Hi guys!!!! I'm still alive.
I do actually have two angelfish tanks still, and at least one pair still spawns regularly, but they also eat their eggs regularly. I am still planning in taking down one of the tanks - the angel only tank - and keeping the other community tank.
In July I started prepping to leave my life of corporate work behind and open an espresso and ice cream shop. I got the work done and opened the shop in September... Friday the Thirteenth. LOL! I moved my main tank, the 150g to the shop and filled it with African cichlids. They are super lively and interact with all the customers, and my customers LOVE them. My business is thriving (so far) and takes almost all of my waking time, which is the reason I plan to take down at least one of the tanks I still have at home.
I never did sell my gorgeous spawning pair, the platinum marble female and the silver male. I wanted to make sure they went to a good home, and since I still have them, that's why I haven't taken that tank down yet. But it's really gotta go since it is not getting the care, maintenance, and attention it deserves anymore. :-(
Thanks for checking on me everyone!!!
Angelwings
As you can see, your thread has led to a mountain of info on breeding Angels. When a you have a few minutes/hours (lol) you should read through it.
What I do is set up a sponge filter in an existing tank for a couple of weeks for a bacteria bed to start growing. Sometimes, when I need a filter in a hurry, I'll take an existing filter and squeeze out some of the "gunk" into the new tank so it can recolonize in the new sponge. I know everybody goes balistic when they hear about "fish in" cycling but in the old days, THAT was the only way we did it. Truthfully, I think you would really need to overfeed the crap out of that tank for 5 small fish to create so much ammonia in a tank that size that it becomes so toxic that they will die from it. PLUS, since you are in MD, I believe you have soft Acidic water with a PH of less than 7.0. What that means is that even tho there will be an ammonia reading, it is really ammonium which is not toxic to the fish. That will give the filter a chance to cycle on it's own while not doing damage to the fish. When I lived in NJ with those conditions, I just maintained my regular water change schedule and the fish did fine. Your biggest concern would be with Nitrites which you can detoxify with Seachem's PRIME if they climb too high. Keep your graph to monitor the cyclings just so that you know but I wouldn't expect things to get that bad. So YES, you cycle a tank with a sponge filter the same way as with other filters.
Sorry couldn't resist! I personally don't know but am willing to to follow along (whether it's in this thread or if you start a new one) as I hope to breed mine.
. I really thought they were going to raise them this time. They even cleaned off all the unfertilized eggs and left the fertilized ones on the slate. I think the male is eating the eggs because the female was very upset with him this morning. She was locking lips with him and they were going around in circles like they were in a boxing ring. Oh well maybe next time they will have better luck.
Does anyone know what this is?
lol
