I just bought two angelfish...how do i keep them alive?

Question

Ok I just set got two new angels... After the purchase the pet store told me they are hard to keep alive. Any information on acceptable enviroment for these fish. My tank is 125 gallons. I have 2 Bala Sharks, 2 Gaurmis (1 blue and 1 green) 3 silver dollars. I any suggestios???

Answer 1

The pet store people may have told you that because all of their angels have been dying. If they are still alive, take them back to the store and get a refund. The mix of fish you have in there already is not a good one for angelfish. If the gouramis do not harrass them to death, the stress of the fast moving fish will cause them health problems as their immune systems deteriorate due to the constant stress.

Angels like slow moving tankmates and lots of tall plants to hide in. The balas and silver dollars will stress the angels by just swimming around at their normal speed which is much faster than the angels swim.

If you decide to keep them anyway, don't worry about the pH of the water for the angels. Trying to continually adjust the pH to a lower number is a waste of time because most angels you get at a pet store are not wild caught. Wild caught angels would be extremely pricey and those would be the ones that need the much lower pH.

Any angel bred and raised in the US is typically raised in water that is much higher in pH than the water in the Amazon. They would easily adapt to water that is in the range of 6.8 to 7.8 if done very slowly over the course of a couple of days.

It would be good to know what the pH of the pet store's water is so you can acclimate them properly and not just dump them into your tank. If you have already dumped them in, call the pet store and ask what the pH is in their tanks. Then check yours and that will give you a good idea on what you need to do to keep them alive or take them back while they are still alive.

Email me if you have more questions. I keep angels in water that comes out of my tap at 7.4 pH. I currently have 8 in the tank and two of them spawn about once every 6 weeks. So, I guess they are OK with the water conditions. I do partial water changes about every week to 10 days on that tank. It is not crowded.

Good luck.

Answer 2

Angels can be touchy, but there are a few things you can do to keep them happy. First, the gouramis might have to go. They are notorious for beating up on slower, more docile fish, and won't do well in the kind of conditions angels need. In a 125 gallon tank, they should be okay until they reach sexual maturity. Keep a very close eye on them, and if they seem to be tormenting the angels, find them a new home. Angelfish are a blackwater fish from the Amazon area. This means they like soft, acidic water. You can buy wonderful stuff called "Blackwater Extract" to help bring the pH down to about 6 or 6.5 (slowly!), and adding some peat moss to your filter also helps. Give them lots of hiding places, and keep them about 80 degrees F. Your bala sharks will get close to a foot long, and can be quite nasty if they aren't in a school - think about adding at least four more to keep them happy. Silver dollars are also quite large, but only semi-aggressive. Neither fish is blackwater, but should do fine if you keep the pH about 6.5. I recommend converting to a blackwater biotope, which recreates the natural conditions of angels and many other South American cichlids, some plecos, almost all tetras, most corydoras, and hatchetfish. There is a lot of good information on the web about biotopes. Remember that many angels are seriously inbred in the hobby, and they will be weaker than a healthy wild strain.