Bellus angelfish breeding project

chad vossen · Sep 27, 2017

revhtree said:
This is totally amazing! Are these from the eggs you separated recently in an earlier post?

It's from a new spawn collected last night. This past week has had poor results with egg collection, but last night we hit the jackpot with a huge spawn, so we'll add them to the tub with the older larvae.

Greybeard · Sep 27, 2017

Awesome.

Great selection... a beautiful, reef safe angel, somewhat popular, and fairly expensive, for wild captured specimens.

I've plan to add a pair of either Bellus or Lamarck's angels to my tank. Love those Genicanthus angels.

DeniseAndy · Sep 27, 2017

This is amazing to follow. Thanks!

maroun.c · Sep 27, 2017

Amazing thanks for sharing.

chad vossen · Oct 3, 2017

Everyone's already seen the angels at day 7, so we'll wait till the weekend to start sharing larvae pics again. Instead, I wanted to share video of their food!

We harvest copepod eggs and nauplii from our parvocalanus cultures to feed the larvae. This is one of the best first feeds for angelfish and other tiny fish larvae.

chad vossen · Oct 4, 2017

Most of the bellus were hanging out together, which made a great video.

cincyfishguy · Oct 5, 2017

This is so cool! How big is your main tank the adult bellus are spawning in? Any chance we could get a wider view of your setup?

I'm going to be following along and hopefully I'll be able to buy one to help fund the breeding!

chad vossen · Oct 5, 2017

The breeding tank is 150 gallons. This pair uses every bit of it too!

The bellus larvae are doing great still. We've lost maybe 10% or so, tough to say for sure. Having a hard time keeping them fed while working full time. Fortunately they are at the size to feed on larger prey items, so introducing rotifers tonight.

chad vossen · Oct 17, 2017

We've got a small update for everyone. Our numbers have been falling, but the few angels left are growing. I'm already planning the next batch, and how we'll do things differently.

cincyfishguy · Oct 17, 2017

Do you know what the standard loss percentages are for a batch of fry? Is there even a standard? I'll be following along to see what you change about your processes.

What's your background in fish rearing? And what made you decide to try the bellus?

chad vossen · Oct 17, 2017

We've bred fish as a hobby for many years now, and consulted with other experts in the industry to further our understanding of what the fish need to grow. We've gotten to day 77 on the joculator angels, and I'm confident we can succeed with the bellus angels too. We've been preparing to rear angels now for over 2 years, and finally have a regular supply of eggs from a few of our pairs. Our focus is with paracentropyge, however Quality Marine send us the Bellus pair to work on as well. The large number of eggs from the bellus really makes things easier for us to experiment with, so we're working with them first for now.
Typical success rates for raising angelfish is around 1-3%. The flame angels we bring in start as a few thousand eggs, and in the end they raise about 50 angels per batch.

chad vossen · Oct 18, 2017

Here's an updated picture under the scope. We can clearly see the spinal cord in the tail is still straight, so they have not started flexion yet. This gives us an idea where they are in development.

chad vossen · Oct 24, 2017

We are now at day 28, and have about 20 angels that are past flexion. You can see the tip of the spine curves up in the tail, marking an important developmental stage of the larvae. I'm confident we'll get probably a dozen angels to settlement in this batch. I want to start a new batch already, but all of the larval tanks are filled for the next 30 days.

cincyfishguy · Oct 24, 2017

So how big is that larvea in the picture? Can you see the fish shape by eye? Makes ya wonder how anything makes it in the ocean. 30 days seems like forever to no get eaten by something bigger.