Spawn of the Juvies

I have 7 juvenile half-wild silver angels in the 125 Buddha tank, along with 8 Denison's barbs, an orphaned black neon juvenile and 3 Otocinclus. I have plans in the future to sell the angels and stock with clown loaches, but in the meantime I want to grow out the angels a bit. The orphan black neon came from a Rena Filstar filter I was cleaning out on the deck, and I found it in the canister. The Buddha tank was the closest so I popped it in there. It is still pretty small so I suspect it was from a spawning in the 150 and the fry got sucked into the filter where it hung out for a while. Remarkable!

Over Thanksgiving my husband had a hunting accident, requiring hospitalization and a series of surgeries, and when we finally got home from the hospital I was on the phone with the surgeon when I happened to notice eggs on the valisneria leaves! I almost dropped the phone. "Sorry, Doc, I gotta go - my angels are spawning!"  No, I actually did finish the important conversation (husband doing fine now, by the way) and after hanging up I saw that two leaves were covered in eggs, and the pair were fanning and in the process of laying and fertilizing more. They were chasing off the other angels who approached, but nothing too nasty.

I was surprised, since these fish are only 3" from nose to tail, and have a bit of growing up to do, but I suppose it isn't too unusual. I guess they're happy!

In the video you can see they don't pay much attention to the barbs, but focus on the other angels. They did a pretty good job and kept the eggs going for about 4 days (not sure how long the eggs were present before I noticed them - I was in a hospital with my husband in Harrisonburg for 3 days) before they finally disappeared. I'm sure they'll have several more spawns before they actually get it right. It reminds me of the "Pregnant at 16" TV show - the babies are trying to make babies, lol.