Freshwater Angelfire & Babies

Question
Okay, first to answer your above questions, my tank is a 55 gallon set up for over a year. I have 5 angels in there, nothing else. 2 double rear filters. No clue about the ph annonia and nitrate, but that won't be part of the answer. I change about once-twice a month about half the water each time.

Okay, 2 of my five have paired off. the others are still little. The pair had a litter/flock, whatever you call a bunch of eggs on the tube of one of the filters. I have a 5 gallon eclips tank that I took out the filter and put in a sponge filter on low. The eggs hatched to about 50 babies. Long story short, I have about 5 left and these seem to be doing okay. I change the water in the tank once a day siphoning out the bottom with a air tube. I change about 25% each time and feed either live or frozen baby brine shrimp 3xs a day.  I got a brine shrimp hatchery that's always going.

Now the questions I have is first why did so many die? We've got well water that's pretty well on the mid range mark as far as ph and all the adult angels are fine with it and that's what they were hatched into.

Second question, my mommy and daddy angels have just laid a second batch this time on the heater. I didn't catch it till tonight, but they've been there long enough for the babies to hatch and mommy ate all the dead eggs and cleaned it off. Once the babies are free swimming, can I move them into the same tank with the other babies? The other babies hatched on 7/17 so not that old yet.

any ideas? I'm freaking out here...lol I'd love to start raising them for real, but am scared a bit because this is the first.

Oh and I've got a 55 out in the garage and a 75 out there as well all ready to be set up to house older babies.  And believe me, none of this was planned, just happened...lol
Thank you!

Answer
Hi Sarah;

The babies that died may have had deformities, organ failure or infections that you simply couldn't see. It happens. The 5 gallon is pretty small too and there may have been an ammonia rise in there. Monitor it next time so you know that extra water changes are in order if that happens. Your maintenance practices are very good so it may not even have been that at all. I'm leaning towards deformities in your case. It is especially more common in parent fish that happen to be brother and sister. If your stock came from the same tank at the fish store it is very possible they were all from the same parents. No way to tell because they can still be very different in color and shape from the same batch. Siblings share the same genes so good and bad genes are passed on to the next generation, 'times two' in sibling offspring.

Cichlids are excellent parents and will protect their young so it is best to just leave the fry with their parents until they are older and past free-swimming stage or until the parents have another batch of eggs and they want the older fry to "move on". It's easy to panic when you see the parents take the babies in their mouth but that's how they move them around to 'safe zones' and feeding areas. As you know, they will also eat the "dead" eggs and babies to avoid infecting the rest. It's actually pretty cool.

Keep in mind that larger fry will eat the food faster and may bully the younger smaller ones. Only mix if they are very close in size. You can add dividers to your bigger tanks so you can keep different sized fry in the same tank.

Another issue; Do you have future homes for all these guys? You may be able to sell them to your local fish store but not all stores will do that. Check with yours to make sure you aren't going to be stuck with hundreds of fish you can't cope with. Yikes!

Have fun!

At Your Service;
Chris Robbins