Breeding freshwater angelfish Advice

[Syven]

Im looking to start a breeding program, just for my pleasure, im looking for sum starter advice. My tank is a 135g, 72x18x23. I will b dividing it into 3- 24x18 inch cubes for 3 different breeders. Any advice.

 

[Andy Sager]

Im looking to start a breeding program, just for my pleasure, im looking for sum starter advice. My tank is a 135g, 72x18x23. I will b dividing it into 3- 24x18 inch cubes for 3 different breeders. Any advice.

I would suggest you read through the thread "Wigglers at last!!!!" in this forum as it discusses just about everything you need to know about breeding Angelfish.
I will say this however, Angelfish, while slow in the beginning, will produce copious amounts of fry so that 1 tank will never be enough room. Divided or not, 1 tank is just not enough space. If you use the large tank for the pair and subsequent 2 spawns, the dividers need to be made so that the tiniest of fry cannot get through them making separate tanks a more desirable set up.
Angelfish produce spawns from 100 -500 eggs so you will need to have an outlet for the overflow. If your choice is to use a pet store as as your outlet, I urge you to be very selective as to the fish you give them as we are part of a movement to increase the quality of the Angelfish available on the market. Bent fins, short fins, deformities are all possible in today's fish ( I've had them even show up as late at 4 months old) so you need be aware of this.
From this point, I'd read through the thread.

 

[Syven]

Thanks andy, i have plenty of empty tanks on hand, i have 6 empty tanks, 3x 40g breeders an 3x 29g. Will thys be enough if i gave a pair a 40 an a 29 each.

 

[Andy Sager]

As I said in the Wigglers thread, I use 4 tanks for every pair of fish. This is because I don't let the fish hatch the eggs or raise the fry. A pair will live fine in a 29 gal ( I use 10 gals for my breeders) so keep the larger tanks for the fry. The thing to remember is when you put fry in a large tank too quickly, they may not be able to find the food as well as if they were in smaller tanks. My fry live in a 10 gal for 30 days then are moved into a 75-100 gal tank for growing out. In my current attempt to get back to breeding Angels commercially, I am suffering major loses to sibling predation in my 30 gal long tanks ( 36"x12" x 16") which I did not experience in my previous hatcheries in the larger tanks. I can only assume that this is a space issue as available food is not an issue. Remember, a 40 breeder is just a 30 long only 6" wider. My 75s and 100s were not actual tanks but 6' long vats of different depths. To keep predation to a minimum, you may need to split spawns into at least 2 -40s making the answer to your question " are 6 tanks enough for 3 pairs of fish?" NO, it isn't.

Hope this helps

 

[Syven]

Thank u for the words of wisdom, indeed I only wish to breed true strains, as of right now i have 1x wild type, 1x D/D, 1x smokey &1x gold marble, my wild type is of the female gender, so im growing the other three hopefully to get a male an start from their, I kno its a hit an miss but i wanna find out what the males have in them, if thys makes since

 

[Andy Sager]

Thank u for the words of wisdom, indeed I only wish to breed true strains, as of right now i have 1x wild type, 1x D/D, 1x smokey &1x gold marble, my wild type is of the female gender, so im growing the other three hopefully to get a male an start from their, I kno its a hit an miss but i wanna find out what the males have in them, if thys makes since

If I remember my genetics correctly, , you won't know what's in your other fish if you breed them back to the wild one. The wild genes will all be the dominant genes. What you might want to do is breed a known D/D, Smokey or Gold marble to your unknown fish and see what they produce. If you know what made the fish, you'll know what is extra.
For example, I am breeding 2 marbles that are mostly dark marbles but have a hint of gold in them. They are producing very light colored Gold marbles and very dark colored marble but nothing else. I'm breeding a Gold marble to a Koi and getting the same mix of offspring as the marbles so I am raising these to maturity to see if they become KOIs. There is a slight possibility that the marbles are brother and sister but the other pair came from different states so I know they are not closely related yet I have the similar results.
Lastly, again if I remember correctly, when you are trying to get wild genes back into the bloodline, you breed the F1 generation to the phenotype you want to create so that they are not all silvers. Say, you have a Black and Wild pair, you will breed their F1 generation back to the black parent to strengthen the line of the black and still produce the black. Again, this will take a few generations to get all black spawns again but the bloodline will not be as corrupt. You can also breed the F1 generation siblings so that they both are carrying wild genetics thereby making any offspring healthier but with less off colored fish per spawn for a generation or 2 ( depending on what color siblings you pair.)
If this all makes sense

 

[Syven]

Sorry bout the lack of knowledge, that's y i'm here, thumbs up. I wanna really breed my black an smokey together, an find mates for my wild type, an gold marble. Maybe I'll just stick with my D/D an smokey, their my favorite of all angels, I'll just breed them an let nature take its course. I'll give them the 135g an just add a few tank mates, maybe I'm not ready for a herd of fry from 3 different pairs.

 

[Andy Sager]

Sorry bout the lack of knowledge, that's y i'm here, thumbs up. I wanna really breed my black an smokey together, an find mates for my wild type, an gold marble. Maybe I'll just stick with my D/D an smokey, their my favorite of all angels, I'll just breed them an let nature take its course. I'll give them the 135g an just add a few tank mates, maybe I'm not ready for a herd of fry from 3 different pairs.

There's nothing wrong with asking the questions. That's how you learn
Most people don;t realize what really is involved in breeding fish. It's not as easy as it looks and many, and I mean MANY, people fail at producing babies. They may get eggs, But they don;t hatch. They might hatch, but they fail to get fed the right food so they die. They all survive then the hobbyist realizes they have wayyyyy to many fish in the one tank and no place for a second tank so they kill the fry by overcrowding. See? It's not as easy as it looks
As for your Angels, Silvers are the only natural color form. Evey other color is a man made manipulation of the genepool to create these different colors. So, because you don't know what made the non silver fish you want to breed together, it will be a guessing game while the fry grow as to what they really are. Since your fish may not be from true strains, you cannot expect true results. Here's a good one for ya, my best Black Angels came from a pair where neither parent was black. Go figure
Hope it all works out for you

 

[Syven]

Yea after read the other forum like it was a book, wigglers at last should be published. Ill just stick to buying angels from good stocks. Would u ship when u get urs back up in motion.

 

[Andy Sager]

Yea after read the other forum like it was a book, wigglers at last should be published. Ill just stick to buying angels from good stocks. Would u ship when u get urs back up in motion.

At some point I may get back into shipping but for now it's pick up only I don't want to miss one minute of staring at my babies