Question about Angel fish breeding.

I have a pair of Angel fish that has spawn a few time now and the bigest problem I've had is them eating the eggs. So I keep a eye on them and remove the eggs when the finish. I bought a couple Mag slates (PVC) from Angels Pluse on line. My Angels started to spawn last night and all the eggs just slide off. Have any of you ever ran into this? What can I do to help them. I emailed Angels Pluse and they told me somethings wrong with my angels that the slate is not the problem. They didn't offer any advise or help.

Thanks Rick

An old timer i talked to some years ago use to use fishing line. Would bunch it all up and when they would lay eggs on it, it would fall through and they could not eat the eggs.

Don't really look to well in the tank but it gets the job done if breeding is what your into.

i had a similar experience just last week. This was the first spawning for this pair. The eggs kept sliding off the leaf. The entire spawn was a failure. I'm conditioning them for another. Sometimes they jsut don't start off right I'm told.

fishloverRon

How are conditioning them for another spawn.

Thanks Rick

Live and/or frozen foods (mostly frozen!) once every day or every other day.
Ron

Ron, use those blackworms! Magic I tell ya....
I nursed some discus back to health on them. Now they are on their SECOND spawn and I've only had them for 5 weeks!

I have two angels that are on their third breeding in 2 and a half months. I just have a piece of slate in the tank and never have had a problem with them sliding off. They do pick at them to get the dead ones off though but leave the rest alone. The eggs may be getting fungus and the parents are picking the fungus infested ones off. Depends on how soon they are eating them. I pulled my babies away after about 2 weeks when mom started getting plump again and it rushed her into her next batch! I have babies coming out of my ears lol. There is a product called Methylene Blue that you can buy at alot of fish stores that treats the fungus. I put it in the water as soon as they start to lay the eggs. I don't feed mine anything special, but turning the temp of the tank up some helps too. Could be that they need a few rounds to get the hang of the parenting thing. I got lucky and mine picked it up pretty well. However with my first batch I didn't pull the babies in time and I went from 31 to 5 over night because they were protecting their eggs. If you have any questions feel free to ask. I've had decent luck so far. But I'm definitely not an expert!!!

So the deal with angelfish is they have been in the hobby forever and a lot of them are captive bred to the point where they seem to have lost their parental skills from the wild. It's very common for a pair of captive bred angels to eat their eggs. You basically have two options:

1) Keep trying with them and see if they get the parenting thing down. It often takes a spawn or two with ANY Cichlid pair for them to get it "right."

2) Remove the eggs and raise them on your own. For this, I would give them a piece of slate or something to spawn on and remove it as soon as they finish spawning. You can move it to a 10-20 gallon or something and add a small air driven sponge filter. With this route, I would recommend methylene blue to cut back on fungus. Remember, methylene blue will rapidly kill your beneficial bacteria so use it with caution in a display tank as you will likely lose your cycle completely. It can also stain the silicone and decor in your tank (and your fingers, clothes, etc).

Good luck.

test ph...in high ph i have seen angel eggs not adheasive. You should shoot for neutral to slightly acidic for angels. The eggs should stick to just about anything. I agree with the advice it could be just young kids figuring it all out. 3-5 spawns is what it usually takes for me with discus and angels to figure it all out. Feed em well on high protien foods...variety i think is more important than any single food...bloodworms, brine, occasional earthworms, occasional black worms, daphnia, mosquito larve, mysis, ground krill,and my personal favorite cyclops. If eggs don't start to adhere (7-10spawns and ph accounted for) I would not breed them since you don't want to pass on that trait. With my baby angles and discus i feed deformos ruthlessly to my red pikes...blackworms and earthworms fatty and bad for liver if fed too much...did dissection in a lab analyzing livers of dead fish from the inside out. Blackworms have given my discus tapeworms and gyradactyl but they really are worth the risk since both are so easy to fix. (look at a blackworm under microscope and you will be blown away at number of gyrodactyls in field of view)
lilydog