I have a pair of angel fish who have spawned a couple if times now in my community tank. The eggs have always bern missing by the next morning.
I was anxious to raise baby angel fish, so I separated them from the rest of the community tank, into their own 30g. Yesterday they spawned again, and miraculously the eggs were still there this morning! Hurrah, progress!
I rushed home from work to see if I can see the wigglers inside the eggs, and they are gone. No more eggs. Those must be tasty little buggers.
Bob, Andy, anyone? Do you have any good ideas for me? I don't want to remove the parents from the tank and stress them out. Plus they get too aggressive in my main tank.
Do they just need practice? Can I do anything to help them along? Clearly, patience is not my strong point.
Some Angels are just bad parents, some just like the taste of eggs and then some just do what is natural and that is to eat or remove the dead eggs from the spawning site. Which one do you have?
It's only a guess but if these are new breeders I'd go with #3 and assume that they haven't gotten the breeding thing down yet. It does often take a few times for them to get it right but once they do, watch out! They can become a machine.
Here's my method for breeding Angels: I am not a fan of moving breeders, I prefer to move the eggs. If the eggs die, the breeders will give me more. If the breeders die, there are no more eggs, See my reasoning?
If the parents don't eat the eggs immediately after spawning, I wait for about an hour or so from the time they finish spawning and remove the spawning site (usually a piece of slate or flat rock) to either a separate tank or to a 1 gal jar. ( I used 1 gal Glass Pickle jars.) Either way, the eggs are placed in the water they were spawned in along with some methylene blue to prevent fungusing. I use an airstone placed under the slate to push a steady but not forceful flow of bubbles in front of the eggs. (A diagram of this procedure can be found in my albums under "Instruction charts". )
If using a jar, the eggs will remain in the jar until they are free swimming then placed in their own 10 gal tank. (I preferred 10s because they were easy to use and move with water plus they were small enough to allow the fry to find their food more easily.) If hatching out in their own 10 gal tank, they will remain in the tank for approx. 30 days before needing to be moved to a larger grow out tank. Either way, I start doing daily 10% water changes once the eggs have hatched so that the M. Blue is all but gone once the fry are free swimming. In a tank hatchout, once the eggs have hatched, the airstone is replaced with a sponge filter if one is not already in the tank. For a jar hatchout, keep using the airstone until the fry are moved into a tank that has a sponge filter.
Once free swimming, they were fed a diet of Newly hatched Brine Shrimp.
Lastly, be aware that in the beginning, you need to only see 1 live wiggler to confirm that you have not only a male and female but that they are both fertile. So don't give up on a spawn until you see that all the eggs have turned white (which means that they are dead.) Once you get this confirmation, usually time and practice will give you better results. If they don't, you will need to reassess as to whether it's the fish or the situation that the fish are breeding in. (Hint: I found high volume filters to be the fault of many bad spawns
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If you have any other questions, feel free to PM me
