is hope with altums). The problem, I fear, is that altums are very rare fish and very expensive, and therefore not many hobbyists are even keeping them, let alone trying to get them to breed. You may be lucky enough to find wild altums in your local fish store on a seasonal basis—they are usually available from August to October.
These altum angelfish are regal fish, with broad brown stripes in addition to the black stripes that scalares have.
However, be aware before buying them that altums are delicate fish, and sometimes an entire batch will die for no apparent reason. Because they are all wild fish, they almost always have parasites, not all of which can be controlled in an aquarium environment. The adult group I have now numbers seven fish, down from fifteen that I originally acquired three years ago. A few were lost as young fish, but in the past year I have had a number of the adults succumb to some sort of internal parasite, which I assume is a form of trematode in the part of its cycle where it has to live in fish (see chapter 6). I have not been able to figure out exactly what the problem is, let alone how to cure it in the fish—another illustration of the difficulty of keeping altums.
It is easy to see from this picture why P. leopoldi is often called the “football” angelfish; because of its shape, many people do not find it as attractive as they find the strains developed from P. scalare.
SCIENTIFIC NAMES CAN BE CHANGED
The taxonomic status of angelfish will, I imagine, be subject to change in the future. It seems that ichthyologists make their bones by constantly revising the work of their predecessors, and I presume that Kullander is no more immune to this than were those who came before him. Of course, it really does not make much of a difference to us when it comes to the angelfish we can purchase at our local fish store.
Pterophyllum Leopoldi
P. leopoldi is the smallest of the wild angelfish species. The leopoldi are usually no more than four inches long, total length snout to tail, and four to five inches tall from the top of the dorsal fin to the bottom of the anal fin. This angelfish is also generally squatter than the other two species and is hence sometimes referred to as the football angel. I have not seen this fish in any local fish store for many years, perhaps because it is simply not very attractive.
Crossbreeds
All angelfish will readily crossbreed, and there are many examples of wild fish that are clearly naturally occurring hybrids of two of the recognized species (scalare and altum). The most common possible wild hybrid fish is what is foisted off on hobbyists in local fish stores as Peruvian altums. Although it may, in fact, have some altum blood, this fish is really just a scalare with a slight upturn to the nose. The idea that angelfish crossbreed is confusing if you accept that part of the definition of a species is that its members won’t breed with fish that are not their species, but species crossbreeding also occurs with the cichlids from Lake Malawi in Africa. Sometimes, if the choice is between passing on your genes by breeding with a species you may not be sure of but who looks enough like you that it could be a conspecific or not passing on your genes at all, there is only one thing to do. Most tropical fish aren’t that finicky about minor points such as the definition of what a species is, and so we get wild natural hybrids—but in the hobby we also get monstrosities such as the bloody parrot cichlid and the Flowerhorn. (Sorry, I let my biases slip.)
ANGELFISH “FLAVORS” AT YOUR LOCAL STORE
Let’s look more closely at the different types of angelfish you are likely to find in your local fish store. In my wholesale business, I refer to these as the different flavors that angelfish come in. The first successful breeding of angelfish was in the 1920s, and for many years everyone was happy just to be able to breed the wild fish, known as silvers, then the F1s (first generation of progeny) from the wild fish, then the next generation, and so on. When I first started keeping angelfish in the 1960s, a few new strains were just being introduced. These were developed from wild fish with genetic mutations that affected their appearance and from selective breeding that sought to introduce or emphasize some variant characteristic in subsequent generations. The first new types of angelfish were what are called black lace—fish with a grayish dark cast to the body rather than the pure silver of the wild fish. There were also marbles, which are fish with a random mottling pattern of black and white all over the body and fins.
The August 1923 cover of Aquatic Life magazine demonstrates the popularity of angelfish, as they are shown alongside easily recognized fish of the day. The cover remained the same from 1916 through the mid-1940s.
In addition to the black lace, breeders soon came up with a pure black angelfish. This fish, at the time of its first appearance in the hobby, was as difficult to keep as it was beautiful and virtually impossible to breed; apparently the genes that make this angelfish pure black also make it a very weak fish. Today’s black angels are really what are called double darks; they do not have the lethal gene of the original, but they are not the midnight black that the original black angels were. Soon we had other strains of angelfish, including the gold, the pearlscale, and the koi, all of which are very popular in the hobby today.
As mutations of coloration were cultivated in different strains of angelfish, selective breeding also developed angelfish with longer fins, leading to what are called veiltails, consisting of very long and flowing fins. The veiltail trait has been taken to the extreme in the varieties known as heavy or double veiltails. These fish have such heavily veiled fins that they are, to many people, unattractive. And the heavy fins have functional disadvantages: they make it difficult for mature double veiltail angelfish to swim. The fish drag their fins along the bottom of the tank, which leads to all sorts of problems with tearing of the fins. This, in turn, leads to fungus problems and other maladies. Fortunately, the heavily veiled fish are rarely seen today in the local fish stores, and they appear to have only a minor presence among the serious angelfish hobbyists.
These angelfish demonstrate the wide variety of fish that are available in the hobby; one fish is solid black, whereas the other is a solid gold coloration.
Several strains of the fish mentioned above are now commonly available throughout the hobby. We will take a look at each of the most popular strains below.
Silver
The normally occurring coloration of the wild angelfish is a silver body, sometimes with a bluish cast; distinct vertical stripes running through the eye, the center of the body, and the rear of the body into the dorsal and anal fins; and often a stripe at the caudal peduncle, where the tail joins the body. Silvers used to be the strongest fish because they were the closest to the wild fish, but angelfish today have been so interbred that the silver angels you can get at your local fish store today are no hardier than any other variety. Silvers are, however, usually the least expensive of the varieties, and they are certainly the most commonly available at your local fish store.
This young silver angelfish is perfectly proportioned and will grow into a fine adult, perhaps even one of breeding quality.
