Hello

[264Douglas]

I am a new member of the group but am not new to the hobby. I have kept tropical fish for 58 years and successfully spawned and reared fry to adulthood from nearly 40 species of fish. I have always had multiple aquariums running at one time. As I age I have began to cut back on the number of aquariums I operate. Currently, I have a 150 gallon show tank in my den area, two 125 gallon tanks, one 120 gallon tank, one 75 gallon, four 20 gallon, and four 10 gallon aquariums set up in the aquarium room of my house. I joined the group to hopefully get help with an issue I have had for the past two years with Anglefish wigglers that die before absorbing their yolk sack. I posted a thread a couple hours ago to see if anybody has had this problem and been able to solve it.

 

[Aiken Drum]

Hi Douglas

Welcome to the community. Looking forward to seeing and hearing about what you are getting up to.

 

[264Douglas]

Thank you.

 

[Colin_T]

Hi and welcome to the forum

Water changes and gravel cleans can be made easier by using gravity. I had 3 tier stands in my fish room and used the top row of tanks to hold water. I filled them with a hose from the tap.

I had a 20 meter long hose that I ran out the door onto the lawn and gravel cleaned the tank water straight onto the lawn. Then I filled them with the water from the top tanks.

No heavy lifting, quick and simple and I could do 40 tanks in half a day.

 

[264Douglas]

Thanks and glad to be in the group. I do water exchanges similar to you by using gravity to clean the gravel. I have a drain in my fishroom that the water drains into. I then have a hose permanently connected to a tap to refill the tanks, unless I need reverse osmossis water. I have a reverse osmissis system hooked to the tap also that I use to get whatever water parameters I want in a tank if I need RO water.

 

[Colin_T]

I assume the reverse osmosis (r/o) unit has the cartridges replaced regularly?

If you use r/o water it shouldn't be a contaminant in the water supply that is affecting the angelfish babies.

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Back when I first started in the pet industry we would stir up the gravel in tanks and syphon the water and gunk into buckets, then lug the buckets of water outside to pour down the stormwater drain. Boy that was awful. I remember doing the same thing as a kid. When I first saw a gravel cleaner, oh joy of joys. Then one day I saw another shop using a gravel cleaner made from this plastic drink bottle and clear hose. That was it, no more lugging buckets for me. I couldn't imagine going back to carrying buckets of water through the house.

 

[264Douglas]

When I was younger and lived in an apartment while in college I raised angelfish for several pet shops in the city my university was in. I carried water in buckets siphoned from the tanks and poured it down the toilet and then carried buckets from the sink and poured them into the tanks. It was work but I was young then and could tolerate the lifting.

 

[264Douglas]

I use partial RO water in the tank to do water exchanges but mix it with tap water to give the water some mineral content. I generally take water for the hatching tank directly from the tank the eggs were laid in so that the eggs are hatched in the same water parameters they were laid in. That method worked for me for years but is not working now. Because the first spawn died after becoming wrigglers I tried fresh tap water for the second spawn. All wrigglers in both hatches survived about three or four days. I have a third spawn I put into a gallon jar and will see if I get a hatch. They should hatch today or tomorrow at the latest. If so I am going to begin small water exchanges immediately to see if that helps.

 

[Colin_T]

Have you tried using pure r/o water and adding minerals?

There could still be something in the tap water that is poisoning them if you are using half r/o and half tap water. You could also try pure r/o water without any minerals added. Angelfish come from very soft water so the eggs and fry should be ok without minerals, just watch the pH doesn't drop.

Is the hatching tank brightly lit?
It shouldn't make a lot of difference but some fish eggs are sensitive to light and if the eggs are in a brightly lit area, it might (unlikely but might) be a factor.