Manacaperu cross wild caught Suriname angelfish

     Now my wild angelfish project has been going for a number of years. I've kept f1 peru altum and spawned them a number of times without any probs back when I had 3 garden sheds (3mx3m) in my parents back yard crammed with 100 4ft tanks bought (for $10 ea) from an aquarium import business in Brisbane, that I worked in at the time when they updated they're quarantine room. They were perfect specimens of the peru body shape not the randoms that are sold as Peruvian these days. One day I'll get around to taking a still shots taken from the hi-8 tapes from those days of what I was up to back then.
     Now I managed to score some Tony Tan f1 manacaperu angels and some f1 altums from Finvision. Unfortunately they are all dead due to various equipment failures (water pump and the backup for filter and heater overheating). I didn't have the money at the time to replace the water pumps. It's what you get when you use cheap crap equipment on a tight budget. I was devastated....lowest point in my fish keeping. Just felt like giving up then.

altums and manacaperu in my outdoor tanks

 manaca showing nice green shading

 some of the manacas

altums eating flruit flies 

I had some wild Surinames from few years before I got the altums which I gave up breeding as they weren't producing fertile batches and gave up on them. Turns out after some researching it can take a few years for wilds to mature (thought that was only altums as I had no probs breeding the peru's once they were adult size). At this point when I got the altums and manacas I had 1 Suriname left, female. being all in the same tank, she paired off with the half moon shaped manaca you see above. At the time I wasn't really ok with that as I wanted pure breed offspring but I thought might as well see what happens. Below you will see the results. Lost most of the offspring due to the heater malfunction mentioned above too.

female Suriname

Another Suriname I had. they have a nice blue tone. I hope to get these again one day.

 sideways pics of Manac and Suriname spawning

resultant spawn. These guys had bent anal fins prob due to bad water at one stage, so I cut them back as seen on some here in pic. Fins grew back to normal shape!!

 

new stand built and second hand $50 6ft tank I repaired and painted

Manac x Suriname all grown up 3.5years old now but produce infertile eggs. you can see some red showing between dorsal and tail. turned out nice I recon.

 spawning pair of crosses. Wasn't expecting this.

 Took the eggs out from community tank only to find that the peps spawned. Just got the male to go with the 2 females I have few days ago....

I have wrigglers

There's one free swimming up at the side. The others are at the back where you can't see them.

 Only have a few left. Killifish outcompeted the angel fry. About 10 left but that's fine and they're doing well. Not a very good pic below with phone but....getting some phone lenses soon so hoping for better pics soon

They've spawned again so that's good. Was expecting them to spawn in say another month but was ready for them this time. Have another tank ready for free swimming and made time to remove dead eggs etc.

8-2-16

Sorry for the bad pic but here's the best I can at moment with my phone. An update on this spawn. Personally, I'm loving the hight of those fins but as we all know things change as they grow.