Breeding Angelfish is Easy

Angel fish are among the most beautiful and graceful of all aquarium fish. A lot of hoopla surrounds the breeding of these fish. Most are old wives tales that don't apply to today's commercially available angels. There are countless color combinations, fin forms, and of course pearl scale.

I belong to the KISS school of breeding. Simply put " Keep It Simple Stupid." These methods will work with most substrate spawners with slight variations. This is meant to work for commercially available angels. Wild or wild cross angels will require more precision with water and other parameters.

I plan to take you through all the steps from selecting breeders to spawning and raising the fry. My way is not the only way just the way that has served me well for too many years to mention. Suffice to say my first spawn of angels occurred when I was a kid. I am now called grandpa.

Generally there are three approaches to selecting your brood stock. The first is buying 6 to 12 nickel to quarter size fish and pampering them in a 29 to 55 gallon tank for the next 6 to 9 months. Make as many water changes as you are able to make. Daily is great but weekly will work also. A varied diet of high protein dry foods; a variety of frozen brine shrimp, beef heart, mosquito larvae. As many live foods as possible.

The second way is to pick medium angels 50 cent to silver dollar size and condition them in the same manner as the smalls. The time frame will be shorter more like 3 to 6 months. With these sizes they will have enough time to adjust to your water conditions and with properly conditioned water you will not be able to stop them from spawning.

The last way is the most expensive and risky. When buying a pair of angels the first thing you must agree on is price. Depending on color, finnage and genetics you may pay as much as $300 for a pair. These are usually Koi, Albinos, Blush, or new color forms. The more popular and more available colors generally sell for $50 to $150 a pair.

If you are buying a pair you first must know whether they are proven (do they produce viable fry). They may spawn (lay) 100's of eggs but none hatch. If this is the problem you may have two females or the male is sterile. Sterility is a common problem with albino and golden forms.

Once you have a proven pair, they now must adjust to you're your water and conditions. Some never do. This is especially true if you purchase a pair from a Hi-Tech hatchery that will brag to you about how sterile and disease free their hatchery is. That is precisely the problem. They are raised in such a sterile environment they are unable to withstand a normal bacterial load in our home tanks.

Be especially careful of wild crosses. They are very difficult compared to normal commercial angels. Buy your angels from a friend, fellow club member, or a pet store that you trust. Be very careful about purchasing sight unseen. On the internet you have little control over what you will get unless you know who you, are buying from.
In choosing future broodstock they must be healthy, feed aggressively, be vibrant colored, and free from genetic problems such as incomplete gill covers, bent or misshapen fins. They must have round bodies not oval shaped and watch for high bodies.

Bent or misshapen fins can be attributed to ammonia and overcrowding during the grow-out period. The fish will not pass these problems on but they do not look good. Let someone else show them in their tank. The body must be round. This is hard to explain but when you see it you will know it. Elongated, oval shaped bodies usually means that the fish were not raised properly. Watch for “Hi-Body” angels. It seems the Asian breeders failed with Hi-Body discus that could not sell here so they are now attempting to sell us Hi-Body angels and they are ugly.

The conditioning tank for breeders should be well filtered especially biologically. I use an under gravel filter on half the bottom and a. sponge filter rated for 20 to 30 gallon tanks. The sponge filter is then used later for fry.

Your potential breeder will begin to lower their tubes long before the first spawn. When you first see this you have plenty of time. Place a spawning medium against each end of the tank. The medium can be slate 2.5 to 3 inches wide and 12 to 18 inches long; PVC pipe is OK, gray is better than white; tile cut in 3 inch width 12 inches long the darker the better, black or dark gray is best. Place the medium against the side of the tank at a slight angle.
It is now time to lessen the amount of flake food and increase beef heart, adult brine shrimp and live tubifex or black worms. I know you are not supposed to feed tubifex because they are bad but they also happen to be one of the absolute best conditioning food I know of. If your fish are as healthy as they should be they will handle the tubifex. You can do without the worms, but the worms will speed things up and increase the size of the spawn. Rinse them well and you will be OK.
You will now see the aggression levels rise dramatically with chasing, lip locking, and just general hell raising. Soon a pair will begin to focus on one of the slates you will want to section off the pair or remove the other fish from the tank. I prefer to section off the pair so that they learn how to defend the eggs from someone. Don't remove the pair from the tank. This will disrupt their rhythm and they may take forever to get it back and maybe never get it back.

A day or so or sometimes only hours before the pair will begin to clean the slate in preparation for the spawning. If they begin to clean the silicone seam in the corner, they have not read the book on spawning angels and you can't tell them where to have sex anyway. Either way it is not important. You want them to do it their way the first time. They have a lot to learn. Never interrupt or stop the first spawn. Sometimes if you pull the first spawn it may be weeks or even months before they even try again. Let them have fun.

About 2 to 3 days after they have completed the first spawn it is time to give your new pair their own tank. A 10, 15, or 20 gallon high will provide good height and enough room for angels to spawn. 10 gallon is minimum. Their new tank should be bare except for a sponge filter rated for the next larger tank size. For example as 10 gallon tank should have a 20 gallon filter. A slate for spawning should be placed on an angle against the side. The only other thing I might suggest is floating plants such as water sprite. It will help sweeten the water and also give the pair a sense of security. Raise the temperature of the water to 82 to 84 degrees. The pair should be fed twice a day with a mix of dry food with Vitamin C added, live and frozen food. Water changes should be made twice a week at 25% to 30%. More often is better but if you go to daily water changes try to stay closer to 10% changes. I personally do the once a week sometimes twice a week at about 30%. Your new pair should spawn in 7 to 21 days from their first spawning date and will usually stay on a similar cycle from then on.

