o2manyfish -- When Angels Get Frisky - Goldflakes Getting Their Groove On

[o2manyfish]

Hey Folks,

I have always been a fan of Goldflake Angels, and they have been a constant member of my reef tank for 15+ years now. Several years back I stepped it up and started keeping them in pairs.

This pair I got as juveniles in Oct 2016. At the time I bought 4 - all with imperfect spot patterns. I eventually moved a pair inside and left a pair in the frag tank. After the power failure wipe out in July of 2017 I moved the surviving pair into the house. One of them got bigger and went towards the bright yellow coloring and one went to the richer deeper golden.

These 2 have been perfect reef fish and caused no problems or damage.

In Sept of 2018 while watching the webcam late at night I caught them spawning. I emailed around and am not aware of anyone else having had Goldflakes Spawn. Let alone in a crowded tank with 120 other fish watching them.

This evening I was grinding away with the magfloat to try to get rid of some of the coraline. I stirred up a bunch of crap on the bottom. And then when sitting back on the couch, the Goldflakes come out and start getting frisky.

Normally they are pretty independent, but you can see in the video that they are definitely getting ready for lights out tonight.

Sorry for the crappy cellphone shot into a cloudy tank...


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Dave B

 

[untico]

Congrats and thanks for sharing


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Joe Kelley]

Awesome Dave, so glad you took this video and posted. Joe

 

[solitude127]

that's awesome. I recently added one to my reef and thankfully he/she has been pretty good about not eating corals.

 

[fish_fanatik]

Love it! They must be happy in their environment to spawn.

You do have a lot of fish ( I’m sure there is a thread somewhere that talks about bioload management, I’ll search for it)

Thanks for sharing

Julie

 

[acesq]

Awesome!

 

[dodgerblew]

It’s a nice day for a white wedding

Love it

 

[m0nkie]

very nice. is there a way to determine male/female? or am I safe buying a tiny baby one to match my 3" Goldflake?

 

[d-man]

Nice Dave.

Tony, typically they don’t start sexing until they are a bit larger. The big one may fight the smaller one for a lil bit but your tank is large enough it’ll probably be fine. Or get a larger one.

 

[wishntoboutside]

very nice thanks for sharing

 

[o2manyfish]

Tony,

My experience with Goldflakes is that they are really easy going. I don't think I have ever seen them fight or be attacked by anyone. At one point I had 6 juveniles in the outdoor frag tank.

Unfortunately a few years ago there was nasty storm that killed 6 or more divers in the Marshall Islands. The divers were all part of the fish collection industry (everything legal). After the tragedy the govt closed the collection for awhile (not sure how they did it). But between the loss of the divers, and the subsequent closure the 'Fish Collectors' in the region took a horrible hit.

Since July of 2017 when we lost a pair to the power outage and moved this pair inside I have been unable to find any decent juveniles. The number of Goldflakes to come thru LAX in the past 18 months is really a handful. And almost all of them are very large adults.

Normally nice 2" juvies show up around Sept October. In October this year I only saw 1 juvie come in, and the fish was in such horrible (and infected) shape there was no way I would bring it home.

While these fish are pricey, the good news is where they are collected and how they are collected is top notch. These fish come in to the US and are ready to become aquarium fish.

Dave B

 

[d-man]

My buddy in Hawaii imports directly from marshall and Xmas. I can get 2” fellas quite easily.