We occasionally get requests from people who would like to see an update on a project. Wild-cross projects tend to be some that are most often asked about. I should do these updates more often. It's not the writing that gets me. It's photography. I used to think that I would love it. Just give me a high-quality camera, which I have, and I will really enjoy taking all sorts of photos. I guess that's not the case. Apparently I just don't have the patience for it. It probably sounds strange coming from someone who has been raising angelfish for 40 years, but if the pictures don't look as good as the subject I will work at it for a while...
For years I have watched people offer standard fin bristlenose for sale to people, stating that these fish carried a gene for longfin. I felt very bad for the people wasting their money and worse wasting the next year or two raising and breeding these standard bristlenose just to find out that all of the babies would look just like mom and dad. As recently as last week we received a call from a customer wanting to place an order for some standard fin, or "normal" super-red bristlenose that carry the longfin gene. It is an understandable mistake to think that the gene that is responsible for the longfin trait might be recessive, but this misunderstanding has been going on far...
This pair is the result of a 3-year project to create a wild-cross Platinum Blushing pair. They are F2 Peruvian wild-cross. Our experience has been that the gene for Blue, when homozygous, causes some negative effects on angelfish. The fry are weaker, slower growing and not quite as fertile in many cases when they mature. We developed this project to see if we could combat these problems. This female always puts down spawns in the 1500 to 2000 range. We couldn't ask for much more at this point. The fry have been vigorous and are growing well, though still not as fast-growing as most other strong strains. On the plus side, fertility was fantastic and hatch-rate was...
It is not uncommon for angelfish to spawn in a group. It usually happens when there isn't enough space in the tank for the number of fish it holds so that a pair can successfully defend a territory. The problem is that literally every time they spawn in a group, they also eat the eggs almost as fast as they lay them. So, what seems like it might have been a good thing, is actually a sign that the pairs need to be separated and given their own tank. In this video, there are 6 fish participating in the spawning and a few fish that are not allowed to. (sorry for the video quality, but it was a very...
This is a feeding of live artemia given to angelfish fry that are a few weeks old. The lighter colored fish are the koi from a Koi/Wildcross mating. Our procedure for feeding artemia is to feed once, maybe twice per day for the first week after free-swimming. Then, twice per day for the next few weeks, when we then transition them to dry foods. To transition, we feed artemia in the morning, and then no artemia in the evening. Instead, we put in a very small amount of fry-sized dry food - but not nearly enough to feed them all even a little bit. After 2-3 days of this, they are vigorously seeking the dry food and we then...
