Angelfish breeding tube question

[x2h]

I have two angelfish and the white female spawns every 10 days or so. yes she is young and restless! the question is about the black one. it acts like a male and uses its breeding tube to fertilize the eggs, or at least it appears so. the eggs usually gets eaten by other fish in the tank by the next day, so I can never tell whether the eggs are really fertilized or not. Only thing I am sure of, is that most eggs are not white after 24 hours.

this way I cannot tell whether the black one is male or female.

I then try to sex it by its breeding tube. Well it is as big as the other female's, not really pointed. the only thing it does differently, is that when it "fertilize" the eggs, the tip of the breeding tube is sort of vibrating. The other female doesn't do that.

Based on this can the black one be a male? If I don't get a positive answer I guess the only way to find out is to let them spawn on a slate and keep the slate in a safe tank to see if they hatch.

Thanks for helping me...

[mickmac247]

Not sure if you can being that tyhey are young but the male many times has sort of a bump on the nose area. Go to Angelsplus.com and look at his breeding pairs as you may be able to see it on some of his pics. Let us know what happens. Mick

[x2h]

thanks for the tip. my black angel has something on the forehead but i am not sure if i can call it a hump. it's been more than 24 hours and they are guarding the eggs very well. only 10% maybe turned white and were eaten by the parents. if the eggs survive until tomorrow i should see wigglers if they are fertilized right? so I am keeping my fingers crossed and will report back again. :-)

[Ariel301]

Not all have the hump. It's a trait of domestic angelfish, caused by our selective breeding. You won't see it in wild fish, or on all male domestic fish, and occasionally you'll see it on a female. I personally select for male angels without the hump because I don't like it.

If your eggs aren't turning white by 24 hours they are fertilized. If you want to keep any fry, you'll have to either put the parents in their own tank without tankmates, or pull the eggs/wigglers/fry and put them in a separate tank.

[mickmac247]

If you pull them with the slate dont forget to put in some type of air flow over them such as an air stone. Some folks use an anti fungal as well. Keep updates comming. Check out the angel forum which has just about everything you want to know just about lol. I see MTS syndrome comming on. aka as more tank syndrome especially with angels who grow pretty good and hundreds at a time. Mick
http://www.angelfish.net/ its FREE

[Ariel301]

Yeah, I forgot to mention the air stone and an antifungal. I always use hydrogen peroxide; about a teaspoon per 5 gallons. It just helps keep the eggs from getting any fungus on them since the parents are not there to clean them. The air stone helps with that too. Also, I pick out any white or fungus-y eggs with tweezers, just to keep the others from getting anything bad on them. And you'll want some BBS to feed them. Live is best, but you can make do with frozen.

[x2h]

wow thanks for all the useful tips. here's the update: at 40 hours after spawning, this morning i checked the eggs. about 20-30% of them are white, and the rest of them are still not wigglers. this afternoon when I came home all the eggs are gone (48 hours after spawning). according to Ariel301 if they didn't turn white at 24 hours they are fertilized. i guess i will use a slate next time. it will only take another 10 days. thanks again!

[mickmac247]

If you are going to take the slate make sure you have a cycled tank ready. When I use a small tak a 5g or 2 1/2 g I sometimes use the tank water the eggs were laid in. Not sure if you ever hatched BB shrimp but if not check out the web or the angel fish lick for geat info. The wigglers wont eat it right away so dont start the BBS to early since its only good for a day or so. Glad you are staying with this as its great to see them grow and possibly sell some to buy more fish stuff.lol Just wondering what are you going to put 2 or maybe 300 baby angels in??? Not everyone realizes the room needed to raise even one batch. Some pairs can lay 500 or more. Told ya MTS lol Mick

[x2h]

hey thansk for the help. yes i have raised baby angels like 10 years ago. what i did is to move the slate with eggs to a small refuge tank that hangs inside the same tank with the parent. the refuge tank has holes all over it so water will be circulated inside the refuge tank. i then remove white eggs daily until they all hatch. then after a few days i feed them boiled egg yolk powder. they love it! then when they grew up a bit i feed them live brime shrimp that i hatched myself. once they are big enough they are released into the bigger tank with the parents. the problem is they soon started attacking their parents. i had to use a tank divider to separate the babies from the parents. eventually i ended up giving away the babies to the neighborhood. i do have a spare 10 g tank this time around so yeah, MTS begins!

p.s. the parents are black and white, i am curious how the babies will look like. 1/4 black, 1/4 white, and 1/2 marble or something like that? my genetics knowledge is very shaky.

[mickmac247]

Great genetic calculator and info on the angel site. Pretty sure someone would have some idea but then again surprises are nice also. Its great to hear that you have done this before so the fry have an even better chance making it. Keep the updates comming Mick

[blackandyellow]

Other subtle differences to look for are the following:

The ventral region between the pelvic (i.e. "whiskers") and the anal fin in females is a little more slated, whereas in males its straight and a bit square. Besides the nuchal hump males tend to develop a "golden" tone in that same region, even if they don´t have the hump.

[x2h]

Originally Posted by blackandyellow

Other subtle differences to look for are the following:

The ventral region between the pelvic (i.e. "whiskers") and the anal fin in females is a little more slated, whereas in males its straight and a bit square. Besides the nuchal hump males tend to develop a "golden" tone in that same region, even if they don´t have the hump.

that's interesting. my white female angel's ventral region is actually very straight while the black one has a slate one. also the white female has a golden tone on the head which wasn't there when it was young. looks like mines are totally the opposite of what you describe.

[blackandyellow]

That´s interesting because right now out of my sexed group, 4 males and two females, all 4 males look very similar in that area (more "squared off") and with the golden tone. The females don´t seem to have as much color in the forehead at all. One is a black and the other is a silver.

Another clue is behavior. Females are not as aggressive (except when defending their eggs) but of course you would need a group to see how they interact intraspecies.

Let me try and get (good) pictures of my group, maybe it´ll help

[Ariel301]

You have one black angel and one white angel?

If your black angel is a 'black lace' (It will be sort of a dark charcoal color with the black stripes faintly visible underneath), then it has one 'dark' gene and one 'gold' gene (Black and 'white'-called gold are carried on the same allele-the same place of a gene, so they are different alternatives of the same thing.) Your white fish would be a gold, with two gold genes. So in this case, you would get 50% d/g (black lace) and 50% g/g (gold)

If your black is a dark solid black color, it has two dark genes: d/d. Crossing that with your g/g gold angel will give you 100% d/g black lace angels.

Crossing a solid black animal to a solid white animal doesn't produce a black/white spotted animal in any case. The spotting is carried by another gene. In angelfish, this is on the same allele of that gene, so your alternatives there are gold, dark, marble, and gold marble, giving you also the opportunity to have 'light' marbles (mostly white with black spots) or 'dark' marbles (mostly black with some white). A regular marble is plain black and white, a gold marble will have a yellowish cast to the body, especially the forehead.

I know that's probably confusing, but at least it gives you what colors to expect from your pair, unless someone in the mix has a strange hidden gene that is going to come out. That happens every now and then.

[Ariel301]

It's difficult to sex angels by their body shape. There are generalities, but not all fish fit into the mold. I've got a female gold marble that looks like a male. The best you can do without seeing them breed is a guess that may be close to accurate.