Previously we went over how to artificially raise the fry. Now we will go over raising the fry naturally. Next we will go over growing out the baby Angelfish.

Naturally raising the fry requires very little work on your part. The parents do all of the work for you. Unfortunately, it is very common for the parents to eat the babies, so most breeders artificially raise the fry. There are advantages to naturally raising the fry over and above that it is much easier. Angelfish fry will eat some slime off the parent’s side for the first few days. Unlike Discus, they can survive without the slime and will immediately start eating other food. This slime is very high in protein and contains antibodies that help the babies fight off disease. Naturally raised fry will grow much faster at first and will have more resistance to disease throughout their lives.

There is also the enjoyment of watching your Angelfish raise the fry. They will stay mostly around the parents for the first month and the parents will zealously guard them. When a baby strays to far, the parents will mouth it back to the main school. This is done by both the males and females. There is nothing more rewarding than watching your large Angelfish parents and the fry swimming around the tank as a loose school. I find this fascinating and it has always been my favorite part or the hobby.

Things you should remember. These babies will be very small and weak, so you will need to turn off all filtration, except for a sponge filter. You can also take the sponge from a sponge filter and put it around the intake tube of an over the side filter. Canister filters are two powerful to put the sponge on their intake tube. The biggest mistake that you can make is to do a water change in this aquarium with water that is not EXACTLY the same temperature. Angelfish fry are extremely sensitive to temperature shock and will die if you do a water change with water that is more than a few degrees different in temperature. With that said, Angelfish fry are also very sensitive to ammonia burn, so you will need to do daily partial water changes.

Start adding a small amount of live baby brine shrimp to the tank within 24 hours of them becoming free swimming. Drip it directly over where the fry are located. Be careful how much you add as if most is uneaten, it can foul the water and lead to ammonia burn. After two weeks, slowly reduce the amount of baby brine shrimp you add and slowly start adding crumbled beef heart flake. After a month, they should be eating exclusively beef heart flake. By the end of one month, they will be about ½ inch. At this point they are much hardier and you are pretty much out of the woods. They will reach the size of a dime in about three months.

Artificially raising Angelfish is actually very easy and if you are looking to have the highest survival ratio it is definitely the way to go.

We raise the fry in 5 gallon tanks. Getting the water correct is very important. You should take water out of the spawning tank right before transferring the eggs and put it in the 5 gallon tank. The temperature of the tank they are coming from and the one it is going into has to be the same. A difference of even a couple of degrees will kill the eggs. Clean water is absolutely essential for hatching the fry as if the water is at all dirty, fungus will form on the eggs. That is one reason that keeping the spawning tank water extremely clean is so important. To assist in keeping fungus from forming, we do two additional things. We add Methylene Blue to the water. Add enough to turn the water a deep blue. We also run heavy aeration next to the eggs, creating a current, which helps to stop fungus from forming. When the tank is ready and all the above conditions are met, quickly take the eggs out of the spawning tank and place them into the rearing tank. They should not be out of the water more than 10 seconds. Just a heads up, the spawning Angelfish will be very unhappy about you taking their eggs out. They will attack your hand and while it really does not hurt, it can be quite startling. To reduce that, I usually tap on the opposite end of the tank to distract them then quickly reach in with my other hand to take the eggs out. Hopefully the eggs will be on a breeding cone or something else that is very easy to remove. If the tank they are coming from is a ways away from the tank they are going into, I use a 2 gallon bucket full of water from the spawning tank to move the eggs into before I move them to the rearing tank.

Once the fry become Free Swimming at around 6 days, you will need to feed them within 24 hours. You should set up a Brine Shrimp hatchery on the fifth day so you can feed them newly hatched brine shrimp within hours of them becoming free swimming. They will not eat much at first and you do not want to foul the water adding two much. As the size of the spawn will vary significantly, how much you feed them will be somethings you have to decide when they hatch out. Feed your new Angelfish baby Brine Shrimp for three weeks. After three weeks start cutting back on the baby brine shrimp and when you feed them add in some finely ground flake food. Between 3 weeks and 5 weeks, slowly decrease the Brine Shrimp and increase the flake food until after the fifth week, they are eating only flake food.

After 5 weeks, you will need to transfer them to a larger tank. When Angelfish are crowded in a tank, their growth gets stunted. They will grow VERY slowly to not at all if left in a small 5 gallon tank. The size of the tank they need to be moved into depends on the size of the spawn. Spawn size can be from just a few to a couple of thousand. I once had a spawn of 2400 from one silver pair. Black and Silver Angelfish usually have the largest spawns. Young pairs typically have relatively small spawns, but the size of the spawn will increase as they mature.

