I have a pairing!

I'm so excited I had to share!

I've just been watching my two smokey blushing angels shimmying against each other and tail slapping .... and then came what I was waiting for .... the lip lock!

Phil was right, they are a male and a female and they're now pairing up.

Question: According to Phil I have 3 females and just the one male. Will the pairing of the two smokey's stay or is the male likely to try to pair with the other two female's at some point?

Maybe.

Some males do, some males don't.

well that's good to know ... it doesn't matter I'm just wanting to be fore warned for possible problems! I wouldn't say the two smokey's are a natural pairing ... it's a bit of a love-hate relationship at the moment but they are still very young so only time will tell. Maybe the male might decide he prefers one of the other females in time... we shall see how it pans out.

I've not seen anymore tail slapping or lip locking today ... maybe it was a one off   

the pairing up process is progressing. Yesterday evening, after feeding them some frozen mysis they went utterly crazy. They started prolonged lip locking that went on for several hours. In between the lip locking they were beating the hell out of each other. The male has a hole in his anal fin and both have marks around their bodies and heads where they were 'biting' each other.
They also seemed to darken in colour for a while.

All is calm this morning but I know it's just a waiting game for eggs now. I could use some advice though as based on last night's activities I can see the angel breeding process is much more aggressive then the process I've known before with bolivian rams and laetacara curviceps.

I have, in my shed, a Juwel Rekord 800 (110 litres) It was put in there due to lack of space and running costs and the fact that my Juwel Rio 240 could accommodate all my stock from two tanks. I'm wondering now though whether I should bring it back into my flat and get it set back up for the two paired up angels. I can see that this breeding process is going to be stressful for the rest of my fish and I also have two local fish stores asking for fry from these angels so having fry picked off in a community tank is something I'd like to avoid.
When I bred my curviceps and rams I just left them both in the community tank. Fry only lasted about 4 days once they became free swimming, so to grow some on I sucked up a few with a turkey baster and grew them on in a 20 litre tank before moving them into the Rekord once they outgrew the 20 litre.
I'm trying to decide what the best option is, whether to bring in the 800 and move the parents and let them do the hard work or leave the parents in the community tank, cope with the aggression (and hope my other stock can deal with it too) and remove some fry at free swimming stage using the same method as curviceps. If I do it that way I can control how many angels I grow on for the fish stores ... I'm pretty sure they won't want more than 10 angels each!
If I move the parents, they are away from the other fish and not causing trouble but I could be faced with having to move on a lot more fry than the store can deal with.

I really don't know what to do and another view point from someone who's had angel fry would help. I've not bred angels before but I'm guessing the process isn't too much different from curviceps and rams, although I understand from what I've heard that angels don't dig pits for the wrigglers .... which is a relief, my male ram was like a bulldozer! lol

You're going to need a separate tank for the young, and it sounds like the odd one out is going to want a bit of peace, so setting up the Rekord for the pair seems a good plan. In a lightly stocked community tank, you might manage to raise some babies, but only if you're prepared to see the parents chasing all the other inhabitants to the far end of the tank. Even then the majority of the babies will get eaten & the growth of the survivors will be less than optimum as they will be competing with the other inhabitants for food. If the parents are raising young they're less inclined to spawn again. If you leave them in the community tank, they're liable to spawn within a week of losing the previous batch.
Having given them a separate breeding tank, if you feel that you have too large a batch to handle, then syphon some of the babies out, and let them take their chances in the main tank, but it's worth noting that the more babies in a batch, the stronger the parent's parent raising instincts tend to be.
I like Juwel tanks, & I like their filters, but not in a breeding tank, as many of the babies will find their way into it. Personally I'd remove the filter (you'll need two pairs of pliers & some thin garden wire, used like cheese wire to cut through the silicon holding it in place.) Alternatively, simply use an air driven sponge filter and leave the Juwel filter in place, but empty of media & turned off, and find something to cover the intake grills

thanks for that. I am leaning toward moving the pair into the Rekord 800 by themselves and leaving them to it. I think it will be easier on me all round.

The problem will be, as you say, the filter. The Rekord still has it's factory fitted internal filter and if I add the adults it'll need to be re-cycled before I add them as it's been in the shed a while now.
As you say though, any fry could be sucked into the filter so I need to find a way to stop that happening. From memory, the filter box has intake holes at the bottom and the top. The bottom one is partly blocked once you get substrate in so maybe I can block it further by piling more gravel in front of it. The top one, I could put some fine filter wool in front of it which will protect it somewhat. If I remove the filter then won't the adults will be creating more mess than a sponge filter can cope with?

I use sponge filters in all my breeding tanks, and have no water quality issues with adults, adults & fry or with youngsters, but I use more/larger filters than their rating. For example in a 70 litre tank I use an algarde biofoam 200 with 2 sponges on it.

okay, thanks. I'll have a look online at a bigger one than the one I currently have. I currently have one made by JAD that's around 6 inches high and about the same in diameter. I've used that for cory fry and the curviceps fry and found them to be great. They filter well and provide some microscopic stuff for fry to eat aswell.

I need to get the tank into the flat first really and see if there is an option to use it's fitted filter and protect fry aswell. I'll have a look into all options and see what I can make work