Free Swimmers That Have Eaten First Bites!

These guys were laid last weekend and I had to leave for work before they hatched (not before removing dad - a very nice looking smokey - because he decided his 12-hrs-from-hatching spawn was delicious) I saw a couple of the eggs with eye balls wiggling slightly just before I had to go (which mom - a pain in the butt gold angel that has only let an angel of a lighter color fertilize her eggs...?? - is taking very good care of, I trust her because she has never eaten her eggs, they were always white when I turned out the night light with few having been touched, dad was the one removing dead eggs before they hatched then I saw him munch on a live egg with eye balls..which mom was trying to stop by dashing at him when she saw him do it, though she never harmed him).
There seem to be a large number of free swimming babies, over 80 is my guess. And the most exciting/surprising part is that they eat HikarI first bites willingly! I'm not sure of mom's genetics, as she has started to develop dark spots that are color not injury (the terra cotta pot was perfect for her to lay her eggs on and dad did a good job fertilizing, if only he hadn't turned cannibal on his unhatched offspring...)
Here is a picture of them "sleeping" on the glass where mom tucked them in for the night, previously (last night) she had them tucked in on a leaf). There are some lighter ones and some with darker coloring already.


This is dad. He is more blue/green in person, but this displays a good amount of it.

 

They are doing really well! Mom seems very nervous being a single mother to a hundred fry (they are like "lalala, oh what's this surface?" and mom's like "*fin twitch, fin twitch*, come back here - in the corner! it's bed time!").
I have another batch that is getting ready to hatch out from an orange koi (60%+ coverage) and a paraiba (nice smokey coloring to her, no smokey markings just darker fins) pair (dad was removed to prevent him from overparenting while mom is doing just fine - he was trying to prevent her from eating dead eggs which she did not like), right now I have three mature males together and have had no issues from them, so fraternities of angelfish could definitely work (I know these guys are males, they have either spawned with a female that has produced viable eggs or shown a very obvious male breeding tube when I first got them). (I'm excited to get to see these guys hatch out and start wiggling! Which should be tomorrow!)

 

Congratulations!

 

That's so awesome that they are eating first bites!! I've never had that privilege with mine!

I've also dabbled with the fraternity concept....although it was just two boys...the got along beautifully with no ladies around. When I'm done breeding I plan to try fraternities and sororities lol

Congrats on all the babies! Have the new ones officially hatched yet?

 

That's so awesome that they are eating first bites!! I've never had that privilege with mine!

I've also dabbled with the fraternity concept....although it was just two boys...the got along beautifully with no ladies around. When I'm done breeding I plan to try fraternities and sororities lol

Congrats on all the babies! Have the new ones officially hatched yet?

Yes they hatched monday, I separated mom and dad (leaving mom with them) and she was doing really well. She kept picking them up with little bits of sand so they were sharing the slate rock with pieces of sand that got stuck to them. They were wiggling pretty well. Mom is aggressive enough to strike, but she is still nervous around me (this is her second mate she and the other male destroyed an anubias *huge six inch leaf turned to tatters in their arguing* leaf and uprooted the plant as well. She did not move them off the slate they were laid on but I also added another surface for her to do so before I left, but I'll see how well she had done tonight.

Sororities may not work because the females will still develop and lay eggs and be aggressive little butts *gold momma was like this by herself, but she never are her eggs as well*. A fraternity should work because they don't have a reason to display or try and breed since no one is going to be laying eggs. (As far as I have seen my three males get along great the forth lives in a tank with three other juvie or male angels (the plat pearl, the single "plat" koi, and the paraiba *bluster, probably going to re home that one soon he needs a tank by himself, bad bully towards other angels and ghost cats*. The forth male is a single dose blue marble pearlscale about six or seven inches tall and has started to get excited to see me.
I was surprised at them striking and eating the first bites. I did offer them walter worms but they just drug then around.

