More tanks more tanks lol thats been going through my head for a while already, so far i have 3×3 ft and 2 × 1.5 ft
I will clean out that other small tank now and put them into it
Now 2 other quick questions
Is it normal to be taking out some dead fry at each feeding? They look like they haven't been getting fed or don't know how to eat and there almost still like wigglers on the bottom of the tank b4 they go i have been thinking they are just the weak ones that should be going anyway
Also with the amount of feeds of BS will the water not be getting salty? I do 10-20% water changes daily (from cleaning up excess BS) but still imagine that the water has to be getting salty should i be using a BS net then transfer to fresh water and baste from there?
P.s. how was your trip andy? did you find any nice stock when you were away?
If you want to raise quantity and make some money at this, I learned this system back in the 1960s. It's working today just as it did for me back then. It requires 4 tanks minimum for every 1 pair of Angels. 1 tank is for the breeders, 2 tanks ( I use 10 gals) are for hatching eggs and raising the fry for the first 30 days +/- and the last tank is a larger 75- 100 gal tank for growouts. This may require 2 growout tanks depending on the size of the spawn. Cramping the fish will reduce growth rate. This is where the "breeder's cheer" came from.
People think you can raise multiple spawns or different aged spawns together in a smaller tank. I say, it's a bad idea. Keep them separate and growing as best possible. Different aged fry will almost always sacrifice the smaller fish. That's nature at work.
Brine shrimp: Baby brine shrimp should be rinsed off in fresh water prior to being fed to your fry. NONE of the brine shrimp water should be going into the fry tanks as it can contain bacteria and other unwanteds that can, in time, pollute the tank. I've noticed that some brine shrimps nets are actually allowing more of the nuplii to get through so I suggest you try to get a net made by the manufacturer of your shrimp eggs so that it works with the size shrimp eggs you are using.
Dead fry: Yes, this is normal. Consider this: in animals that produce multiple offspring at a single time, the general rule is that only 10 percent of the offspring will survive to become breeding adults. So what happens to the other 90%? They die! Most of it is genetics but some of it is also predation. Since we have taken away the predation by animals other than siblings, by tank rearing, we have increased that 10% margin substantially. There is a draw back to this however. In nature, it's survival of the fittest. In a fish tank, it's survival of the how many we want to keep. This means that the weaker fish may have been kept by a previous breeder and has formed bloodlines containing weaker fish genetics so you are going to be losing some on a more continual basis. This is why I prefer to buy and sell only larger sized fish. My smalls are nickle body size because dime size fish still, in my experience, exhibit a higher rate of unexplained deaths. Even the larger size fish still die but again, in my experience, the dividing line from a lot to a few seems to be at about that nickle size. ( FYI: In one of the stores I visited on my trip, I was telling the owner of what I was doing and she was telling me how she too has seen the Angelfish go from hardly sturdy stock to weak fragile fish now. This all goes back to what the breeders used as their breeding stock.) In some strains, the fry start out too small to eat newly hatched brine shrimp so if there is a lot of these in your spawns, I would start them off with infusoria or another smaller food for a week prior to starting them on BBS. If you are seeing some, but not a lot of these smaller fry, I'd sacrifice them as part of the 90%. They will probably be dead before being salable anyway.
As for my trip, IT WAS GREAT!!!
: I acquired some new plant stock as well as information. The Angelfish situation is.... how can I say this nicely?.....Crappy? I went to one of the bigger stores in Alabama and when I asked for colors I was looking for, the answer I got was " We haven't seen those fish in years around here." In another store, I went back to it on my return trip because I was told they were getting new stock in during the time I would be away so I went back to check it out. Besides some larger Silver & arble Angels, someone had traded in a pearlscale. The smaller fish looked like they were clamping up and the choice for mediums were Koi. Just Koi.
No other colors.
I was told that THIS was all that was available.
We gotta change that.
So I came home with no new fish.
: I was also looking for some Bettas ( What can I say, I LOVES me some doubletail veiltail Bettas
) but there were no DTs and the females they did have available were just too big even for the males they were selling. I took that as a sign to not do bettas for now.
So it's back to making quality Angels for me.
Hope this helps