile of them but if it is a large tank it might be harder for them to find it. Once they get to the 3 or so weeks old I would think they would be ok in a 5-10 gallon tank since at 2 weeks they are already swimming very well and now seek out food. (smart little guys too, they know the shrimp go for the light so that is where they go!)

how do you keep the brine hatchery and the fry tank from floating in the tub of water?

i guess i can put sand in the tubing for the hatchery, but the little tank i have may not hold enough water to keep it down, guess a nice chunk of slate is in order ;)

gosh i wish you were closer so i could watch first hand, but luckily pics on the internet gets me just about in your fishy room ;)

wow life without internet must have been rough on newby fish parents!

the black one is called a pinyo, i think that the way its speld. for a breeding pair it will cost you around $250 bucks! nice find! there my fav.

Don't fill the tub all the way. Leave the water in the tube about once inch below the water in the hatchery (to account for the fluid you will lose when you syringe out the shrimp). The water in the swimmer tank should be at least as high as the hatchery but as high as possible for their tank. As long as the water is higher in the hatchery and tank then the water in the tub they will sink due to negative bouncy (like a submarine).

scottyofala wrote:

the black one is called a pinyo, i think that the way its speld. for a breeding pair it will cost you around $250 bucks! nice find! there my fav.

Yup! Pinoy are some of my favorite angel fish! I was really happy to get the pair for $40. The guy just didn't want to have the grow out tanks needed for raising the fry. I was happy to take them though hehe. Only thing I am not sure is what the offspring will look like. I can see 8 fry that are the female color and the rest are the males colors. It could be very interesting as the male has some nice green/purple mix color on his face. If I can get a good mix of fin-age and color of the two I think they will be very good looking fish.

my silver/orange head looks jsut like yours, is there a name for the coloration? My other three are like your other one except realllllyyy long fins ill have to take pics soon!

As far as I know they are just called Golden Angelfish. I believe mine may have the pearl scale trait as well. The scales that are sliver are very bright (pearl like) but not sure.

I love the long veil black ones if you get them to pair off you will have some amazing offspring!

are you using any type of bubbler for the babies?

or does the 95% change daily keep them supplied?

The water change seems to be fine. I put a bubbler in there and due to the size of the tank I had to more of less have almost no bubbles coming out of it because the current it caused in the tank made the fry have to swim. I figured this would most likely stress them out and they would burn through food much faster. Once they get in the 10 gallon tank next week I will add a bubbler since they will be able to get well away from the current.

these darn brine shrimp don't seem to want to hatch for nothing!
added a second heater, didn't work, added baking soda, didn't work, added light, didn't work.

so now started 2 new batches from scratch and set up like yours, and really hope they hatch cause the baby angels started swimming and are ready to eat soon, hope they can make it 18 hours for the eggs to hatch, if they don't then don't know what i will do!

moved the angels into a small tank.

sprinkled a little bit of flake food crushed into powder, but don't think that will work.

Strike.. give me a prompt before the next meeting.. you might not recall an item I bid on and won.. it was for a group of 4 wooden airstones.. since I was the only bidder, I got the whole batch of 10 or 12.. They are freaking amazing.. I'm thinking they are about 1/4th the size of bubbles that come out of normal airstones... Sounds like they'd be perfect for what your dealing with right now.. Not of use right now I know, but i'll schlep ya a few for future endeavors. Bill
p.s. Mark made them by hand...

LvMyPuffer wrote:

these darn brine shrimp don't seem to want to hatch for nothing!
added a second heater, didn't work, added baking soda, didn't work, added light, didn't work.

so now started 2 new batches from scratch and set up like yours, and really hope they hatch cause the baby angels started swimming and are ready to eat soon, hope they can make it 18 hours for the eggs to hatch, if they don't then don't know what i will do!

moved the angels into a small tank.

sprinkled a little bit of flake food crushed into powder, but don't think that will work.

To be honest I never had trouble hatching them however, I have heard that people get bad batches from the store. Always possible since they are really meant to be stored in a chilled place.

Like you can see in the pictures there is one heater in the middle of the tri-batch setup. It just heats the water around the actually soda bottles. I add water till about the 3/4 mark from the bottom (cap end) of the bottle. 2 TBS regular old non ionized salt. 1/4 tsp baking soda (gives me well into the 8's PH) and then just a tiny scoop of shrimp. The important thing is aeration. It should be very vigorous. No air stone is needed just the end of the tube. I drill a small hole in the bottle cap and squeeze the air line through it. After 18 or so hours the husk of the shrimp should be floating when you turn off your air. If you wait about 5-10 mins take the syringe and suck under the husks down just an inch or so in the container. All the shrimp will gather at the side with the light on it making for easy pickings. Hope that help!

I have also heard that First-bites works well as a way to feed fry but never tried it. It seems pretty small so it might work. The size is what is really important since the fry are so small they have to be able to fit it in their mouths. Of course most people will say they report faster growing and healthier fry with feeding live food.

Good luck!

williemcd wrote:

Strike.. give me a prompt before the next meeting.. you might not recall an item I bid on and won.. it was for a group of 4 wooden airstones.. since I was the only bidder, I got the whole batch of 10 or 12.. They are freaking amazing.. I'm thinking they are about 1/4th the size of bubbles that come out of normal airstones... Sounds like they'd be perfect for what your dealing with right now.. Not of use right now I know, but i'll schlep ya a few for future endeavors. Bill
p.s. Mark made them by hand...

Thanks Bill.

I am able to add the air stone now they have grown a lot in the past week. They have no trouble swimming against the little current now.

Here is an update they are now 3 weeks old



This is from the latest batch at less then one week old.

Wow Amazing

That is awesome.

Awesome! love the updates they are really cute little guys.