We are ready for the second spawn and now we are going to get rich. HAl HA!
When you see your new pair cleaning the spawning slate don't do anything but observe. It may still be a day or so before they will actually spawn and they will usually spawn in. mid to late afternoon.
Prepare a round gallon jug or 2 1/2 or 5 gallon tank filled with the same water as the pairs tank. Aerate with a tube weighted with lead plant weights. NO AIR STONE. A round jug is better as there are no dead spots. All the water keeps moving. Once the eggs are laid give the pair about an hour to continue caring for the eggs to make sure that they are finished. At this point you can remove the slate to your hatching tank. Place the slate with the eggs facing down and near the air supply not allowing the air to touch the eggs. Add Copper Sulphate to the water 1 drop per gallon of water. This will help slow down the fungusing of the eggs. Methylene Blue is usually recommended, but I find it stains everything (including fingers, the new golf shirt she got me for my birthday) and you have to use so much that it is no good for the fry. It tends to kill them without substantial water changes. It is rare to have no fungused eggs so don't worry if you see some. When the eggs turn white remove them. A toothpick does well for this process. When you and your new pair of angels get good at this you will be down to a dozen or less fungused eggs per spawn. Don't give up, the team will get better.

The eggs will hatch in about 60 hours depending on temperature. They will begin to quiver just shortly before the hatch. White eggs do not hatch give it up. Once all the eggs hatch you will have a choice to make. The experts disagree on this next step. I feel it is a judgment call based on circumstances. If you have a large amount of white and fungused eggs you need to shake the slate so the good eggs will fall off.. Don't hit the slate on the side or bottom off your glass tank or you'll have your new spawn with the water all over the floor. If there are very few or no fungused eggs leave them on the upside down slate. They will fall off naturally. Once all the good eggs are off the slate remove it and clean it "NO SOAP" Your fry will hang out or rest on the bottom for the next five days absorbing their yolk sac. Remember that extra mature sponge filter in the breeder grow out tank? Go get it. You now want to place it attached to the air tube in your fry tank. They will eat from it.

On the morning of the fifth day from hatching you need to start your brine shrimp hatchery. Near the end of the fifth day your new angels should all begin to swim in a small tight swarm. Once they are all up they are ready to eat. I prefer to wait until the next morning to begin feeding. Besides, they have that mature sponge to nibble on. The next morning you will begin feeding your baby brine to the young fry 5 or 6 times a day, maybe 4, 3 is OK, no less than 2. Baby brine is a terrific food but you must not over feed as it is deadly on angel fry. It will cause velvet outbreaks and ammonia spikes. Feed carefully. You must do daily water changes. Drain from the bottom of the tank to remove dead brine and feces.
Brine shrimp only have nutritional value to your fry from the time they hatch, which usually starts at 18 hours to about 30 hours, so you must have a fresh daily supply. You will continue feeding live baby brine until your fish are nickel to dime size at which time you can begin to wean them to other foods.

At about 10 to 14 days your fry need to be moved to larger quarters. I prefer 30 Low but 20 Long are fine. The tank should have a bare bottom with two mature sponge filters rated for 20 gal each. When it comes to biological filtration more is always better. When you determine you are ready to call the Mayflower fish mover your fish need to fast for at least 12 hrs. Full stomachs on the move will kill some of your fish. A 20 Long can handle 150 to 200 fry. A 30 Low can handle 250 to 300. It is always good to err on the low side of these numbers never more. Once the move is made you must continue your feeding program 5 or 6 times a day right? Daily water changes must continue still about 20 to 30% is right. Remember drain the water from the bottom. In my fish room 1 use a 60 watt light bulb over my brine shrimp hatchets for better hatching percentage. My fry tanks are nearby this light and it has an unexpected benefit. It tends to keep the fry from resting on the dirty bottom of the grow-out tanks at night.

At about 4 weeks old the fry will begin to look like angel fish and begin to be crowded. It is now time for yet another move. Now is the time you need to understand what you plan to do with our fish because you are going to need a lot of tank space to continue putting size on the little buggers. Oversized filtration is still the order of the day. You are not looking for violent water movement but good biological filtration. Oversized sponge filter partial underground filtration with 2 inches of gravel on top of the UG plate is good.

Depending on your plans for your fish you now need to begin culling of your fry in conjunction with this move. An ideal size tank for culling is the little 1 to 3 gal plastic tanks. What you will do now is remove about 1/2 dozen fish from their current home and place them in the small plastic tank. Any fish that is deformed in anyway goes in the garbage pail. Deformities can range from bent fins, bent spinal, incomplete gill plates, missing plates, fish that are much smaller than the rest, not a little smaller because these tend to be females but drastically smaller. You will be placing your fry in 20 L, 30 L, 40 L or 55 gal tanks for their continued grow out. This is also a good time to separate colors and fin types for example standard vs. veil vs. super veil. The larger the fins the slower the growth because it is harder for the veils to fight for the food. Slower growth is seen in black angels of the older strains. Some of the more modern strains do not have this problem…..cull accordingly.

The fry should be but in their tanks in amounts of 3 to 4 fish per gallon: 4 for standards, 3 for veils. . At nickel or dime size you should begin to feed flake and frozen food. By eight weeks all should be large enough to sell. Daily water changes are nice but they are no longer necessary. If you have chosen to sell your fish to shops, don't give them away. Charge a fair price, usually 1/3 of retail prices. Silvers are least expensive with Koi, Black and Albino more expensive.

Good luck, enjoy your angels and when you buy your first corporate jet I want a ride because it all started here.