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Raising Angelfish
Posted by: Mbuna on Monday, January 10, 2005 - 05:22 PM
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By: J. D. Whaley
Last month I wrote about preparing Angelfish for spawning. This month I will discuss rearing the resultant baby fish. Let me start by warning you that it is important to start with healthy parents that haven't been subjected to excessive medication, this seems to contribute to infertility problems. Be prepared to rematch your pairs if they have spawned more than three times and haven't produced live wigglers on the spawn site. Even this is no guarantee. I had a pair once that hatched live wrigglers, but under microscopic examination they were absent the major portion of their brain tissue so they had no chance of ever swimming. The genes of the angelfish have been scrambled more than any other fish that I can think of so don't be discouraged if you aren't successful with your first pair.
Twenty four hours after your fish have spawned you should be able to see eyes developing within the eggs with he naked eye. Things are pretty stable from this point until the seventh day when they become free swimming. Because my primary goal is to raise lots of angelfish not to observe parental raising of baby fish, I move the eggs on the first day to one gallon sun tea jar, which helps me protect the eggs from the parents who may eat the eggs for as little a reason as having the lights flicker. The gallon jar allows me to medicate the eggs without continually subjecting the parents to chemicals. For the first three days I treat the eggs with seven drops of Fish Egg Guard by Jungle products which prevents the spread of the fungus that often develops on infertile eggs. Many other breeders that I know also use methylene blue but I don't think that it's as effective. When all the eggs hatch that are going to hatch and the spawn site is covered with a mass of rapidly wiggling baby angelfish, we get the what I feel is the most important step in the process, treating baby fish for Costia. I don't know whether it is transferred with the water or within the egg itself, but I do know that my success rate goes from near zero to near a hundred percent of survival of hatched by addition of this one step. Whenever I do autopsies on dead baby angelfish I almost always find Costia (a parasite so small that they must be magnified at least three hundred times to be observable.) Costia doesn't often cause immediate death in adult fish, but since it attacks mainly the gills and baby fish don't have fully developed gills, it is a major killer of baby fish. My solution to this problem is to treat the water in he gallon jar hatchery with eight drops of a green dye medication containing Malachite Green, Acriflavine, or analin. I use Contrabac by Tetra because it works for me but I assume that any medication containing green dye will work.
On day six it's time to start preparing for feeding the baby fish when they become free swimming on dy seven assuming that eggs are incubated at least eighty degrees. The easiest and most nourishing first food is baby brine shrimp but in an emergency the artificial foods in a tube will get you by. Brine shrimp are another chore that a that aquarist seem to dread and I don't understand this because I feel that they are easy, convenient and cheap if you are going to be doing this on a continuing basis. I will discuss hatching brine shrimp in another article, but they take twenty four hours to hatch and baby angelfish love them and they get off to a great start and you can tell if they are eating them as their bellies turn orange when they are filled with brine shrimp. After their first or second meal which is fed to them while they are still in the gallon jar hatchery, it is time to move them to larger quarters, which for me is a ten gallon aquarium filled with just enough water to cover the heating element on whatever heater you are using. It's very important that this water be aged at least twenty four hours to prevent hyperoxygenation and be approximately 80 degrees. I try to make the transfer just before the lights go out so that they have overnight to settle down before adding food again. Some breeders transfer the eggs and fry to larger tanks, but I feel that it's worth the extra trouble to move them twice because the fish and food are more confined to the same areas. A light source is important here because both the fish and the baby brine shrimp are attracted to the light so they're concentrated in the same area of the tank. It's important if you want rapid growth to feed the baby often as they don't have much storage capacity. So, for the next week or so five feedings a day isn't too much. The reason that I fill the ten gallon tank with only enough water to cover the heating element is so that the percentage of new water is much smaller and so that I can keep adding water gradually to fill the tank over the next few days. By the time the aquarium is completely filled, a sponge filter that is large enough to filter at least thirty gallons should be added so it can begin cycling. The bioload is very small at this time so that by the time the fry are large enough to create a large bioload, the sponge is cycled. With angelfish fry it is especially important to keep the ammonia concentration very low because they suffer ammonia burn at levels too low to measure with test equipment available at pet shops. Ammonia burn is a condition to be absolutely avoided if you want quality fish as the tips of their fins are dissolved away and become ragged. If it affects their fins this much, what do you think it does to their gill tissue?
After feeding the fry baby brine shrimp only for a bout a week it's time to start giving them a more balanced diet. I use a food that is especially formulated for angelfish but any flake food will probably work if it's fine enough. I just take a pinch of flakes between my thumb and forefinger and crumble it as fine as I can. When the fry have become large enough to be able to tell that they are angelfish, (about two weeks) the next larger tank should be made ready. Because I use twenty nine gallon tanks for my breeders, this is my next larger tank. I normally try to syphon water and fry to the next tank as they are harmed less by traveling through a hose than by being netted.
As a normal practice I try to never move fry to a tank that has had fish in it previously without completely sterilizing the tank with a Chlorox bath. That goes for nets, hoses, air lines, air stones, or anything else. Assuming that the fry have gotten through these last three weeks without coming down with omething, it would be a shame to contaminate them now. The rest is more of the same. As they get bigger they need more tank space. It takes lots of water and tank space to raise quality fish. As a rule of thumb, a fifty five gallon tank will house seventy five angelfish that are five to six weeks old. I have raised in excess of seven hundred twenty five fry from one spawned from one pair of angelfish. And a mated pair in excellent physical shape with ideal water quality will produce that many fry every seven to ten days. If you still want to try raising them, be prepared for where you are going to put them all.
I raise angelfish because I think black superveil angelfish are the most beautiful aquarium fish possible, and by raising them, I get to keep the cream of the crop to keep improving the tock. For me it's like you can have your cake and eat it too.
Note: Note: Published at FishGeeks with express permission from the author. This article can not be copied or reprinted, either physically or electronically without the permission of the author. Copyright 2004, FishGeeks.
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