The evil angel...

[niks93gt]

I got 3 Angelfish from Petsmart. The next day, two died. Water Params were fine... 0 ammonia, 0 nitrite, 5 nitrate. So I get 5 more from the LFS. Each day, one has died. Now I'm down to the 1 from Petsmart and 1 from my LFS. I've came to the conclusion that it has to be the 1 from petsmart killing them. I've seen him be agressive once, but normally the others just hide in a corner. He isn't bigger... All my other fish are doing fine... pleco, BGK, corys, hatchets, tetras... etc...

Now the question is, should I get rid of the one and try again for a mated pair, or just keep the one in the tank by itself?

Nik

 

[Stephen]

Either way seems to be fine. I'm just not sure if any Angelfish eggs would make it to the hatching stage because of the presence of the other fish you have.

 

[SparKy697]

I think you would be hard pressed to find many people here that has had great success with angels. It seems that they are just so frail these days. I had similar experiences with them recently. I decided to wait a while until I got a bigger tank so that I could give them a place that was not so stressful. I'm of the opinion that they get freaked out easily by the other fish, even if they are not aggressive fish. This stress seems to do them all in IMO

 

[Peyton]

I have had no luck at all over the years with angels. I have bought so many trying to keep them only to have them all die. I gave up on them.

 

[Fishyfanatic]

I have had the original 5 angels for about a year now, haven't lost one yet. What size is the tank?

 

[confusion]

How are you acclimating them? I had a LOT of problems early on, but I've gotten some adive on acclimation that's reduced my loss of new angels to 0. I suspect that they're not dying because of the angel, but the angel is picking on them because they're dying.

 

[BrianNY]

Fish that have environmental swings are susceptible to stress related deaths. If a fish dies suddenly after being moved, there was likely a drastic change that could not be tolerated.

Tips on buying fish from the lfs.....

1. Don't be in such a hurry to get the fish at home. It may have just arrived from the distributer and the 2nd move too soon could kill it. Make sure the fish has been at the lfs for a week before taking it. My lfs will let me pay for the fish and then hold it for me for a week.

2. Take your tank pH on the day you're planning to bring the fish home. Ask the lfs to test the pH in the fishes current tank (in front of you). If the difference is more than .5, you should use the drip method to acclimate.

3. Ask the lfs to feed the fish in front of you. Pick the best eaters. They have the best chance of survival.

 

[justrelax]

What size is the tank?

and how big are the angels you're buying? If they are adults, it's going to be hard to get them to get along. Unless you buy a proven mated pair.

 

[confusion]

I've found that, in general, a difference in GH is FAR more impactful than a difference in PH when introducing new fish.

For all new angels, I follow this process:
- I ask the LFS to put in extra water with the fish. Always a good idea, IMO.
- Put the bag in a container that will keep it from tipping over - I use a big square tupperware deal for this.
- Use an airline and a flow control to drip about 2 drips/sec from the tank to the bag.
- When the amount of water in the bag has doubled, I carefully pour it out into the container - in such a way that the fish just swims out into the container.
- I continue the drip until the container gets about 3/4 full.
- When it start to get full, I scoop out half of the water and let it fill up again.
- About this time, I open up the flow control on the air line so it fills the container much faster.
- After it gets full again, I carefully release (not net) it into the QT.
- I add some of the jungle anti-parasite parasite (which has metro and praziquantel) to the QT
- I add 1 TBSP/10G of salt to the QT

It's a lot of steps, but it really does help out a lot.

 

[niks93gt]

The tank is a 75 gallon. I don't want them to breed, I was just hoping to have two nice angels as my centerpiece. The angels I bought are no more than 2 inches. The ones from the LFS are bred locally... I'm sure the petsmart ones are not. I just don't see this being an acclimation problem when the fish were fine for six days then suddenly each day for the last 3 or 4 days another angel has died. Each time one dies, a different one sits in the same corner the one that just died was in until it dies too. All other fish in the tank are fine. I've decided I'm going to let nature take its course. If the 1 survivor (because now the other angel looks in bad shape) stays alive for a while, I'll have just one angel... but if he ends up dieing, I'll go to a different lfs and buy 6 more and try again.

Nik

 

[confusion]

You might be right. My process also treats an apparent rapant problem with internal parasites that they become susceptible to with the transport.

After you add them, do they eat for some period of time?

 

[SparKy697]

Mine ate for a few days then just stopped eating.

 

[niks93gt]

They all eat just fine. One angel, right before he died, I noticed a red spot on his eye, kinda looked like internal bleeding.

Nik

 

[JustOneMore20]

Its hard to say what is killing your angels. But I had a similar problem. For months I had 1 angel by itself, but decided to get another one because I wanted 2. Well I ended up buying 2 more, since I figured adding one would be a death sentence. The 3 got along fine for a few months, then one of the newer ones started bullying the biggest one. It didn't seem to cause damage, but eventually I woke up one morning to find my biggest angel dead. I had only had it a year, so it wasn't old age. I figured the stress had taken a toll on her/him. Well the 2 angels left got along great. I thought they were male and female because they swam around together everywhere. Then the angel that had bullied the older angel before started doing that to the other one. She/he would leave little marks on the other angel's body and it would have tears in its fins. I didn't have anywhere to move it though. Most of the time they got along, so I didn't think anything about it....until I found that angel dead one morning.

Moral of my long story.....if you suspect that the one angel is killing the others, just keep it alone. Thats what I'm going to do because I don't want to buy anymore and have them killed. My angel is perfectly happy by itself now....rules the tank.

 

[Newzpix]

I've had good luck with Angels over the years.

Last year I set up a 45 gal planted tank and bought 6 juvie Angels. They took to the tank without problems. Now they are full grown and two of them mated and produced a large amount of eggs - was able to save a few of the fry which are now dime sized.

I'm not doing anything special. CO2 injection, Fluval filter, diatom filter every-other week, daily additives for plants.

As others have stated, be careful when purchasing them. Really look em over. Make certain they are not clamping their fins. No sores. Eyes look good.

 

[niks93gt]

Well the the next of the last angel died while I was at work. The lone angel is swimming around like he rules the world. The tank has been setup for a month now, has been fully cycled the whole time (except an ammonia or nitrite spike when I added new schools for a day or two) and other than the angels I've only lost 1 other fish and that was a cory... and from my experience with cories, I always lose 1 or 2 when I buy a new batch. I'm kinda disappointed... I was hoping to have the experience Newzpix had but I guess I'll have to deal with only having 1 angel.

Current Stocking:
4-5 inch hand fed BGK
3 inch L199 Pleco
10 Silver Hatchets
8 Bleeding Hearts
5 Peppered Corys
and 1 evil angel

Nik