# My silver angels spawned, most economical way to hatch bbs as food?



## jiayaw (Jun 10, 2011)

I have angels spawned before, but I typically let them be in the community tank and they usually get eaten after they are free swimming. But this time the parents are so pretty I want to try and raise the fry. After raising some juvenile silver angels for a couple of months, I ended up with a breeding pair that spawned. Because they spawned in a community tank, I decided to just remove the eggs and transferred them to a 5 gal tank that has a heater and a sponge filter. After one day, most of the eggs look healthy.

So now I am going to need to plan the food source for the babies if and when they do hatch to free swimming fries. I should have time to setup a hatchery over the weekend and have bbs to feed the fries as soon as they become free swimming but since I never had experience raising bbs before, what's the most economical way to hatch bbs and have constant supply.

Thanks in advance, and attached is a pic of the father guarding the eggs before I removed them.


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## SeaHorse_Fanatic (Apr 22, 2010)

Google "brine shrimp hatchery" and maybe add "pop bottle" in your search. 2 litre pop bottles upside down with bottom cut off and an airstone inserted for aeration and circulation is probably still the least expensive method of hatching bbs. Good luck. BTW, if this batch doesn't make it don't be too disappointed. Some common reasons rearing angelfish yourself may not work include: Eggs may not be fertilized properly, moving from 1 tank to another may cause casualties, no parents in tank means you have to physically remove the dead eggs before they rot and fungus over, contaminating the other healthy eggs. It often takes 1 or more batches to perfect a rearing method that really works well and sometimes even if you do everything "right", things happen.

Anthony


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## mollyb (May 18, 2010)

Well, this is always exciting!. Congrats. I think they are a nice pair as well, I am assuming the female is the one that was blurry in the other post. 
I find you need 2 x hatchery setups. It takes 24 - 36 hrs for a batch, so while you are harvesting one, have the other one started. Water temp is important, some people put the hatchers in a water bath, but the temp in my fish room seems fine without. I use the upside down pop bottle (plastic) thing, and have a stand to hold these hatching cones stable. I have seen using another pop bottle bottom, cut off as a stand as well, but I like access to the neck of the bottle as I insert a stopcock in the neck, easy to harvest the new BBS as they seem to fall to the bottom of the cone when newly hatched and the air is off. Also, I wouldn't use an airstone as they say the BBS can be affected by small bubbles, I just use he end of the airhose, no stone. I found a light source was essential to hatching, and I had extremely poor hatches before I finally mounted a small light over the hatching cones. I use a coffee filter paper to capture the BBS. Good luck. 

PS Angel fry do well with crushed flake, just in case!


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## jiayaw (Jun 10, 2011)

Yea it was the female that was blurry in the background!


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## Tensa (Aug 2, 2014)

That is really exciting! Congrats!!


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## jiayaw (Jun 10, 2011)

got about 10 of these guys free swimming. Feeding them live bbs, hopefully at least some of them will survive!


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## Canadian_Aqua_Farm (Apr 21, 2010)

You always take the best photos, great detail on that fry. They will grow fast on the live baby brine.


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## mollyb (May 18, 2010)

Canadian_Aqua_Farm said:


> You always take the best photos, great detail on that fry. They will grow fast on the live baby brine.


No kidding, great photo, I would like to be able to do that!. What kind of setup do you use? lens? settings? Enquiring minds want to know. Thanks, Brent

congrats on the 10, at least you know it is a good pair, numbers should improve with next spawns, if you have the room!


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## SeaHorse_Fanatic (Apr 22, 2010)

Wow, amazingly clear photo. BTW, if you want to swing by my place in Burnaby, I'll give you some special FD food for your fry.

Anthony


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## jiayaw (Jun 10, 2011)

This morning, I've counted 12 swimming around, and here are some more updated pics of the fries!

Thanks for all the kind comments on my photos! These photos were taken with my Nikon D610 and the Nikkor 105mm VR macro lens on a tripod (had to use tripod and live view as it was hard to focus on fries as they are so tiny that even breathing will knock the fish out of focus) and generally just shot with higher ISO to get a decent shutter speed with a wide open aperture. I just used a desktop CFL lamp for lighting as I don't have a hood for the 5 gal tank.






















