I Think My Angels Paired Off!

[truetotexas]

i have two beautiful angels and i think they are pairing off... they are always staying by each other. while swimming, sleeping, eating... how would i know if they were pairing off?


thx guys!

me=noob

 

[Corleone]

They are a schooling fish, so they may just be doing that. Watch for them to start guarding an area of the tank and cleaning a surface. If they lay eggs, you can be sure. Don't panic if they eat their eggs the first few times - most cichlids have to learn how to not eat their eggs, and once they start hatching, they might continue to eat their fry. They'll figure things out eventually.

Angelfish sometimes pair off with the same sex, too. I've got two females who regularly lay eggs together. They never hatch, and eventually they either eat them or stop guarding them and other fish eat them.

 

[truetotexas]

ooo i see... thanks for the advice! i commonly see them behind or under my driftwood. i think maybe that would be the place of they were pairing off.


i have another question....

how would i know if my tank is fully cycled?

because from what ive read you would first see a spike in ammonia, then nitrite, then nitrate. and once you see the nitrate the tank is fully cycled.

in my tank i always have had a little less than .25ppm of ammonia. ive never noticed a rise in nitrite and i already have nitrates...

would you say that my tank is cycled? or at least close?

 

[Corleone]

How long has the tank been running? If there's ammonia there, the cycle isn't finished. Sometimes they go weird, though, especially if you used a bacterial supplement product and were lucky enough for it to work. A constant ammonia level like that can mean the filter is underperforming, or possibly a faulty test kit. Take two samples, test one and record the results, and take the other to the LFS and ask them to test, then compare their readings to yours. If any of their results don't match yours, just replace that test (depending on what test kit you use, you should be able to buy the tests individually instead of a whole new kit).

 

[truetotexas]

yeah.... actually my ammonia is probably realy close to if not 0. because i just brought home the api master test kit and it was yellow. meaning 0. but the cheap strip kit i had said i had a little in there.


so then do you think its alright?

 

[Corleone]

If the API test says 0, then I'd trust it (you can have the LFS double check to make sure). Strips are notoriously unreliable, and the ammonia one is probably the worst (It's the one with three pads that you have to shake up in down in the tube, right?). A friend of mine insisted on using them for months, and I never got any reading higher or lower than about .1-.2 on it.

 

[truetotexas]

YES THAT IS THE ONE HAHAHA! it would only read a constant .25ppm or so. the master kit said zero though.


okay so i just tested for nitrates and nitrites and ammonia...

they are all at zero.... is that bad?

 

[Corleone]

0 nitrates are unusual, but not impossible. Make sure you follow all the annoying steps on that one, like shaking the bottle for a full minute, to maximize accuracy. If you've been doing frequent water changes thinking you have .25 ammonia in the water, you may have reduce nitrates below the readable threshold.

Might still be worthwhile to have the LFS double check your test results, but I've had no trouble with the API nitrite test, and only rare false positives from the ammonia test. Sounds like your cycle's finished, though.