In our next issue, we will go over naturally raising the fry.

Previously we went over Angelfish fry prior to them becoming free swimming. Now we will go over your options as to how to raise the fry.

You now need to make a critical decision. Do you let the Angelfish raise their own fry naturally or do you artificially raise them. Both ways have their advantages and disadvantages. We will briefly discuss the advantages and disadvantages of both methods.

The main advantage to letting the Angelfish raise their own fry is that it is MUCH less work. Other than keeping the water ultra clean via water changes, as you will not be able to run any filters except a sponge filter, there is not much to be done different to what you normally do. If possible, please take any other fish out of the tank. The huge disadvantage is that the parents will eat the fry a majority of the time. They will do it very quickly, you will not know they are eating them and there is really nothing you can do to prevent it.

There is one other advantage to naturally raising the fry that most people tend to forget. Angelfish fry will feed a little off the natural slime of their parents and in eating the slime they receive antibodies from their parents, thereby making them much more resistant to disease later in their life.

Conversely, the advantages and disadvantages to artificially raising the fry is just the opposite. There will be two to three weeks of caring for your fry several times a day.  Generally speaking, more fry will survive when you artificially raise them.

Angelfish are much easier to artificially raise that some other fish such as Discus, we recommend that you go with the artificial raising of them. In our next segment, we will go over artificially raising Angelfish.

Previously we went over Angelfish infertility. We will now go over the fry prior to them becoming free swimming. Next we will go over fry after they become free swimming.

This is the easiest part of spawning and is also one of the most fascinating.

After 48 hours the eggs will begin to hatch. Only the dark ones will hatch. They are dark because after about 36 hours, the eye starts to develop and will show through the egg sack. Most of the fry will stay attached to the surface where the eggs were laid via a small membrane on their head. A few will become detached and will fall to the bottom. At this point the fry will look like a small comma to the naked eye. Under magnification, they are quite ugly and will look like something straight out of a monster movie.

They will remain attached to the substrate for another four days. There is not much to do at this point. They will have an egg sack and will live off of it during this entire time. There are only two real concerns. The first is the parents eating them. If you are going to artificially raise the fry, you will want to take the parents out. If you are not going to artificially raise the fry, you should cover them with a screen. The second concern is fungus. Adding Methylene Blue to the water will mostly solve this. If you are going to artificially raise them, and have taken the parents out of the tank, you should add aeration about one inch from the fry to keep the water moving around them. They will start to become free swimming 4 days after hatching.

We will now go over what to expect after the eggs have been laid. This is where the frustration starts. The first two issues that you will be confronted with are eating of the eggs and fry, especially by the male, and infertility. We will go over the eating of the eggs first. We will go over infertility in the next part of the series.

One problem, and the one you must get past, with breeding Angelfish is the eating of the eggs, or fry once the eggs hatch out, by the parents. The good news is that only about 30% of the spawning Angelfish pairs will eat the eggs and another 20% will eat the fry as soon as they hatch out.  This is a much lower percentage than with some other Cichlids such as Discus.  While both parents will eat the eggs, the male does it more often. This is sometimes done as they spawn and there is very little you can do if this occurs while spawning. The female will make her egg-laying run and then the male, instead of following her with a fertilizing run, will follow her and eat the row of eggs. This behavior is most common in new pairs. Many new pairs will eat their eggs in the first couple of spawns and then eventually stop eating the eggs, so do not give up on them. If you get lucky and they do not eat their eggs when spawning, there is still a chance that they will eat them before they hatch. Fortunately, if you get this far, there is something you can do. You can, at this point, take the eggs out and artificially raise them or you can take a mesh screen (house soffit screen works very well) and fit it directly over the eggs. This will allow the Angelfish to still blow on the eggs and bond with the with the fry and will still keep them from eating the eggs. Obviously, you will need to have planned for the spawning and will need to have created the screen prior to the actual spawn. If the eggs do not get eaten and are fertile, they should hatch out in two days and become free swimming in about six days.

In the next article, we will go over infertility.

In the last article we went over how to get your Angelfish to spawn. 

