Angel "Goes All Papa Bear" on Me

I am not actively trying to breed my fish right now but I had to move this breeding pair out of my 150 as something of an emergency when I suddenly had a huge fight between this pair and another newly formed pair who were trying to move in on them. I have had angels kill each other in this situation and I had a nearly empty 29 sitting there, so I moved this well established pair into it right away - problem solved. They've been laying eggs forever but in a community tank never had a chance to hatch them out.

I've seen them picking at leaves and doing their thing, but I haven't seen any eggs. Friday afternoon I noticed some brisk activity in the tank and lo and behold, not eggs, but WIGGLERS! They snuck an entire batch of eggs past me (not hard to do) and hatched them out. It was the cutest thing. I haven't had angel babies in at least five years and I was excited, though not eager to deal with babies, with my busy work schedule and summertime family life.

This tank is in a horrible location, by the way, for any breeding pair, and was never meant to be a breeding tank at all, but a planted display, with blissfully ignorant and tolerant tetras or wee goldfish, or something like that. It is in a busy hallway at one end of my kitchen, on the bottom rack of a stand where Otis the F8 puffer resides above. Lots of nearby human and canine foot traffic and activity + close to the floor location = Crummy Breeding Tank.

I was having a party Friday night, and could not resist showing the kids and my other guests the wigglers. Well, gee, where are they? Oh, sorry, folks! Sometimes the parents get panicked and will actually eat their eggs or babies when they feel threatened, and everybody crouching in to take a look has stressed the tank too much. Oh well, nothin' to see here. I felt a little bad about it, but, as I said, I never meant to breed, and next time I'll just call one of my angel breeding friends at the first sign and they'll come by and snag them to raise.

Saturday afternoon I go to feed them and, what do I see? WIGGLERS! The parents had moved them to a more secure location for our party, then moved them BACK to the original leaf when the house calmed down. I should have realized this, because I saw my breeding pair move their brood years ago, but I had forgotten how they can be. It is just adorable.

Somebody needs to come by and get these babies! I know angels are not in short supply by any means, and getting your pair to STOP breeding is harder than getting them to START, but someone may want some wild/zebra DNA in their breeding program, since there are fewer wild strains available than domestic.

Here's Papa trying to run me off

And here's Papa thinking about moving the babies again, lol