 

The pariahs momma is so aggressive, she also did not move her babies and I had to get everyone off the slate to separate them from the dead eggs she failed to remove. Had to quarantine her in one part of the tank so she would stop biting my tools and aiming for my hands. Succeeded at least.

 

She's just being a good mom well she's being good as far as trying to protect them from you but she's not doing her job as far as protecting them from the unfertilized eggs lol

Are the babies still with her? Or did you move them to a different tank?

 

She's just being a good mom well she's being good as far as trying to protect them from you but she's not doing her job as far as protecting them from the unfertilized eggs lol

Are the babies still with her? Or did you move them to a different tank?

They are still with her she immediately went around to try and pick them up from the sand where everyone got blown to separate them from the fungused eggs (babies were trying to stay stuck to it so I had to swirl them, I know she was trying to get through because the loose barrier kept getting moved).

She let me pull the last couple fungused eggs from around her slate after she saw what it was, but before that point she would make a parrot cichlid jealous of her attacks.

 

I hate these mommas a little right now, I don't know what got into them, paraiba ate all of her babies (between friday and today), gold ate a good portion of hers (about 20 or so left alive, they have full bellies at least) same time frame. I just can't win this weekend - I lost roughly 140-160 1 week to 2 week old baby angels and about 90+ albino bn plecos.
I put the two mommas into time out together to prevent viable spawns until I have more time to dedicate to them. Neither of them eat eggs so hopefully they see them turn white and figure out that they need to work together to get rid of them.
The gold's babies are showing some dark sections across their tiny bodies, but I am not sure what will show up with such a small pool of them now being all that is left (they seem in good health at least, these last ones where the ones able to escape mom's ravenous mouth).

 

Naughty mommas!!!!! I'm sorry they did that to you!!! What a let down!!!!

What happened with the pleco babies???

I'm so sorry you had such a rotten weekend in your fishy world!! Good luck with the remaining babies. It'll be fun to see how they turn out.

 

Bad filter, very bad filter - it was messing up my guppy tank but I didn't connect the dots, I upgraded the filtration systems for the guppies and moved the hob filter over to the babies' tank so they could have a little more flow. It was an ammonia spike, even though the previous set of two sponge filters kept the water crystal clear/clean (I moved one in with my gold baby angels which works great for them, nice clean water and they are fine with the bubble rate, so I knocked off one sponge filter and replaced it with the hob in the baby pleco tank - the guppy tank cleared up after removing it and I didn't have anyone at home to do an emergency water change when I was at work to help them survive until I could come to the rescue).
I have since trashed the filter completely - I refuse to buy another one like it. I upgraded the sponge filter in the pleco babies tank to prevent further issue which I hope works because I have to leave for work tonight.

Thank you for the sympathies, I'm just not having a good weekend - I hope your's is better, i'm hoping the blue pearls make it (the ones you separated).

The gold babies are doing very well with happy fat bellies (first bits also makes them orange) and lots of new plants to play in to give them cover until they get larger (I moved over five small female guppies that are virgins, they thankfully don't bother the smaller angelfish fry).

 

Ya, I've learned at my angel babies really appreciate having a lot of plants and a lot of cover. When I first went bare bottom for my 40 breeder grow out tank, I definitely noticed a difference because it was pretty empty and I don't think the angel babies were very happy. So now I have potted plants and floating plants and mosses and everything in there. It definitely helps I don't know how professional breeders can grow them out in big empty tanks like I've seen.

With a giant spawn of baby plecos, it is really hard to maintain good water quality! Hopefully the new filtration helps. How many do you think you have left?

My heart did sink when I read your last post :-( so I hope everything starts to look up from here on out!!

And thank you I really hope these pearlscale Blues make it for me! But it just seems like the more I want something the less likely it will happen for me!!!

