Chances are you will never see a wild angelfish in your local fish store. Virtually all the angelfish available to the hobby today are produced commercially on a more or less massive scale, from the basements or garages of local hobbyists everywhere to large fish farms in Florida or the Far East. Even though it is very unlikely that you will ever encounter a wild angelfish, we can learn much about these fish in general by looking at where they came from originally and how they live in the wild.
These wild angelfish are of the variety often called the Peruvian altum. This variety is rare and is not often seen in fish stores.
ANGELFISH IN THE WILD
There are three species of angelfish—Pterophyllum altum, P. leopoldi, and P. scalare—all of which originated in the Amazon River basin in South America, primarily in Brazil but also in Peru and Colombia. The main branch of the mighty Amazon River is formed around Manaus, Brazil, a port city where the Rio Negro and the Rio Solimões merge in the famous “wedding of the waters” (also known as the “meeting of the waters,” or, in Portuguese, Encontro das Águas). The warmer, slower waters of the Rio Negro, which flow from the north, are almost black, full of dissolved vegetation and other organic material. The colder, faster waters of the Solimões are almost yellow, full of silt and other mineral particles washed into the river from its many tributaries in the Andes. From Manaus to a point many miles downstream, they seem to run separately in the same bank, the northern side of the Amazon black and the southern side yellow, until the waters finally mix to the muddy brown color the river keeps all the way to the Atlantic.
My introduction to the Amazon started with an eight-hour flight that was truly amazing. For hour after hour we flew over the jungle, a green carpet broken only by a river or a lake here and there. Once in a while we could spot a wisp of smoke from a native settlement, the only sign of human presence. A few hours into the flight, we passengers were freely wandering the plane. By the time we neared Manaus, I was talking with the two crew members and enjoying the view from the cockpit jumpseat. The pilot started making wide, arcing S-turns. I asked him what he was doing and he replied, “I’m looking for the river.” I asked for some explanation, and he said that it was hard to navigate over the endless green of the jungle and their instruments were not all that accurate, so he normally located Manaus by looking for either the Rio Negro or the Solimões. That day he spotted the Rio Negro, and we followed it to Manaus, getting an incredible view of the wedding of the waters from about 2,000 feet.
Transporting people and cargo along the Amazon, a boat makes its way along the “wedding of the waters” (also called the “meeting of the waters”) in the vicinity of Manaus, Brazil.
Angelfish are found throughout the tributaries of the Amazon, primarily in the small creeks and almost still pools and small lakes that feed the Rio Negro and the Solimões. This natural range is generally referred to as the flooded forest, but the term accurately describes local conditions only during the rainy season, roughly December through May. The dry season (or not-so-rainy season) includes the other six months of the year. While average temperatures in the tropics vary little from one season to the other, the water levels in the region change dramatically. When the rains flood the forest, water levels rise as much as 50 feet above dry-season levels.
THE “WEDDING DRINK”
My friend Scott Dowd, the senior freshwater aquarist at the New England Aquarium in Boston, leads an expedition at least once a year to the Amazon basin, concentrating on the area between Manaus and Barcelos in Brazil. To celebrate the “wedding of the waters,” Scott creates a special drink by filling a beer stein halfway with Antarctica Pilsner, the most popular light beer in Brazil. Scott then pours in Guinness Stout (which he has hand-carried from Boston) over an inverted spoon, so the dark stout floats on top of the lighter pilsner. When you drink the beer, the two slowly mix together, just like the wedding of the waters. Scott points out that this is done on all of his Amazon trips when they first see the actual wedding of the waters, regardless of the time of day or night.
THE AMAZON RAIN FOREST
This area is an amazing rain forest—for the most part, pure unspoiled jungle. I saw it for the first time in the early 1970s from a DC-3 cargo plane en route to Manaus from Panama. We—my two traveling companions, two other passengers, and I—boarded in Panama at five o’clock in the morning. The cabin held two banks of three seats precariously bolted to the floor, and boxes of cargo filled the rest of the space. As we prepared to depart, one of the pilots told us that because the plane carried passengers it was bound by all of the rules for passenger airlines, which meant that we must keep our seat belts fastened at all times. He then tied the door shut with a length of clothesline rope, and we were off.
Aerial view of the Rio Tapajós, which meets the Amazon River in Brazil
What this means for angelfish is that, during the rainy season, the water is freshened and there is plenty of food around. Angelfish, along with most of the other fish in this great body of water, spawn frequently, producing many thousands—actually, make that millions—of baby fish trying to survive but mostly providing food for the larger species. Fruits and insects are also abundant during the rainy season—it is a time of easy and bountiful feeding for the fish. In addition, because the volume of water increases significantly, the adult fish are less likely to fall prey to other fish, as they have so much more room to swim and more places to hide.
At the time of high water along the Amazon, the water literally invades the land, creating flooded forest areas such as this one, near the Rio Nhamunda in Brazil.
When the dry season comes and the waters recede, conditions in the Amazon basin become less friendly. As the volume of water decreases, the fish population becomes more concentrated, and competition for hiding places and food increases. The baby fish that have survived the rainy-season spawning need more food as they mature, but there is much less in the way of fruits and insects to feed on, so the fish go for long periods of time without much food—as well as prey more on each other. This eat-or-be-eaten situation makes the outlook fairly bleak for an angelfish in the dry season. Fortunately, the rains eventually come again, life in the river improves, and the cycle continues.
HABITAT IN THE WILD
As noted, angelfish exist in the wild through much of northern South America, primarily in the huge expanse of jungle from which the Amazon River and its tributaries drain into the ocean. This vast basin encompasses much of Brazil, Peru, and Colombia, and altum angels and altum/scalare hybrids are found as well in the upper Rio Negro and Rio Orinoco basins in Guyana and Venezuela.
This is the Rio Nhamunda (same GPS location as the photo on the previous page) during the dry season, when the lower water levels force angelfish to compete for precious food and hiding places.
THE RAINY SEASON