They are growing little by little each day and so far, all are doing well. You can see the full orange belly that resulted from the fries eating the baby brine shrimp.

Luckily the baby brine shrimp seems to be able to live for about 4-5 hours in the fry tank even though it's freshwater... so I can put in an excess of the brine shrimp in the tank before I head to work to allow the fries to graze on the shrimps and not have to worry too much about the food rotting, while supplying the fries with enough food throughout the day. Then when I get home from work, I will put in a bit more brine shrimp into the tank to let them feed before I do a 25-50% water change depending on how messy the tank gets. But this method seem to be working for providing the fries with constant supply of food, and the tank is big enough so that the fries have to work a bit to find food so they won't overstuff themselves!


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## jiayaw (Jun 10, 2011)

A video of my 15 babies
and here's a picture of day 11


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## mollyb (May 18, 2010)

nice - I love baby fish. It will be cool to watch them transform into the angel shape, with your photography skills. Keep it up. Brent


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## Marko1 (Jul 26, 2010)

Great pictures and photos Keep it up love the progress reports! Love angels!


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## jiayaw (Jun 10, 2011)

From the looks of it... of the 15 fries, I "MIGHT" have to cull one of them, as it looks really bloated but the tummy is clear (not orange like the rest of the group) and it seemed like can't really swim properly. I will give it a few days and see if it lives through it and recover, if not, I might just cull it... just in case it might just be because of bad digestion.

Anyways, here's a quick update of some of the healthier ones (all other 14 fries are looking great)


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## jiayaw (Jun 10, 2011)

ignore this post, accidentally double posted


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## jiayaw (Jun 10, 2011)

*Day 15*

Day 15 (day 8 Free swimming)

If I pay careful attention to the shape of the fries, they are starting to develop the ventral and dorsal fins and starting to develop the more triangular shape! So far all 15 are swimming around


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## April (Apr 21, 2010)

Look grest. The main thing as they develop is water quality. Siphon the bottom and clean slime off walls. Low nitrates. A lot of people who raise Angels locally end up with short dorsal fins .
Fin shape and height all has to do with very clean water. Even parameters otherwise you get short cut off dorsals. 
Your parent pic has very nice fins. 






Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk


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## jiayaw (Jun 10, 2011)

I've been religiously cleaning the tank daily and also change 50-75% of the water daily. I just need a better way of harvesting my brine shrimp so there's less shell entering the tank. I saw that a few fries got unhatched cysts in their stomach and thankfully they have been successfully pooping them out...But I really need to work on harvesting those bbs


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## April (Apr 21, 2010)

Your fry should grow well then! I just use the pop bottle uncut. Airstone through the the bottle neck . I unplug the pump, keep by a light and let the eggs settle to the bottom and put a light by the bottle. Then I siphon where they all congregate by the light into a shrimp net. With the same airline with the airstones off and the pump off. 
Once they are eating well you can also order decal brine shrimp eggs from angel fins.ca and use unhitched. Meant to have better nutrition than hatched and easy to use. 


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## jiayaw (Jun 10, 2011)

Just posting this as an update, I'm down one fry and now at 14 fries. The one that does was the one that looked like it had a deformity and was ballooned ever since it hatched. All the other 14 looks really healthy


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## jiayaw (Jun 10, 2011)

April said:


> Your fry should grow well then! I just use the pop bottle uncut. Airstone through the the bottle neck . I unplug the pump, keep by a light and let the eggs settle to the bottom and put a light by the bottle. Then I siphon where they all congregate by the light into a shrimp net. With the same airline with the airstones off and the pump off.
> Once they are eating well you can also order decal brine shrimp eggs from angel fins.ca and use unhitched. Meant to have better nutrition than hatched and easy to use.
> 
> Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk


Thanks April for your pointers!


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## jiayaw (Jun 10, 2011)

Day 16


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## mollyb (May 18, 2010)

keep it up


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## jiayaw (Jun 10, 2011)

Day 17 - I am not sure if I am hallucinating, but seems like compared to yesterday, the bodies of most of these fries are higher than yesterday! They are definitely changing at a really rapid pace!

