The Angel Fish eggs made it through the night! I was quite surprised. I am thinking it was the Pleco that cleaned them up last time. Mommy Angel has been constantly fanning them all day. She will knock an egg loose, quick grab it, roll it around in her mouth, and spit it back onto the leaf, hoping it will stick. Most of them are gone now. I don't think I will have any in the morning. 

Here you can see the eggs. I think the brighter white ones are unfertilized. 

Mommy and Daddy Angel fish, so proud. 

No time lost - They are at it again!

Well, I spoke too soon, they DID pick the leaf on the opposite side of the tank to lay their eggs on. I am going to let this set go unmolested by me to see if they do a better job of guarding the eggs this time. 11 days between spawns. 100 - 150 eggs per spawn. If less then 100 hatch a spawn that is over 3k baby angels in a year. Uhm... No... I can't afford to feed myself sometimes. I am NOT feeding THOUSANDS of baby angels. They shall be left to their own devices for the time being. Maybe next week I might be more charitable.
The top photo shows Mom and Dad Angel Fish laying their eggs. The photo to the right is of Mom watching her newly laid eggs.
I really like this third photo. I wish I didn't have the slightest touch of flash reflection in the upper right, and that her feeler-fin 

Pruning.

Well, tonight I had to do it. The tank was slowing growing shut. I had to prune back my plants. You can see the bucket of leaves that I culled of the plants. I went through and found all the yellowing, holey, broken, or otherwise disagreable leaves and mercilessly yanked them off the plants. I think I am tossing out more and better leaves then most pet stores have in their stores. I also added a few iron fertilizer tabs. Ed at Big Al's recomended them this weekend. I also gave the tank a dose of liquid fertilizer. I think I will try fertilizing 2 times a week instead of just once a week when I top off the tank as I had in the past. The plants quit "boiling" O₂, and I am kinda disapointed. I am hoping the fertilizer and the thinning will bring that kind of activity back.

The Angel Fish are at it again! They where in there cleaning up leaves as much as I was! They will clean on the leaves before they lay their eggs on them. I thinned out the largest of the Amazon Swords enough that the Angels are looking to lay eggs on the other side of the tank this time. If I can catch the eggs after they are fertilized, and before they are eaten, I may put them into a breeding net that hangs on the inside of the tank. I found out this weekend that I am going to need a license to sell the babys to the pet store. I am going to see how many babies I get before I think about spending the money for that. 

*CRIES*

 Before


 After

Angel Fish Spawning

Two of my Angel Fish seem to have paired off. They have been cleaning off the plant leaves for a few days now. With my new light, the plants have been bubbling like mad, driving the poor Angel Fish NUTS trying to keep "their" leif free of "stuff". The 3rd Angel in the tank, the prettiest, has been shunned to the "full" side of the tank.
Mom, previously known as Nemo because of her missing feeler fin thingy, is at the upper right of this second photo here. Dad took a while to get the picture of what was going on. He was more interested in the food I put in the tank to keep the other fish full enough not to bother the eggs.
I am rather excited about this deveolopment. This tank currently holds the only other fish I ever raised from eggs (even though he was laid and born in my other tank) - my green cory cat. I used up the entire 256MB of my camera's digital camera. So if you want to see a LOT of photos that look an aweful lot alike, check out the Angel Spawning Photo Gallery. 

Fish Tank Video

I took a 30 second video of my fish tank with my digital camera. It turned out OK. It is pretty large, at 10MB, so you will want to be on a fast internet connection to download it (I am sorry mom, no video for you).

In the video you can see my 3 Angel Fish, a Neon Tetra, 2 Ghost Shrimp (tust me, they are there), several of my Amazon Sword Plants, and in the last 1/4 of the video, you can see oxygen bubbles bubbling up off one of the plant leaves in the top right corner of the video. Now how is THAT for a run-on sentance.

Mike's Fish Tank Video (Requires Quicktime).

New light hood for the planted tank.

Well, Yesterday I went out and bought a light hood for the planted tank. I must say, it is really nice. I got a Coralife Deluxe Series Double Linear Strip 6700k 65 watt light fixture plus legs so I can set it above the tank like how I prefer to run my planted tanks. I must say this thing is bright. In the photo at left, you can see how bright it really is. It has 2 plugs so I can run both lamps independantly if I wanted to plug them each into their own timer.

My plants LOVE having so much light. If you look closely, you can see a string of little oxygen bubbles rising up off one of the leaves. This formed about 20 minutes after I had turned on both lamps. After an hour or so, and a refill and shake of my CO₂ bottles, I now have at least a dozen leaves giving off streams of oxygen bubbles. The plants seem to leave streams of bubbles where there is damage to a leaf, a hole or a tear or something like that. A lot of the other leaves are forming little bubbles on the underside of the leaves. It doesn't look near as impressive, but it is still really cool.

I was worried that the fish where going to be really shy with the lights being so bright. But it doesn't seem to be bothering them. A little food, and they are back to their normal, nippy, playful selves. My Pleco is even out right now "sunning" as I type this.

 

Here is an ok shot of my TV tank. The photo doesn't really do it justice, it is so busy in the photo you can't hardly see any fish. You don't see any of the baby guppies. On the plus side, you don't see all the algae spots on the inside face of the tank either.
Most people never see their Coolie Loaches. I see mine regularly, just never with them free swimming. They are always tucked away in the little rock pile I made for them in the front left corner of the tank - I see their tails more often then there heads. Here you can see him poking his head out.
You can see both my tanks here. Notice the bottom tank is darker then the top tank. This shouldn't be. My poor plants probably think that the Sun-Gods have forsaken them, and left them in eternal dusk and gloom. Hopefull I will be replacing my cheap $10 wallmart strip lights with a real light hood with decent power to it. To replace the currently burnt out bulb and the 2 lights that I never bought when I moved to Florida will cost $30, add to that the remaining light is about to die, it won't cost that much money to buy a good light hood that will shed enough light to make my plants happy again. Place your orders now for some MONSTOR Amazon Sword plants! LOL 

5 week Aquarium update

I was looking at my blog today as I was moving it to it's new home and noticed how small my angel fish looked in the photos. If you compare the photo to the left to the one I took five weeks ago, you will notice how much more full the plants are - really noticable are the ones in back.
It is really difficult to take a good photo of fish - especially when most of your lights are burnt out on the tank. I am down to 1 florescent light that is over a year old. I can't imagine how well my plants would have grown if I had some decent light for them. Nemo here seems to be growing his little fealer fin thing back, it is about 2 times as long as when I got the fish. What is that thing called? I don't remember.
I really think that live plants really add a lot to the tank. Now if I could only keep the front of the tank clean.... This is a great picture of the best looking of my 3 angels. I love the rich green background color in this photo. The flash realy fell off quickly to leave the background that dark, I guess that big mirrory Angel Fish right in the middle probably really confused the camera.