angel fish breeding advice needed

hi members of tasa, i need some input from people with angel fish breeding know how, ok so 6 months ago i was lucky to have a pair of platinums pair up, i had one spawn of about 50 fry " wich they all about 5cm now. so on second spawn the female died for some or other reason, i think it was cause of thr deworming medicine i put in as she had nematodes since i got them. anyhow i got the male another girlfriend and they did second spawn but eggs go white, with about 10 wrigglers but they seem to eat that as well. i have now put a piece of driftwood in just to bring down the gh, tap water is as follow tds 85, gh is at 6, ph is at 6.2, nitrite is at 0 and nitrate is obviously highish cause no plants in tank so only way i can lower that is by water changing, so my question is what must i look out for in the water that can make the eggs mostly go white? maybe the small persentage of chlorine in water making the eggs hard when the eggs absorb the water? or other stuff maybe? thanks in advance guys.

 

When eggs change colour to white after a day it is most likely that the water is too hard for the sperm to fertilize the eggs in time. The softer the water the longer the male has to do his job. Use RO to bring the tds down to 60ppm and see if that helps, the outer egg membrane will take longer to go hard. You have to always dechlor though.

 

thank you boelderbeestie, i think i need to set up a water pre prep tank, drop in some driftwood and a big airstone, then fill it 60 ro and 40% tap watet and add some quality anti chlor then, run it for 3 days before water change? what you think of that? thanks for your input boelderbeestie

 

That's an excellent idea.

 

thanks boelderbeestie, someone did pm me with pretty much the same advice as you gave, on a overseas forum, but they mentioned the prepping the water a bit beforehand with the drifwood, so just thought ill ask if you aprove of it or not, so thanks

 

I thought you where already prepping water. Instead of driftwood you can use catappa leaves, it has a bit more kick and with anti bacterial properties.

 

ok how many of them leaves per 100 ltr do you reccomend boelderbeestie?

 

Start with one and monitor what it does. With a low kh it doesn't take much to pull the pH down. Just monitor the pull with your test kit so that you know where you stand with it. With what did you test your gh with? When I do the math you tds and gh doesn't add up. I get a TDS of 105ppm with gh alone as you didn't include kh.

 

its with them sera test strips, suppose they not the best tools in the tool box lol

 

Liquid tests tend to be much more accurate than the strips. Well worth a buy

 

thanks @Hendre , ok so what all tests i need for angelbreeding you think? obvious ph, tds pen and gh test as well as nitrite and nitrate but cant think of any other, kh maybe? or anything else? thanks guys so far for your input, you to @BoelderBeestie

 

gH and kH are nice to have. TDS pen is important too, I purchased an API master kit but you have to get it in from overseas... Nitrogen tests are useful but not necessarily critical

 

Kh, ph, tds, no2 and no3. Your kh must be known, this will determine what your buffering, you'll need an expensive probe to test ph in soft water accurately unfortunately. I don't test gh often, I work with tds and when you know the kh you can work out the gh with the tds reading, one degree of kh or gh is 17.8ppm. No2 you'll test for when anything goes wrong to make sure your filters are cycled, it must be 0 always. No3 to see how "dirty" the water is, you want it as low as you can keep it but below 10ppm.

They are needed when working with fry. No2 for when you have weird deaths to make sure it's not your filter and no3 to see how polluted the water is.

 

Yes, I'm going to try there's next. The Sera ones is hard to read as the colour changes to slightly.

 

API kits work the same way. The moment you hit the threshold it changes colour

 

thanks very much guys, i just learned some here, im happy i joined here, seems like theres some knowledgeable folks on here, i apreciate everyones input and time taken to guide and teach me.