As for the parents.. they spawned again yesterday, but I was at work when it happened, and according to my family, when the lights turned on with the timer, they ate the eggs. Probably will have to wait another two weeks or so to get another batch but they are getting there =) At least right now I can focus on this first batch.


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## jiayaw (Jun 10, 2011)

Day 18
At first I just thought that maybe some of the fries are just going to take longer to develop but from my observation... the parents might actually be carrying recessive gold genes...because while most of my angel fries are starting to show gray dots/pigments on their body... approximately 3-4 of the 14 fries are lacking the pigment and look yellow/gold like this one







and a pic of some other ones which actually have the gray pigment... and not to mention all of them developed their ventral and dorsal fins now.


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## mollyb (May 18, 2010)

shot #3 is worthy of using as a desktop. nice


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## jiayaw (Jun 10, 2011)

Day 20 - starting to take on the shape of an angelfish


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## jiayaw (Jun 10, 2011)

Day 21







And today I've also added a tiny silver tip BNP to the fry tank to help keep the tank free of algae now that the fries are big enough to not be food for a tiny silver tip BNP


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## jiayaw (Jun 10, 2011)

day 22


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## jiayaw (Jun 10, 2011)

Day 23 - these 15 fries are in a 5.5 gal right now... debating whether I should move them to a 10 gal soon or should I just wait until they are dime sized and move them into the 33 gal...


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## jiayaw (Jun 10, 2011)

Day 24


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## mollyb (May 18, 2010)

cute little guys.


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## jiayaw (Jun 10, 2011)

Another batch of eggs were laid in the community tank.I've moved the eggs over to the fry tank in a breeding net to isolate the eggs from the bnp. Over the next week I'll move the bnp and the near pea size angels from the first batch to the 33 gallon tank and I'll release the new clutch into the 5.5 gal. exciting times...so far only two eggs turned white and I've removed them already. Looks like well over 150 eggs have been laid this time


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## mollyb (May 18, 2010)

careful, you'll be getting more tanks soon!


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## Marko1 (Jul 26, 2010)

Breeder tanks, grow out tanks, New pairing tanks, Selling tanks...Here they come  Hahha:lol:


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## jiayaw (Jun 10, 2011)

Hahaha... Sadly 3 of the babies from the first batch died today...They randomly started to thrash around as if they had a heart attack then just died immediately after


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## April (Apr 21, 2010)

Check your ph . A ph drop or change will make them do that. Also check nitrates and ammonia.
Babies can't take any pj change especially lower. Maybe need to add a buffer slowly . 6 weeks is the crucial time. Hope the rest are ok.


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## jiayaw (Jun 10, 2011)

I've been adding gh booster(pinch) to add a little bit of gh in the tap water but I guess I need something that'll stabilize ph a little better


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## April (Apr 21, 2010)

Well try match the new water with the old. Maybe hold over night? Hopefully all the rest will be fine 


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## jiayaw (Jun 10, 2011)

I moved them over to the 33 gallon tank leaving the second batch of wrigglers in the 5.5 gal. They look really happy now!


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## jiayaw (Jun 10, 2011)

Culled majority of the first batch and left for 4 relatively healthy juveniles that are really starting to look like pea size (approaching dime size) angels

Now the second batch have hatched and are free swimming and today is day 9 since the eggs were laid














and here is a youtube link to a video I took 




They are in a marina breeding box right now attached to the 33 gal growout tank that I have the first batch in. I will probably move them into the 33 gal tank once they are big enough so they won't be eaten or harassed by the first batch. But if they end up overcrowding the box before they reach that size... I will raise the 4 from the first batch in a 10 gal temporarily and move this much bigger batch into the 33 gal


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## Marko1 (Jul 26, 2010)

Any New updates ?


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## jiayaw (Jun 10, 2011)

they are doing well~
Here are pics of the first batch from a week or so ago (Day 38) right now they are on day 48 (largest one is dime size now)


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## jiayaw (Jun 10, 2011)

Here are some pics of the second batch day 28 (pics taken on saturday)














and third batch (day 16)


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