Angel Fish Fry Help!

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ShannonKoletti

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Hi, my tank at work is stocked with 5 very large adult angel fish, two being a pair. Last week I removed wrigglers from the parents into a net fry nursery until I had a sponge filter for a 16 litre tank I had. I used the water from the main tank for the 16L tank and after a few days after the fry became free swimmers I moved them to their new tank. I left some with the parents but they swam off and were eaten almost immediately as it's a large community tank.

The fry survived for just one day in their new tank and after that all but two were dead. I'm not sure where I went wrong, I cleaned the tank have correct temp and PH and minimal water flow with a sponge filter. I'm thinking perhaps I left them too long in the nursery as it started to smell and get hot?

The parents have now laid another batch of eggs and I'm wondering if I should remove them and put them in the new tank and raise them from eggs, wait until their wrigglers, or don't move them all together. I can even move most to the new tank and leave some with the parents?

Any help would be much appreciated!
 
Was the sponge filter seasoned? A good way to do is is by leaving the sponge filter going in the main tank for a month or more to get a bacterial colony established. Perhaps the water quality went bad and killed the fragile fish.

What were you feeding the fry? Egg layer fry do best with infusoria as their first food. It is a live food you can culture on your own with plant matter and old tank water. It is entirely possible that the fry starved, they do not take well to finely crushed flakes and liquid fry food can be iffy.
 
Filter was brand new which I also thought may of been the reason, but I’m thinking the nursery was just way too dirty for them before I had moved them? I wasn’t at work for a bit so I hadn’t been getting to check on them, my co workers were looking after them.

They’re being fed First Bites by Hikari? Just mixing their tank water with a tiny amount of the powder which I witnessed them eating.
 
I'd lean towards the unseasoned filter. Water quality goes bad quickly with un-eaten food so perhaps they were overfed and the left overs started to rot which the filter could not process. Either way, a seasoned filter is vital in a fry tank.

Another possibility is there was a contaminant on the new tank. How did you clean it?
 
It only takes traces of ammonia to kill newly hatched fry. I would move the eggs on whatever they're attached to into the nursery/grow out tank. Initially, you might treat with methylene blue to avoid fungus on the eggs. You may need an air stone with a light stream to keep water circulating around the eggs.
Once they become free swimmers, perform water change(s) and be sure you have a seasoned filter. If necessary, 'clean' sponges/filter media from an established tank to seed the filter with BB.
You may do okay with first bites, but Angel fry do best on baby brine shrimp - live is best, frozen may work. As they grow, encapsulated brine shrimp eggs and/or crushed flake food should work.
 
I cleaned the new tank when I got it with just boiling water and I've been doing 20% water changes every day. The two little babies are still alive and the new eggs are still with the parents! I don't have any gravel in there but I do have two little tiny pot plants from the main tank.

I've been trying to get my airstone to work with my filter to move the eggs but it seems to only work on the surface then when I push it further down into the water it stops working? I don't really know what's causing it but I have the filter and airstone connected to a T valve with the screw unscrewed. The pump is a huge 200 litre one.

The filter I couldn't really do much about as I didn't have a sponge filter and I needed to move them ASAP from the fry catcher, the water was filthy in there, hot and had no water flow. I also was sent the wrong filter which is double the size I ordered, but I got another smaller one which I'll leave in the main tank to get cycled. Do I need to have the filter on and running in my main tank to have it established or can I just leave the sponges in there?

I'm currently growing some baby brine shrimp, do I need to do anything with them? I'm worried the salt on them might hurt the baby fish?

I think I've decided to move the new eggs when they turn into wrigglers as I can't get my airstone to work, and leave some wrigglers with the parents to see how they do?
 
For the baby brine shrimp, use a brine shrimp net and run under a faucet or some tank water briefly to remove any salt....but if not, there's typically not enough salt to negatively affect fish in a tank of water. Note that for newly hatched fry, brine shrimp need to be newly hatched.
You can move them when they're wigglers, but some may fall off.
It's likely that any left behind will be eaten by the parents or other fish. Some pairs alone in a tank will be fine with fry, others not so much and in a community tank, they're nearly doomed....big fish eat little fish unless they can 'run' and hide.
 

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