Angelfish fry spend their first days as wrigglers attached to a leaf or slate, living off their yolk sacs. Free-swimming changes everything: the yolk is spent, the whole brood lifts into the water together, and each tiny fish must find food small enough to fit a mouth that can barely take anything wider than itself. The foods that suit this stage share three traits: they move, they fit, and they can be offered fresh many times a day.
Start the Culture Before the Eggs Hatch
Set up your brine shrimp hatching before the parents spawn, or while the eggs are still being fanned. A hatchery needs aerated salty water, warmth and roughly a day to produce swimming nauplii, so a culture started on free-swimming day leaves the brood hungry through key early feeds. Run two hatcheries in rotation so a fresh batch hatches while the previous one is being fed out, because nauplii lose nutritional value as they grow in the hatchery. Keep a backup culture of infusoria or similar microscopic live food going in parallel for very small fry and for any day a hatch fails; a living backup you never use costs little, while a gap in feeding costs growth you cannot buy back.
Feed Newly Hatched Shrimp Little and Often
Rinse harvested nauplii and release a small cloud near the brood, close enough that fry encounter shrimp without chasing across the tank. Feed several times a day in amounts the brood clears while their bellies swell round and take on a faint orange tint from the shrimp inside them; that visible belly is your portion measure, not a spoon. Stop when bellies are full and interest fades, because shrimp that die among the fry decay fast. Fry that ignore the cloud may find the food too large or the batch too old, so try the finer backup culture next.
Bridge the Smallest Fry, Then Grow the Menu
In a large brood some fry are smaller than their siblings, and those fish may need infusoria-grade food for the first day or two before they can manage nauplii. Offer the fine culture first, then the shrimp, so both sizes eat at the same session. As days pass and bodies deepen, keep nauplii as the backbone while introducing finely crushed, high-quality dry fry food in tiny pinches, watching that fry actually take it rather than letting it sink and rot. Growth should look even; a widening split between large and tiny fry usually means food is not reaching the smaller fish.
Clean Around Every Feed
Heavy feeding and delicate fry foul water together, so cleaning is part of the feeding method, not a separate chore. Siphon the bottom gently with narrow tubing after feeds, removing dead shrimp, waste and the fine film that forms on bare glass, and top up with water matched in temperature and chemistry so the brood is never chilled or shocked. Use a sponge filter or shield any intake so free-swimming fry are not drawn against it, and keep flow gentle enough that tiny fish can hold position while they hunt. Test the water often during the first weeks, because ammonia that an adult tank would shrug off can stall or kill a whole brood overnight.
Watch Bellies, Behaviour and Losses
A well-fed brood spreads through the water in a loose cloud, snaps visibly at food, and rests with full bellies between feeds. Fry hanging listlessly, gathering at the surface, or showing empty, pinched bellies at feed time need the next meal sooner, finer or fresher. Count losses honestly each day; losing the occasional weak fry happens in large broods, while rising daily losses point to water quality, food failure or overcrowding that you should correct quickly. Ask an experienced breeder or aquatic specialist for help if losses climb despite clean water and full bellies, because early diagnosis at brood scale is hard to do alone.
With feeds needed from morning to evening, open KinsLe before the brood lifts and assign each hatching, harvesting and cleaning turn under Care Teams so no rotation depends on one person's memory.