new angels!

Sometimes if you wait long enough, things just come your way.

I have five new angelfish. I've wanted for a long time now to have a companion for Miss Beautiful, but it's hard to find adults that I know are female- stores sell them when little and unsexed. Friend in the fish club connected me with somebody who's moving and had to re-home all his angelfish. He had three generations in some very large planted tanks- it was so beautiful. Most were veils; I brought home five of the standard fin types. Even though I'm not particularly partial to golden angels or koi, I saw how handsome his adult golden angelfish were and gladly brought the younger ones home. 

With promises that if any pair off and I have to remove the males, I''ll find them good homes. Which is maybe already happening- but I'm getting ahead of myself. It was a long ride home for them in a bucket and then for the first time I did drip acclimation- as they came from a walstad style tank with RO water-

I let the drip run for half an hour while keeping a close eye on them, then siphoned some waste out of the bottom of their bucket and ran the drip another half hour while I caught Miss Beautiful, put her in a separate bucket, and rearranged all the tank decor.

I turned my A/C down so the room warmed up to 75° and hoped that would slow heat loss from the buckets enough, but it didn't- and I probably took too long getting the tank ready. I think they got a bit chilled in there- several of the new angels have cloudy eye now, and Miss Beautiful looked rough when I put her back in the tank- fin edges dark, a tear in her caudal, cloudy eye, redness at the pectoral joints. I could have cried. Should have put a small heater in her bucket, and been more gentle with the handling. Well, I tried. Doing extra wc this week to help them.

Hoping to alleviate aggression, I netted the new angels into the tank first, then released Miss Beautiful.

She hasn't bothered them at all. It's the other way around. (I switched the light off after checking to make sure none were in shock from the different water conditions- took these photos first though.)

Most of them stayed in one corner for a while, then started venturing around the tank- and I watched them for a long time in the dimness. 

Two of the koi angels started acting like a pair- swimming alongside each other, with turns of the head to gently mouth the other. One (probably female) mouthing plants as if testing or cleaning them, the other (probably male) threatening everybody else- even asserting himself against Miss Beautiful though she's larger. These new ones are two years old. Their gold color looks so attractive among the green vallisneria. 

Of course, I still have my two festivums in the QT tank! So here's my plan for the rest of the week: test the tank for ammonia spikes, do small partial wc daily as needed. Treat the festivums in QT with General Cure (it's supposed to arrive today). End of week, move the festivums into the 55, reloacate the QT so I can fill it to the total 20g, and move out any confirmed male angelfish (if the presumed pair spawns by then I think I'll know) . . . 

The prior owner also gave me two baby sword plants. I promptly (but gently) uprooted all the corkscrew vals from a planter basket, tucked them in a gap between hardscape, and planted the swords. Think I'm going to phase out all the corkscrew vals and hope to get more crypts and aponogetons in here instead.