Angelfish Fry Eating Plants

Hello everyone, I've not posted here in a while, I have a pair of breeding angelfish, the first lot of fry died, the second are doing well, they are not free swimming as yet, but they are eating the plant leaf that they have been put on by the parents, is this ok, and normal? I have never kept angelfish before, and the breeding pair now have their own tank, I have a fry tank ready for the fry when they are bigger, I just have never seen this before and wanted to check if you guys think it's ok/normal or should I remove them now?

Are they eating the actual leaf - are there holes on the leaf like you get when a garden plant is attacked by caterpillars? A lot of tiny fish, including fry, feed off micro-organisms which live on surfaces in the tank. If the parents have put the fry on the leaf, that's where they'll look first for their food. But if they are eating the actual leaf there is not much you can do about it.



It is better to keep the fry with the parents as long as possible. They can be kept together until the parents show signs of wanting to spawn again. At this point, they'll see their offspring as a threat to the new eggs and may well eat them.
Cichlids that have been left with the parents usually become better parents themselves. Commercial breeders remove the eggs straight away, or very soon after hatching which is thought to be why so many people have problems with their fish eating the first few batches of eggs - the fish have to learn not to do it.

Thanks lovely people, we have got up this morning and the fry are all now free swimming, the parents are doing a good job so far, being very attentive, they are much more relaxed now that we have removed them from the community tank that they were in before, so hopefully these fry will be raised successfully. I will see if I can get a decent pic of them and post it on this thread some time in the next couple of days   

All the fry were inside the filter? I wonder how they got there, or more to the point, how the parents let them get in there 

The 620T is an Aqua One tank, an Aqua Style to be precise. The filter is a trickle filter. I've checked with the maker's instructions and it has an intake pipe with a strainer on the end. The strainer will stop adult fish getting sucked up but not fry, as you've discovered. There is a simple adjustment you can make for future fry. Either wrap a length of filter wool round the strainer (though this would look messy as it would need to be tied on) or use a cube of sponge with a slit cut in it, and just slide the slit over the strainer. Sponge should allow water to pass through easily, though it would need to be cleaned regularly. And it would grow micro-organisms for the fry to eat.

If angels are like apistos, the parents suck up the fry, take them where they want to put the fry then spit them out. I wonder if they chose a spot a bit too near the filter intake and didn't know what to do when their babies disappeared up the tube.

The toe of the tights would work just as well