Angelfish pairing

Question
I currently own two angelfish, one gold male and one black veil female.  The male is full-grown and I have had him going on two years.  Recently his mate, whom had health issues the entire time I had her, died.  Prior to her getting sick they spawned together numerous times.  The male has been alone for about a month or two, so I purchased a female replacement, hoping they would pair.  While the female is by no means small, she is still about half the size of the male.  Thus far the male has been pretty aggressive towards her.  I should note that the now-deceased female was purchased prior to the male and was always the aggressor to other tankmates.  Thinking the male would be more docile, I bought the new female, but alas it is not so.  I have the new female for 2 days, and she is showing some marks from attacks (damaged scales on her side and ruffled fins).  It seems that the attacks have lessened as long as she remains in a certain spot in the tank that he guards.  Once she moves for food or otherwise he gets very upset and chases her around the tank.  She seems less stressed than when I first got her, but he definitely isn't making it easy.  Is it reasonable to expect that he will lessen his attacks or is it pretty much hopeless?  I should also add that the old female was a silver, the tank is a 37 gallon and almost square, and the other tankmates are a royal pleco, an icantremember pleco, two shrimp, and a striped raphael catfish whom hasn't left its rock in 3 years.  Thank you for your help.

Answer
Dear Ian,
I'm sorry to hear of your Angelfish troubles.
I've had my Angels spawn and I've raised the fry many times. I have also experienced the trouble you are going through with trying to pair your lonely male with a new female. I've never had luck with this and unfortunately, like with many cichlids, artificial pairing can be difficult, but sometimes if you allow the pair to live together for several weeks they may eventually spawn, but if you see your female obviously stressed to the point of hiding and breathing rapidly, this probably won't work out and you be best off to remove her. Angelfish can be hard on their mates, even the ones who pair up naturally... Often a male will become very territorial and won't allow the female into his part of the tank as you are seeing. You will have to decide on if she is too stressed and/or damaged. Once before, I had my large male Angelfish named "King" in a 29gal spawning tank, and I experimented adding a similarly sized silver striped female full with eggs, they spawned but the male did not cooperate and often tried to keep the female from the spawning site while she was still laying eggs! Anyway, this never worked out and the striped female had to be removed. However, when I added a Marble female who "King" had naturally paired up with before in the past they spawned and I got two sucessful batches of fry from them.

Not only that, but I've had female Angels turn on their mates and aggressively attack them and take bites out of their tail, fortunately the angels survive this and can raise sucessful spawns despite the aggression between the pair.

Angelfish are very tricky in their ways and like with many cichlids they can be aggressive and territorial, sometimes you can never know how things are going to turn out. I cann't predict the outcome of this but maybe if you'd tried mixing him with a group of other mature or similarly sized angels, he'd find a female in the group and pair off with her. Who knows, it could likely happen. If, however, you can even find several reasonably large angelfish, and hopefully you'd get a female or two in the bunch.

The only other option is to start all over again with a group of 6-8 young Angelfish and allow them to pair up naturally. This probably isn't the most practical thing for you though. Most common varieties of angelfish can spawn at 6-7 months.

Maybe when your female comes into breeding condition and is ready to lay eggs things will change with the male. Be sure to provide them with plenty of spawning sites, most any flat object propped at a slight slant against the glass or something else supportive works and sometimes tempts pairs to spawn. Slate is by fair the most popular with Angels.

Really by most standards, your pair should spawn eventually as long as the female is truly a female of course. Just keep watching them closely, but be sure to intervene if the nipping and chasing becomes too much for the female to handle.

I really hope this works out for you and feel free to let me know how it goes!

Best wishes,
Karen~