First time breeding angels... Opinions?

Okay so back in September I bred angels for the first time... Bred plenty of other fish before anything from guppy to clownfish but I like angels so decided to give it a go as my pair are getting on a bit and I wanted to be able to say I had to be honest. The pair isn't perfect so my expectations weren't high - just a gold x silver pairing nothing special.

I kept the maintenance high and the good food pretty much constant and from 3 spawns (with virtually no abnormalities other than 1 bent spine case) I got pretty high growth rates and as I'm typing this up still have 8 of the remaining fry. They're aged between 5-6 months and all easily 4.5-5"+. I get a fair few comments on how small thei eyes are and as a discus keeper attribute it to the high growth rates.

This is one of my favourites @~5 months his name is Harley.



I will take some more recent ones of my other 7 but was hoping for some opinions on whether Harley is a good attempt for a newbie?

FIRST TIME BREEDING ANGELS... OPINIONS?

The first time I ever bred angels, back in the 1980's, I managed to raise 4 fry. So any more than that for a first attempt I would regard as a great success   
This time round, I started again at the end of 2007, I raised about 30 or 40 youngsters from my first batch, and most of those were bellysliders and/or had badly deformed fins. With hindsight, I can attribute that to grossly excessive feeding.

By comparison to my early attempts, your fish are splendid examples, and the growth rates you achieved with this fish, and your smokey (as posted on facebook) are quite spectacular.

There are a number of factors that can influence growth rate :-

Temperature, frequency of water changes, diet not only what is fed, but how much & how often, size of tank, number of occupants, and finally genetics....

Some varieties do seem to grow faster than others, silvers and smokeys being two that I've found to be more rapid than most.
Another factor that could be at play here is heterosis or hybrid vigour. Despite the name hybrid vigour, this doesn't necessarily involve an inter-species cross, simply the pairing of two unrelated individuals, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heterosis .

Certainly, as with discus, stunted angels can have disproportionately large eyes, but I wouldn't say your fish had noticeably smaller eyes than I would consider normal. I have to say it does have the look of a fish that's been fed a high protein diet, personally I prefer a slightly less portly look, but that's a minor quibble, and over all I say excellent work for a first attempt.

Pterophyllum wrote:

FIRST TIME BREEDING ANGELS... OPINIONS?

The first time I ever bred angels, back in the 1980's, I managed to raise 4 fry. So any more than that for a first attempt I would regard as a great success   
This time round, I started again at the end of 2007, I raised about 30 or 40 youngsters from my first batch, and most of those were bellysliders and/or had badly deformed fins. With hindsight, I can attribute that to grossly excessive feeding.

I've sold about 130 juvies too so in total from 3 consecutive spawns have gotten about 140 angels. Glad this is a good start!!

By comparison to my early attempts, your fish are splendid examples, and the growth rates you achieved with this fish, and your smokey (as posted on facebook) are quite spectacular.

There are a number of factors that can influence growth rate :-

Temperature, frequency of water changes, diet not only what is fed, but how much & how often, size of tank, number of occupants, and finally genetics....

Some varieties do seem to grow faster than others, silvers and smokeys being two that I've found to be more rapid than most.
Another factor that could be at play here is heterosis or hybrid vigour. Despite the name hybrid vigour, this doesn't necessarily involve an inter-species cross, simply the pairing of two unrelated individuals, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heterosis .

Certainly, as with discus, stunted angels can have disproportionately large eyes, but I wouldn't say your fish had noticeably smaller eyes than I would consider normal. I have to say it does have the look of a fish that's been fed a high protein diet, personally I prefer a slightly less portly look, but that's a minor quibble, and over all I say excellent work for a first attempt.

 

I've always been taught high protein diet is the best way to raise young so I tend to use a high protein diet as early as possible, they've not been fed flake because I don't believe it's worth feeding and stuff like hikari discus pellets they eat but because they have such huge appetites it's no more than a treat to calm them down if they get a bit rowdy... Lol... Until they were 1 month old they were at about normal temperature for angels but at 1 month they were big enough not to be eaten by my discus so I just seperated the spawn out with biggest in my main (240L at the time) and the others in a 10G or 30G depending on size. As fry I honestly couldnt even put a number on feedings maybe 7 or more per day until they were about 2 months then cut to 4-6. As fry given a thorough clean after every single meal using syphon and toothbrush, 50% change every night and on top of that a 70% every week. I tried to sell when I could (when they were 1" body or more) so the tanks werent overstocked and even at say 4 months getting daily wc and the parents werent related as far as I knew... Just shop bought.

But thank you