After the eggs are laid

 Okay, your pair of angelfish just laid eggs.... Since we do not parent raise most of our fish we will talk about hatching the eggs artificially.  We will wait a couple of hours after we are sure that they have finished spawning and then we remove the piece of slate that the eggs were deposited on and put them in the hatching container. Our hatching containers are 1 gallon wide mouth glass jars (the kind that pickles come in).  We do not use the water from the breeding tank to fill the jar up, but use aged water straight from our freshwater aging tanks, which is the same temperature and water conditions as the breeding tank.  We then add 5 drops of methylene blue.  The methylene blue is added to the water so that the unfertilized eggs will not fungus and kill the good eggs.  You can use other things like Hydrogen Peroxide, which will do the same job, however we prefer good old fashioned methylene blue since you only have to add it one time and it does it's job for the entire hatching process.  Hydrogen peroxide is cleaner to use (it won't stain everything blue) but you must remember to add it every 24 hours or it will all dissipate from the water.  Next, we add an air stone to the jar so that it will create a water flow passing over the eggs (this imitates what your breeders will do if you leave the eggs with them to parent raise.  Basically it creates enough water movement over the eggs to keep them as clean as possible.  In about 48 hours, if everything goes well, you will see that your eggs have a little tiny strings protruding from the egg and are wiggling.  That's why at this point they are called wigglers.  If there are any white eggs that did not hatch (these are unfertilized eggs), they should be removed with an eyedropper, as they can still fungus and kill the hatched eggs.  We like to change at least 50% of the water and replace with new aged water at this point and repeat the water change every day.

Feeding and caring for the Angelfish fry

4 to 5 days after your eggs hatch the wigglers will start to swim. They do not look like angels at this point. They look more like little tiny guppy babies.  This is the point that they need to be fed.  They will need baby brine shrimp 3 times a day to stay strong and survive.  (We will explain how to make a brine shrimp hatchery later on). We give the babies their first feeding as soon as they are free swimming in their first home "the jar".  Most breeders will move their fry to larger quarters at this point and then start to feed, but this is what works for us and we continue to have great success.  We do move the babies to a small tank (usually either a 5 gallon or 10 gallon tank) 24 hours after they hatch.  We prefer to  use a small tank so that they can easily find the food at feeding time.  Each time we feed them their baby brine shrimp we will siphon off the bottom of their tank 2 hours later so that the uneaten food does not spoil the water.  We still do a 50% daily water change.  We can usually keep the spawn in these small tanks for about 3 weeks depending on the size of the spawn and their growth rate.  After 2-3 weeks we move them again to a larger tank.  Either a 20 gallon (this time the long type) or a 40 gallon breeder tank.  We prefer to use the 20 gallon tank, as once again they can find their food much easier. 

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