Angel fish laying eggs in community tank

[Al Bundy]

My pair of Koi Angel fish have today laid about 150 eggs on the bloody filter and are currently fertilising them.

This is my first every tropical tank and I'm not quite sure what to do. Do I need to remove the eggs? Do I need to remove the other Fish?

Will the filter be a problem? Its an underwater Hagen Fluval +3.

I also have gravel and plants in the tank and a piece of driftwood where my loach like to hide.

Any advice would be really appreciated as I would like to try and keep as many of the fry as possible.

Thanks

Al.

 

[black angel]

congrats!!!
my koi angels did the same a few days ago.
as its the first spawn they had about 80% of the eggs go white and the male then ate the rest.

dont get too pannicky just yet as they arent the best parents. also make sure the *male* is a male and not laying eggs as well, as sometimes two females will pair up and lay eggs together .

as for keeping them then you will need a couple of four foot tanks up and running to take care of all the potential young.

as they are in the community then you may well lose them all to the other fish, especially plecs who come out at night. if you can move the fish then you could give the young a fighting chance.

in a couple of days any eggs that arent white will be about 24 hours away from hatching so you would need to switch off the filter or cover the intake if you can with some stocking but it could be impossible to do this.
i got a large sponge filter and air pump and put that in.

good luck with the babies
oh, heres a pic from my spawn

 

[TwoTankAmin]

Angel eggs in a community tank = lunch.

 

[Al Bundy]

How can I tell if they are both female?

 

[black angel]

females are generally rounder in the belly and males look pinched. the male has a slight hump to the head and is usually bigger than the female. in my pic, the male is the bottom fish. sometimes if they are both female they will lay together, maybe if all the eggs go white then i would be suspicious as well.

 

[Al Bundy]

Thanks for all this great advice, its really appreciated.

I'll get another tank tomorrow.

 

[Al Bundy]

Right, I woke up this morning and found all the eggs gone. I'm suspicious of my clown loach as they didn't come out for their feed this morning. I also found a neon dead.

My question now is should I still go ahead with getting another tank? Will they continue to spawn?

Thanks

 

[black angel]

always supposing they didnt eat them themselves then the loach could easily have eaten them.
if you do want to spawn them again it will take a while to condition again and it could be months rather than weeks so theres no rush to get a tank. but having it set up and running for a few weeks is a good idea.
if you want to spawn them and watch them rear the young then i think you will need a four foot tank just for some of the young to get the room to grow and you may need to cull some if too many survive, but as they havent attempted rearing yet then you will be very lucky to get any surviving from the next couple of batches unless you take them out if it looks like they are eating them.
all you need in the four foot is a couple pieces of slate and a couple of large sponge filters and then place them in when they look like they are about to spawn again and condition with plenty of live food. once they have spawned and you want to remove them, remove them and turn the slate around so its looking down and place an airstone so the bubbles hit the eggs to imitate the fanning process.
thats about all i know as i did it years ago but the angels looked after them well themselves on the first batch and i got 20 to an inch which was plenty for my tank.

just found out that they can spawn again within a month!!

 

[dolly_daydream]

hi
just thought ide let you know what i did with my angel eggs,as soon as my pair laid eggs i thought it would be best to leave them,bad idea ,no the parents didn,t eat them but as soon as they became free swimming i lost almost all of them down the gravel,there so tiny you couldn,t almost see them there even smaller than danio babies ,anyway,as soon as they laid eggs i cut the leaf with the eggs off and placed them in a jug in the same tank and moved them on to a smaller tank,making sure that the eggs never came out of the water and the jug should then be emptied in to the smaller tank,and keep the water well airated,as soon as you see wigglers still stuck to the leaf after a couple of days,you should get some liquifry ready, theres no need to feed at this point as they still feed of the yolk sac,as soon as you see free swimmers drop in the liquifry,after a week or 2 start feeding on brine shrimps at least five times a day and regular water changes,and you should soon starting seeing good growth .but make sure you filter is a sponge filter so the babies dont get sucked up, angel fish dont like strong current so make sure your filter isn,t to strong,and put some tights over the filter with a elastic band so the weaker ones wont also get sucked up,i bred angel fish for a year with a spawning every 3 weeks and had almost perfect results, pm me if you need any other advice
thanks
and good luck

 

[Al Bundy]

Thanks for all this great info.

What are sponge filters though?

 

[Al Bundy]

Oh and can I use any old piece of slate as long as its clean?

 

[black angel]

thats a couple of pics of my double sponge filter which can easily filter a 24 inch tank and its basically run by air pulling water through the sponges. i use an airvolution AV1 for an 18 inch tank as i am also running my fluval (hubby bought it so didnt look at the size), and i think i would need a bigger one if i wanted to run it on its own, but its currently with my oranda as a second filter to the juwel. if you wanted it to be the only filtration in the tank then i would suggest getting the AV2 or similar. for a four foot tank you would need two double sponge filters and either have two AV2's or one AV3 and get lots of tubing.
if you do get the sponge and air pump then buy tubing as well as it doesnt come with it.

as for the slate, it needs to be roughly 12 inches tall and about 5 inches wide and as long as its clean and has no sharp edges then it will be fine.

hope that helped