Above is a swarm of Angefish Fry

This is what hooked me on Tropical Fish as a young boy and I still, 45 years after my first spawn, find it fascinating.   The first sign that your Angelfish are getting ready to spawn will be their obsession with cleaning the slate or breeding cone you provided.  It will always be on a surface that is mostly vertical and if you do not provide a surface that meets that condition on which you want them to use for spawning, they will spawn on other surfaces that are much more difficult such as the side of the tank or filter tubing.  Once you see both of them cleaning the spawning site, spawning will usually follow within a day or two.  You will also see them start doing the mating dance.  They will swim towards each other at a slightly upward angle.  Once they get next to each other, they will shimmer and then swim away from each other at a slightly lowered angle.  The mating dance is not always performed.  I have found that Wild Caught Angelfish almost always do it, but  later generations of tank raised strains often do not.  The most spectacular aspect of the spawning will be the colors of your Angelfish.  Whatever their color, it will become MUCH more intense and vibrant during spawning.  This will be the prettiest you will ever see your Angelfish.  They will also become aggressive toward other fish, including other Angelfish, at this time.   They will aggressively defend the breeding site from all intruders, including you.  If you put your hand in near the spawning site when they are preparing to spawn or have already spawned, they, usually the male, will bite your hand.  While it really does not hurt much, they will do it very aggressively, it will startle you and it will be something you want to avoid.

At some point after your Angelfish start doing all of the above, they will actually lay the eggs.  It will start with the female rubbing her belly, and her breeding tube, against the surface that they have cleaned.  She will always lay in an upwards motion.  The total length of the spawning run will be between ½ and five inches.  She will lay between 1 and 12 eggs per spawning run.  They can lay over a thousand eggs at one spawning, but it it usually 3 to 5 hundred.  The more mature the pair, the larger the spawn will be.  The male Angelfish will usually then follow directly behind her in the same basic motion fertilizing the eggs.  The entire process can take between one and five hours.  The eggs will usually be beige

This is when the fun is over and the frustration can start.  The first two issues that you will be confronted with are eating of the eggs, especially by the male, and infertility.  In the next article in this series, we will go over Angelfish eating the eggs.

To catch wild Discus fish in the wild, exporters will use a bright light at night to attract the fish. Then, they slowly draw a net around them.  River guides know the best areas of the river and the parts of the river that are structured to allow the best use of the nets. There are two methods that are generally illegal but are still being used by some unscrupulous collectors.  In one method they use mild explosives such as M-80s that will shock the fish and make them float to the top and then the fish are easily collected and then they put them in containment structures to allow them to recuperate. Another illegal method is to use high voltage electricity in very short bursts to once again shock the fish and then they are collected from the top of the water and then collected to recuperate in pools (containment structures). These containment structures are designed to keep the Discus contained but also to allow free flow of river water through waters in which the Discus are kept. Both methods end up in a high percentage of the fish, not just Discus, dying.

These wild Discus are often caught from pristine forest pools where they have had no contact with chemical medications or common aquarium pathogens, making them suitable for aquariums without use of antibiotics.  Wild caught Discus usually have immunity from Discus Plague.  These Wild Caught Discus fish will typically have a stronger immune system than tank raised Discus.  On the negative side, some of them will often have parasite(s) and/or worms, usually requiring isolation and treatment before export.

In the wild, Discus fish are found in South America, particularly around the Amazon. They thrive in clean water, often swimming in small Blackwater rivers, lakes, and pools. Their natural habitat includes submerged tree roots, decayed wood, vegetation, and aquatic grasses, where they hide from predators. 

Last article we went over Spawning Tank set up. This week we will go over how to get your Angelfish to spawn.

The first thing you need to understand is that you are not in total control. If Angelfish do not want to pair off, there is nothing you can do about it. The only thing you can do is provide the right conditions so that it is more likely that they will pair off. If you have a sexed pair and they are the only Angelfish in the tank, it is likely with about a 80% chance that they will eventually pair off if left together for a long period of time. To hurry our potential young lovers along, we provide conditions that are conducive for romance. We put 12 newly mature Angelfish in a 55 gallon tank and let them acclimate to it for two weeks. We then start doing some sudden changes in the tank conditions to stimulate courtship. Some of the changes we make are • Change the water temperature to 72 degrees for a few days and then bring it up to 86 degrees over about 12 hours and then leave it at 86 degrees for the remainder of a week. • Let the tank get somewhat dirty, not doing the daily water changes for a few days and then doing a 80% water change. • Feed them heavily for a few days and then stop feeding them for four days, followed by feeding them live food for three days. • Do two 60% water changes four hours apart where the Ph goes from 6.5 to 7.0 at the first change and then from 7.0 to 7.5 at the second change. • Leave the tank dark for two full days and then turn the lights on for two full days. If we have tried all of the above and after two months they still have not paired off, we switch out six of those Angelfish and start the process over again with six new Angelfish along with six remaining. In the next article we will go over the spawning.