Electricity and angels

Question
Hi ,
Sorry i couldnt mail you because iwas planning to breed my Flower Horn Male with a flower hoen female that Anand owned. We had both of them in my 75 gallon tank with a separator net in between. The process was far simpler than i feared it to be. The eggs were fertilized by the male after a week. But he almost tore the separator once the fry hatched. So i had to shift the female and the fry to another empty tank which was pretty stressful.

But otherwise the process went fine. Yesterday, when i saw some left over food in the bottom of the tank, i put my hand in to take the food material when i felt an electric shock and i was thrown of my feet. Right now i have got a sprain in my leg and both my hands pain a lot. Still this is very vital. Nothing seems to be happening to my flower horn. I believe there is some short-circuiting between the hood light and the water.  But i am not able to locate it.

Where do you suppose the problem lies? Whenever i switch on the hood-light, the flower horn gets near a piece of driftwood and stops there. Yet when i raise my hand in feeding position, he swims up.  I took my electricity tester and inserted it into the water and the tester flared up indicating the presence of electricity. Since then i have removed the hood and the filter alone is running.  Please help me with this problem!

My friend wanted me to ask you this question as he doesnt have internet connection at the moment.He had 4 angels (nearly adult) and recently he got a black angel which i found out had stunted growth. The black one seems to dominate all the other angels. The tank is about 25 gallons. What can he do? There are some hiding places with a lot of vallisneria.

Hope you are fine
.....Srinivas
(will let you know about my flower horn breeding in detail once my hands are fine)

Answer
Hi Srinivas, don't worry about getting back to me in time.
It's OK!
~ I am glad to hear about your Flowerhorn Breeding!
That is quite an accomplishement!!!! Cheers to you!

However I'm sorry to hear about what happended to you!!!!!
That is really scary. I do hope you are really OK. Take a rest from now. I would completely throw away that hood. Some must have gone wrong with the circuiting. Aquarium hoods should not do this at all. Make sure you always use a protective glass cover and keep the water level low enough to completely clear the aquarium hood. I am in no way a electricity technician so you be best contacting a professional if you can. Take that hood off! It's probably defective and especially since you got shocked it's better safe than sorry. Get a new one. And use your electricity tester before you ever stick your hand into the tank again. It doesn't sound like your flowerhorn is affected badly by the presence of electricity. The sudden lights most like just surprise him for a while. When I turn on my lights for the first time early in the morning my fish often act strange and usually hide or sit on the bottom until they fully awake. I do believe fish go into a somewhat deep state of sleep eventually.

Now for your friend's question... Hmm.. I currently have the same problem with my angelfish. There has suddenly become a "Queen" member in my established group that has decided to even turn on her mate and the rest of the angels. Usually though, it's the ruling male who can get aggressive. Breeding pairs also get very aggressive. But it's easy to forget Angelfish are still cichlids and a group always has a pecking order. The newer Angel may be establishing his ranks among the group. The best thing for him to do is watch his angels closely and he may have to remove the aggressive fish if he makes the others very miserable. Lastly, a 25 gallon is a little small for 5 angelfish and it might be better for the group to have a larger aquarium. A 55 gallon would be great. But the new angel may be just establishing his rank along the group.

I have been doing just fine by the way, thank you for asking!
I do hope you are great as well!

Best wishes and Happy fishkeeping!
Karen~