60 Gallon Tank Angel fish eggs turning white what am i doing wrong

Can anyone help with this I have a pair of angle fish who lay eggs every 12 days however I have lost every egg due to them turning white. I am hoping I don't have to females in the tank but not really sure how to tell since i am never here when they lay eggs, I have added Methane blue to help the last batch and they still turned white. they are the only to fish in the tank, I watch them fanning the eggs after the are laid however still turn white with in a couple of days any help would be nice

 

My guess is the eggs aren't fertile which either means you have two females or the male isn't getting the "job" done.

 

this is the 3rd batch they are both very young, do you think I should just keep trying or remove the male and add another male to see if this will help thank you for your reply

 

experienced the same thing myself.
my pair: circled is what to look for.



the male a marble, it's pointy like the tip of a pencil.


The female a platinum, it's rounded and blunt looking.



When all else fails, watch on day 12 or so and try to see who's laying the eggs for sure that's a female. LOL

Possible you have two females, but here's the questions now.
1) how many spawns are you on now?
2) when the eggs are laid are they all turning white in the fist 12 hours, or is it just some, and then those turn the rest of them white a day or so later and fungus kills all of it before they hatch?
3) how clean is your tank. When I say clean, I mean 0 ammonia, 0 nitrites, and as close to 0 nitrates as you can be, the nitrates being nonexistent is critical for going from wrigglers to free swimmers and making it past that point. the water has to be pristine.
4) what temp are you set at? hatching occurs fastest at 82F. right around 3 days, if you have white egg and fungus issues, the way to combat the fungus take over is getting them hatched faster, it works better than metheylene blue or anything else I tried. get them to wigglers before the fungus gets out of hand.

now for question one, this is important, if all white in the first 12 hours, it could be two females have paired, BUT it could be they have freshly matured and the male isn't viable yet. each spawn should get better, I took 6 spawns before I got freeswimmers. first batch was horrible, but each one got a little better once I figured out how to defeat the white eggs and fungus. the parent also learned to pick out and eat the white eggs some as they develop. there will always be white eggs, he doesn't fertilize them all and will always miss some, and some just don't make it to hatching. it's keeping the fungus in check and the hatch and wriggler stage short that got me over that hump.

I tried jar rearing, and picking off white eggs myself each day before they could fungus, but that wasn't very productive. I tried methylene blue, the eggs still fungused. I tried chlorinated tapwater in the jar which actually worked quite well, and by day 3 when they hatched the chlorine has aged out of the tap water.
the wrigglers did freeswim, for about a day, but theydied in the transition to a tank from the jar. that didn't work out. I was learning and the parents also need to learn on the job also.

What did work is the pair laid eggs, and I just had the tank really clean for them and had already set the temp to 82F and it worked out, really well, on day 3 they hatched, the parents moved them away from the bad eggs, day 6 they all were free swimming,


and now 2 months later.



I removed the parents from the fry tank after the 2nd week of free swimming, they were too defensive for cleanings, and the fry were starting to get clingy.

my opinion, if you see positive momentum from each spawning, just stay the course, they are new to it and it will take at least a half dozen attempts to get it right and each step further will be learning something new for them as they get further along. you might get lucky and it's sooner, or it's happens later, but I'd say the pair isn't right if by the 12th spawn it's still all bad and white right after laying the eggs. .

I'll tell you right now, it's months of daily work if you do breed them and they are successful. feedings and cleanings and the bigger they get, the more they eat and the more they poop. LOL

oh, one more question? what size tank? reason I ask is, I have the parents currently housed in a bare 10g by themselves, they won't use the vertical slate, they lay eggs horizontally on a slate on the tank bottom, in a 20g Long, they would lay horizontally. either way, just saying 20g seems to be the right size for spawning, and growing out the fry, and removing the parents after two to three weeks of freeswimming rather than moving the fry worked for me. Breeders would say to move the fry because it's better to lose a spawn than one of the pair, but I used the tank water and an aged sponge filter and did a 50% water change on the 20g to keep the fry without moving them, figuring moving fry wasn't my strong suit. there was not issue with the acclimation it was literally the same everything between the two tanks.

