Retirement and forum shutdown (17 Jan 2022)
Hi,
John Howell who has managed the forum for years is getting on and wishes to retire from the role of managing it.
Over the years, he has managed the forum through good days and bad days and he has always been fair.
He has managed to bring his passion for fish keeping to the forum and keep it going for so long.
I wish to thank John for his hard work in keeping the forum going.
With John wishing to "retire" from the role of managing the forum and the forum receiving very little traffic, I think we must agree that forum has come to a natural conclusion and it's time to put it to rest.
I am proposing that the forum be made read-only from March 2022 onwards and that no new users or content be created. The website is still registered for several more years, so the content will still be accessible but no new topics or replies will be allowed.
If there is interest from the ITFS or other fish keeping clubs, we may redirect traffic to them or to a Facebook group but will not actively manage it.
I'd like to thank everyone over the years who helped with forum, posted a reply, started a new topic, ask a question and helped a newbie in fish keeping. And thank you to the sponsors who helped us along the away. Hopefully it made the hobby stronger.
I'd especially like to thank John Howell and Valerie Rousseau for all of their contributions, without them the forum would have never been has successful.
Thank you
Darragh Sherwin
deformed angelfish fry.(GONE)
- anglecichlid (ciaran hogan)
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Anyone with a aquarium can keep fish,
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I'd feed them to My Monsterfish
drop them into the shop if You want
Des
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- anglecichlid (ciaran hogan)
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Anyone with a aquarium can keep fish,
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- derek (Derek Doyle)
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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.
30 tanks specialise in african cichlids, angelfish and various catfish
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- anglecichlid (ciaran hogan)
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Anyone with a aquarium can keep fish,
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- igmillichip (ian millichip)
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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
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- anglecichlid (ciaran hogan)
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- igmillichip (ian millichip)
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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.
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- anglecichlid (ciaran hogan)
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- igmillichip (ian millichip)
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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
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- derek (Derek Doyle)
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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.
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- derek (Derek Doyle)
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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?
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- anglecichlid (ciaran hogan)
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- igmillichip (ian millichip)
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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
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