deformed angelfish fry.(GONE)

i have around 60 of these to be culled and there free to take away any time over the weekend.could deliver within reason.might suit someone with bigger fish.just cant do it myself

I'll take them if You want
I'd feed them to My Monsterfish
drop them into the shop if You want

Des

will do il drop half them in for ye des,i got a pm off another guy so il split them between you two.

The main cause of deformities in angelfish fry is usually highish nitrites and or pollution. any ammonia or high nitrites will cause wipe outs but lower levels will see an increase in bad shape, crooked fins, missing gill plate covers etc. Also a lack of calcium in the water will prevent good finnage growth, but it is a fine line as too much hardness will inhibit breeding and survival rates. When growing on fry it is important to give them enough growing space and cull or split early as it is better to have 50 good healthy young than 100s of badly shaped or weak fish.
I have found that genetic factors are not as vital with angels (they are all chronically inbred anyway) as with other species and the first few weeks of life are when most faults develop.
ps. the addition of polyfilter to the tank when eggs are first laid will be a massive help.

cheers,im only finding out all this stuff now tbh,still a bit of a learning curve,most if not all the deforms are missing gill plates.there is a few smaller ones aswell.i read somewhere that the gill plate deform is down to genetics rather than water quality.il have to check it out later.

The only viable genetic gill-plate defect that I commonly see in Angel Fish is in the blushing angels.

There may be the odd case of other spurious genetic mutants though.

Other gill disorders in viable fish tend to be teratogenic (eg by virtue of an environmental effect on the parents or the developing embryo) or post-development gill deformities such as nitrates, or a deficiency or an excess of certain nutrients.

ian

cheers thanks for the insight,im nearly sure they are blushers! So would it make sense that most of the deforms are gill related?

anglecichlid wrote:

cheers thanks for the insight,im nearly sure they are blushers! So would it make sense that most of the deforms are gill related?

In the blushing, the strain has been made by selecting fish with thinner gills so that you can see the 'pink' bit show.

But, most gill deformities are not related.

ok im lost, i have blue blushing angels. Most of the bad fry that need to be culled have gill problems as far as i know.now would that be down to water quality or the parents or a little from both? Treat me like a 10 year old on this please if you can!

anglecichlid wrote:

ok im lost, i have blue blushing angels. Most of the bad fry that need to be culled have gill problems as far as i know.now would that be down to water quality or the parents or a little from both? Treat me like a 10 year old on this please if you can!

I thought you meant in general across ay batch of angelfish.

So...onto your fish:

the problem is most likely to be the same in all of your fish that had gill problems.

Firstly, there would be a genetic per-disposition for weaker gill covers (from the blushing angel side).
That would have made them more prone to environmental factors that other strains of angels may tolerate a lot better.

High nitrates is a large cause of gill problems in fish in general, and that can happen at any stage of development.

During development of the young, the fish will need the right micro-nutrients to help build a good gill structure......those things include calcium, iron and vitamin C (just to name a few).
Without, for example, vitamin c and iron the connection between bones cannot be formed correctly (=scurvy in humans).

If, however, there is an environmental effect such as deficiencies or excess of certain chemicals then there may well be problems that go beyond those that can be readily seen. You may have fish with weakened hearts or insufficient structure around the gut....and that could be related to dietary related gill problems.

With nitrate "damage", that can affect any fish no matter how healthy the fish. You tend to notice the gills not lying against the body correctly (or even curling outwards).

The nitrate itself does not specifically directly damage the gills but causes changes in physiology that force a gill deformity.

Ammonia, though, will directly damage the gills.

Ian

the very nature of the fancy strains of angel fish means heavy culling is needed to get even reasonably decent looking fish. the blushing strains are developed by concentrating on thinning the gill plate cover as ian said and the blue strain is also achieved by concentrating on a colour mutation. this double whammy will mean that the normal traits of good shape, good finnage and hardiness will be somewhat compromised. as angelfish are fairly cheap to buy the research and care that is put into discus or arowana linebreeding (careful outbreeding to keep vigour etc.) is not usually applied by the original creators of these new strains. at one stage the hobby was awash with long finned and veiltailed strains but these seem to have lost popularity and there is a race to produce the next big seller.
with angel fish normally producing 300 plus fry which develop very quickly a huge strain is put on the filters ability to cope and the resulting nitrites/nitrates and ph drop will affect the normal developement of the young.
I have bred from angel fish where the young fish had gill plate covers missing or ultra thin and these same parents produced perfect fry on other occasions, when i took extra precautions.
in your case it is probably the blushing or thin plate mutation that is causing the problem with the fry but it is useful to know that water quality that even dips slightly can cause problems with emerging or developing baby fish.
anyway good luck with the future breeding.

ah just in behind you ian, but again you are saying pretty much the same thing a bit more scientifically lol.
just one other point, i often add a very small amount of common salt when growing on young angels or other south american cichlids and this is something that was always reccomended by the old timers and i have always felt it was of benefit. what do u think?

cheers. You have been really helpfull ive learned more in two posts than i thought i could have.i really mean that.

Like everything in fish keeping, when everything goes right it's all straightforward and simple, but when things go wrong it can get complex.

I tried not to make it too scientific.

There are a number of offsets when breeding certain colour or shape strains. Many mutations on colour are fine and have little disadvantage to a fish in captivity (but a brightly glowing platinum white siamese fighter would have some major problems in the wild !!).

But some are not just simply colour varieties.
The genetics behind some colour variations are also linked to other problems that could lead to disastrous outcomes.
Psychological problems in fish are not easy to identify: there is always a potential that a certain colour form may also be linked to pyschological disorders. It may well be that that psychological disorder is nothing more than a symptom of increasing brain damage. Ultimately, the fish will die.

I am always concerned when a new strain is produced that the original breeder did his/her homework first before releasing them onto the market.

I have done siamese fighting fish line breeding for years to produce new strains or strengthen existing strains.
Along the way, I have seen a number of additional problems in fish showing certain colour strains.
Often it may well be nothing more than a linked-gene, and that can be selectively bred out (eg there is a closely linked problem with fins and spine in the opaque-masked bettas, and I am in the process of trying to make that more robust and breed it out of the linkage).
In some cases, the colour genes that are being selected are directly the problem to other biochemical and physiological problems.

In response to Derek's query on salt.......I have bred angels with salt in the water. It can work wonders to help prevent nitrate induced problems, it will increase the conductivity a small amount (and that is not always a bad thing....it depends on the fish), and it will work to some extent within the redox system.

Similarly, the "old-fashioned" use of methylene blue in breeding tanks is actually scientifically one of the best things that you can do.
Not only is methylene blue an antidote to nitrate and nitrite toxicity, it is a potent agent in the tanks RedOx system and will ensure than compounds intended to be in a chemically reduced state are kept in that state (ie it acts as an anti-oxidant).
The latter point is very useful in an oxidizing environment that is often found in angel tanks kept on the acidic pH side.

The oxidizing environment of an acid pH is great to minimise microbial growth, but can play havoc with fish development unless the diet is balanced to be sufficiently anti-oxidizing.

There....science supports much of the so called "old-fashioned" methods.

Ian