 

I have exactly 11 babies left, dad is in okay shape, he wouldn't have been if I had gotten home 2 hours later though (I lost one of the remaining dozen babies, he tried really hard to stay alive but I didn't make it in time for him, he passed about thirty minutes after I got him into fresh/cycled water from another tank, the others seem to be breathing okay now, no one seems terribly damaged but if I had come home maybe two hours earlier I would have managed to save more of them).
I added some more anacharis and a large section of java moss so they can hide and munch off of it. I don't like the look of bare tanks, even my bare bottom pleco tanks have plants (mostly because I have a ton of plants and can't put them in other tanks, partly because everyone relaxes when they can do the "if I can't see you you can't see me" trick).
My older angelfish are doing well (the juvies) they have all put on some size in the past couple weeks which I love, but I'm going to probably sell Phantom (I like opera a little more because of the interesting mark she has - i'm guessing female for now even only being quarter plus in size), he is turning out to look just like his dad, but with a more intense orange to his face, he will be a veil comb angel, his pattern looks kinda like a smokey which is interesting. The blues and the other koi I have are all doing well, even they one that had some fin issues (he literally lost almost all of his fins and recovered after a small stint in a hospital tank, now I can't tell him from the others lol).
The gold babies seem to notice me coming over to the tank and swim over a little but for the most part they hang out in one of the corners that is away from the filters.

Cross your fingers, sacrifice some brine shrimp, and do the "i'm watching you" finger thing to make sure they know you mean business? (Make sure to uncross fingers before that point or it will look funny.)

 

How is everyone doing???

Question for ya.....my angelfish babies' growth always seems to slow down or stall once they get to be almost dime sized....it's annoying. They get that size really quickly and then seem to stall...

What do you feed your young juvie angels to keep that good growth rate going? (4 weeks or older)

 

My juvies ate a lot of crushed snails (pond/bladder) to the point they are them right off my fingers..I moved them to a larger tank (these are phantom and opera) and they doubled in size.
I think varying their food or high protein mix would be best, then give them some space (don't leave them by themselves while juvie they seem to stress and grow slower).

I think I have a couple left I can't really seem to find anyone but I also added more cover plants (I'm just hoping my feeding schedule was kept to, which I don't think so). So I'm not sure.

 

My juvies ate a lot of crushed snails (pond/bladder) to the point they are them right off my fingers..I moved them to a larger tank (these are phantom and opera) and they doubled in size.
I think varying their food or high protein mix would be best, then give them some space (don't leave them by themselves while juvie they seem to stress and grow slower).

I think I have a couple left I can't really seem to find anyone but I also added more cover plants (I'm just hoping my feeding schedule was kept to, which I don't think so). So I'm not sure.

Really??? You're young angels eat the snails? That's cool!

What kind do you think you have a few left of?

 

Really??? You're young angels eat the snails? That's cool!

What kind do you think you have a few left of?

The gold smokey pair, I lost the other half to the other pair last night (koi boy), so I won't be able to replicate the paraiba/koi (and he was really nice too!! and I really don't know what happened because he wasn't acting weird the night before and the other two are fine, all males so there shouldn't have been any jealousy over females) unless one of my other kois grows out a little faster (not the baby babies that are snail eaters, but the other koi juvies I have, I have a couple that literally doubled in size over two weeks, so one of them is almost two inches across - they were bigger than a quarter now they are definitely bigger than that - I need to upgrade my blue smokies tank to something larger or more a couple out, I only have four but their growth is slow compared to the kois, so i'm not sure what that is - the babies phantom and opera will actually pick at the ramshorns in their tank now so they haven't forgotten and they are by far my most hand friendly ones).
(Though I am honestly going to probably just sell the paraiba as she is really aggressive to just about everything (the exception being the koi, but even they argued over parents rights over the eggs they had), she is just trouble, I think the name cruella fits her (I think she even has a streaked top fin so..lol). As pretty as she is it is a pain to house her by herself without any tankmates. I just don't know what her problem is.)

They love it, I sometimes crush up a few and wiggle them around (have to take them from another tank lol, my kuhlis and those two babies munch on snails) to draw their attention, they greedily will eat several in a row if I allowed them (I normally stop them at two or three, they spit out the shells or I crush the shells so they fall off before they can grab them and hurt themselves).