cycle

Question
Hi,
We are just starting to breed FW Angels, we have tons of fry and they must be transplanted to a new tank.
We set up a few ten gallons for the first stage after the fry are 2weeks old. We vac out the bottoms of our tanks to remove waste and excess food, we have bare bottom tanks with two med size sponge filters and a few Amazon sword plants floating. Question: When we vac bottom of tank and replace about 5-10% water daily will this trigger a mini cycle?
Thanks in advance,
John

Answer
Hi John,

Changing water every day is highly recommended in fry tanks. As long as you don't disturb the sponge filters - which is where 99% of your beneficial bacteria are housed - you will be just fine.

When I raised cichlid fry, I did 20% water changes daily and that seemed perfect. I too, used a 10 gallon tank so I had a 2 gallon pail that I left sitting out overnight with a few drops of dechlorinator. I keep my tanks at 77 degrees which for me (in Florida) is about room temperature. You can keep the water in the bucket heated with a heater, if room temperature for you is much cooler than what you keep your tanks at. You can also just add some hot water and stir well.

As far as water changes go, as long as you do frequent ones, you ought to be just fine. I let the water sit out because I feel like it "settles" it. As long as it is close in temperature and chemistry (pH, alkalinity, hardness) then there is nothing to worry about.

The fry are probably old enough by now to eat frozen baby brine shrimp and daphnia. I recommend Hikari brand frozen foods, since they are fortified with multi-vitamins - try including that in the diet if you haven't already. If you are offering crushed flake, I find dipping the flakes in vitamins helps. VitaChem is one product I used daily when I was raising fry. I have read that liquid baby vitamins works fairly well as a substitute for VitaChem, so that's another option.

I'm a big believer in New Life Spectrum pellets, so as soon as my fry were old enough I ground up some NLS, put it in a wide mouthed shot glass, and slowly made it sink to the bottom sideways, where the baby fish went in and out, constantly nibbling at it! It's a very "neat" food and it has all of the vitamins your fish need, there's no need to even supplement it with VitaChem because it is nutritionally complete. I have heard that some fry will eat crushed Cyclop-eeze, and if you can get them to eat that, it is supposed to be an even better food than baby brine shrimp, however I don't know much beyond that.

Since you say you're fairly new to all this, I'll include some links:
http://www.cichlid-forum.com/articles/pterophyllum_scalare.php
http://cichlidae.com/tank.php?id=352

All of the sites below were created by dedicated hobbyists:
http://websvirginia.com/angels/
http://members.aol.com/angelbook/
http://www.geocities.com/fgrainer/rasisingangelfish.html

I hope that you find that information helpful. Best of luck to you, breeding fish is awfully exciting! Just make sure you have a plan for them all...don't be a sucker like me, and keep every single one!

Have a nice weekend,
Nicole