I find the 20g is the appropriate size for the first 8 weeks of the fry so the fish don't have to go too far to eat, but right now it's getting tight and they need a bigger grow out from 8 weeks onward or I'd have to keep culling down to make more room.....
oops nevermind I see it's a 60 gallon.

going to be honest here, 60g that's fine for the pair. it's a bit big to raise the fry in. If you can get a 20g tank, (not a long) I think it would be best really, a heater, a sponge fliter and jumpstart it off the 60g, it will be easier to keep clean, and easier for the fry to get to the food when they are tiny for the first two months of growth. you'd move the parents to the 60 after the fry are free swimming when the parents have hammered your hands trying to clean and you've had enough of that, and then when the fry get big for the 20g, you can switch the fry and the parents around and put the fry to the 60g to finish grow out, and the parents in the 20g which isn't bad, mine get along fine in a 10g, I'm sure they aren't thrilled it's tight but they make it work and get along like peanutbutter and jelly,, but I'm out of space and can't take another tank and it's what I have but the 10g works. it's just not ideal to house the parents or the fry for long. a 20g would get you to dime/cent size, then the 60 could get you to nickel/ quarter and give you time to offload some to thin the herd for 50 cent and larger for yourself. And remember, KEEP the BEST ONES FOR YOURSELF! you did the work! LOL

Your pair needs more time, they will get better at it. you could also try lowering the temp to slow them down between spawnings, give them a chance to fatten up and get strong before the next batch.

 

This is the third spawn this one not all the eggs are white but most of them are turning white . It has been 4 days and there is a few not white but I don’t see anything happening when I tried to suck out the white eggs they were hitting the turkey baster protecting the eggs I got a 20 gal tank set up now I’m going to try that everything is 0 except nitrate level is 5 ppm
Hope this is work I’m planning a water change before moving the pair into this tank . I am struggling with getting the water soft below 8

thanks for the info

 

Ok. it's still early, like I said, it takes them time to learn and if it's not working out their go to move is to abort and eat the spawn and get ready to lay eggs again. but they should get a little further each time. could take 3 tries, could take 6, 9 or 12. but there should be improvvements, and there should be progress futher each time.

They should hatch to wrigglers on day 3, should be about 60 hours or 2.5 days, if it's taking 4 or 5 days, the water should be warmer. I found 82F got me right at the 2 days/48 hours mark, you can maybe even reduce it below 48 hours by going to 84F, but I'm just not comfortable with that and don't think the benefit is really there to do it. if they aren't wrigglers on day 4 , the temp is too low. it could take up to 74-96 hours if temp is cool. the cooler it is the longer it takes, but you shouldn't make it too hot ether. the longer it take the worse the white eggs get, the worse the fungus gets and spreads.

the wrigglers and fry are really tiny, I need to use a magnifier to see them and really check them out. sometimes the wrigglers can look like eggs still until you look really close and see a little tail thing flapping back and forth on the egg.

As far as picking out the white eggs I was using a bamboo skewer and using the pointy tip to knock them down as carefully as I could. that, cleaning, and everything else is really hard with the parents int he tank, so I'd recommend either removing the eggs to a jar after they are laid and fertilized, OR leave them with the parents and turn up the temp to get a quicker hatch and faster development, to "beat the fungus" whic is usually taking iover by day 3 and a fuzzy mess into day for and on.

However the parents will also learn from this mistake of not eating the white eggs and will do a better job of it on later attempts. if they learn the white eggs are bad and ruining the rest.

I'm gonna share my top secret personal stash info. LOL

Heres a progression of a much earlier spawn of my pair.:
within the first 6 hours.



12 hours:



24 hours later , this is about 36 hours overall:



this is 24 hours later than previous, about hour 60, of what was left at this point hatched to wrigglers, got hung up and attached to the white fungus, and


by day 7-8 I was down to just a couple fry free swimming that had made it and it failed. this wasn't even the first attempt either, this was like the 3rd. if you look at the progression, they were learning to pick out the white eggs, and getting good eggs with it in error and missing white eggs. they got better at it on spawn 4, 5 and 6.

spawn 4 failed, Spawn 5 I tried the jar rearing and made a stupid mistake and screwed that one up, and then tried raising the temp to 82F, which was successful to get them to hatch early before white eggs became a fungus issue. I think they hatched right around 48 hours at 72F.

pH isn't that big of a deal, really. better that it remains consistent and doesn't fluctuate quickly than it is to get it lower.

it sucks to fail every two weeks but it's a necessary learning process for the pair to figure out. You can tweak things to help along for the best shot at success, you can do it all yourself in a jar with an airstone or in the 20g tank and move the eggs a few hours after they are laid and pick out white eggs every 24 hours. it will work out once the parents have HOW to do it nailed down.
I'm just giving you the info that worked for me, and telling you, it's completely normal to fail over and over and over again at the beginning until the pair gets it right.