My angelfish have become my major focus lately.  Aside from the Philippine blues from AngelMania, I’ve obtained a few golds and gold marbles.  The golds are here in hope of breeding with the blues and (eventually) breeding platinums.  (Platinum angels have 2 gold genes and 2 blue genes, so it’s going to take a couple of generations to get that done!)  The marbles are just attractively marked. ;D

Fortunately for the platinum effort, my first breeding pair is a male gold and a female Philippine blue ghost veil.  (Sexes are best guesses, crowd-sourced on FishLore, lol. Angelfish are notoriously difficult to sex.)  Since they’re going to be staying around, they’re the first of the angelfish to get names: Aurum for the gold, and Selene for the ghost.  They’ve laid eggs twice now, successfully fertilized them, then guarded them fiercely for 2 days before making them disappear.  Those two batches were within the crowded 36 gallon tank, where I think they may have been quite stressed by the other fish. The pair is now isolated in one half of my new 60 gallon tank, so I hope they’ll feel a bit more secure and can hatch their eggs out.  They seem very attentive in caring for the eggs, so I’d like to see them try to raise some babies 🙂

The other half of the 60 gallon will eventually be for another pair of breeders, I hope, so at the moment I’ve got all 5 of my pearlscale fish in there.  (Pearlscale is a mutation of the scales that makes them sort of raised up and therefore super reflective; it’s a recessive trait, and may still not even manifest in a fish with the right genes because of environmental factors.)  There are 4 blues and one juvenile gold I picked up at PetSmart, so I might even be able to get 2 pairs out of that batch if I’m patient 🙂  Certainly, I’d like to see the gold pair off with someone in a few months once it’s old enough.  That would give me two pairs producing potential platinum-parents… if Aurum and Selene manage to raise some kids!

There are still 5 angels in the 36-gallon as well: 3 gold marbles, a blue veil, and a double-dark veil with blue genes.   Come to think of it, I’ve yet to get a good pic of the DD now that it’s an adult — it seems to be a shy fish.  Here’s my favorite of the gold marbles, though:

The sterbai corydoras are now in the 36g as well, hopefully enjoying the sand bottom more than the gravel they were on before. 🙂  They do their little cory dances along the walls and are probably utterly mystifying to the angelfish XD

Next (and last) update: the livebearers!