As you all may know, I've been trying to raise the first spawn from my pair of silver angels (there are 11 of them now) and they have been moved to the 33gal since 2 days ago. I now have another batch of wrigglers in the 5.5 gal about to be free swimming by friday (will be much bigger group now that the eggs have mostly been fertilized unlike last time!)
But here comes the problem, maybe it is because of the small sample size (the 3 that died 2 days ago were in perfect shape)... more than half of the first batch seemed to have some sort of deformity (2 have stubs for their feelers, about 4-5 with lop sided or really bent feelers... with less than half of them having symmetrical fins (and quite a few of them seem to be super veil and have curved dorsal and angel fin which is not my preference but isn't too bad.
I will observe the second batch to see what the ratio of deformed vs normal offsprings are like before I decide if I should even save any future batches of eggs (don't know if it is bad genetics from the parents or maybe it was just bad luck with the first spawn and the small sample size of the first batch)
But here lies a problem, how much more time should I give the fries to try and see if they are just late developers? And after which time would be a good time to cull them. They are now too big to be fed to the adult angels humanely, but the next best thing I can do would be to freeze them... although it is a horrible feeling to cull them after raising them from eggs (best case scenario would be if I can find someone to adopt them)... any pointers for what I should do and when I should start doing it? The first batch are getting close to their forth week free swimming.
Everyone's input would be much appreciated
But here comes the problem, maybe it is because of the small sample size (the 3 that died 2 days ago were in perfect shape)... more than half of the first batch seemed to have some sort of deformity (2 have stubs for their feelers, about 4-5 with lop sided or really bent feelers... with less than half of them having symmetrical fins (and quite a few of them seem to be super veil and have curved dorsal and angel fin which is not my preference but isn't too bad.
I will observe the second batch to see what the ratio of deformed vs normal offsprings are like before I decide if I should even save any future batches of eggs (don't know if it is bad genetics from the parents or maybe it was just bad luck with the first spawn and the small sample size of the first batch)
But here lies a problem, how much more time should I give the fries to try and see if they are just late developers? And after which time would be a good time to cull them. They are now too big to be fed to the adult angels humanely, but the next best thing I can do would be to freeze them... although it is a horrible feeling to cull them after raising them from eggs (best case scenario would be if I can find someone to adopt them)... any pointers for what I should do and when I should start doing it? The first batch are getting close to their forth week free swimming.
Everyone's input would be much appreciated