Help Me Understand Angelfish History

[waterdrop]

I would so much appreciate all of your thoughts and bits of insight into how angels have come to be what we see out there today. I don't know the best way to organize my thinking about this. I guess I would like to confirm what species are out there and what might have originally been imported for aquarists when the hobby was beginning.

Then I'm imagining it would be nice to understand the phenotypes and what mix of wild caught and captive bred activities that proceeded over the years. Do those of you that like and follow angelfish as a breed have a set of phenotypes that categorize the looks that are seen and help reduce the confusion of what all is out there? Don't know them all? - Please throw out the types of looks you think might be a phenotype or that you do know of.

And beyond that I'm sort of interested in getting a feel for the history of how this spread out from the early beginnings, perhaps being mostly wild caught and retaining limited phenotypes for certain decades and then at some point greatly fanning out to all the phenotypes and captive bred ones we see today.

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About species I only know this.

About phenotypes, I'm familiar with the traditional vertical stripe patterns, the black variations, the fact that veil tails were then seen in both these colorations, and that this relatively narrow set of looks seemed to be all that was around for some decades (I have kept many of these in earlier years). Then there began to be various looks that seemed to be varying amounts of loss of the vertical stripes and albino characteristics being mixed in. Then finally I seem to see lots of solid colorations and even the bit of (Koi?) orange up at the head. Anyway, I feel quite ignorant of the details but am trying to describe the little bits I know so far.

I suppose someone will say I need to wait for Tolak to see this. It would be just wonderful if he and any other angel hobbyists could say hello and that they've seen this. Then they could perhaps add a few paragraphs of memories when they had time. I'm also thinking some of you may have links or book recommendations or anything else.. (or perhaps their will just be a collective sigh of silence ) No one's comments would be too small, don't want all the words to put anyone off, its really simple in the idea as I'm sure some of you have watched it happen over the years or heard of it. Plus I'm only recently back to the hobby and probably don't know the extent of colors and patterns now in angelfish.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Tolak]

You can start here; http/theangelfishsociety.org/articles/no...r_norton(1).htm

Look over the rest of the site, it is a regular source of info for me, there is a lot there.

They recently revised their phenotype library, as if the genetics info in Dr. Norton's articles isn't enough; http/www.theangelfishsociety.org/phenotype_library_2007/

 

[Miss Wiggle]

(or perhaps their will just be a collective sigh of silence )

**siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh**





















































well Tolak's links will tell you what you really need to know, anecdotally all I'll say is I absolutely love the 'wild' colouring with the silver and black vertical stripes. I think the gene pool has been tinkered with a bit too much to get all these fancy varieties and it's very hard to come across decent wild type angels around here nowadays.

In my limited experience I've found the 'fancier' the variety the weaker the angel, but that could be luck of the draw with the stockist/breeder.

 

[waterdrop]

You can start here; <a href="http/theangelfishsociety.org/articles/no...r_norton(1).htm" target="_blank">http/theangelfishsociety.org/articles/no...r_norton(1).htm</a>

Look over the rest of the site, it is a regular source of info for me, there is a lot there.

They recently revised their phenotype library, as if the genetics info in Dr. Norton's articles isn't enough; <a href="http/www.theangelfishsociety.org/phenotype_library_2007/" target="_blank">http/www.theangelfishsociety.org/phenotype_library_2007/</a>

OMG! I've never seen one link answer so many questions all at once! If I'm less active on the forum the next few days, you'll know where I'm reading/looking!

Thanks for the huge kickstart Tolak,
~~waterdrop~~
ps. MW-->

 

[waterdrop]

Those Norton genetics articles are amazing. Has everybody else here already read these?

 

[waterdrop]

OK, Tolak et.al.,

First question: Is it true that the "known universe" of freshwater angelfish consists of the 3 species that Corleone says in the link in my first post? (ie. Scalare, Leopoldi and Altum)

(second question) Actually, I forget how the names go, is it "Pterophyllum" that's the "Family" and the 3 listed are the 3 species within the family?

(thirdly) MW says, in some other angelfish post, that modern phenotypes that we see are the result of breeding sometimes between these 3 species. I can not yet tell from the TAS articles whether this might be true or whether, for instance, all those phenotypes Dr. Norton is describing are the result of breeding different phenotypes of Scalare? I believe the Altum type grow to be quite large, but the Leopoldi seem roughly similar to Scalare, so its not clear whether they could/would pair up for breeding.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Miss Wiggle]

Purely anecdotal (as ever ) but i've seen angels before in lfs's which definately had some leopoldi characteristics, could be coincidence but i was sure there was some lineage back there somewhere from a leopoldi. I was sorely tempted by those angels as I remember as well!!! ha ha

but yes, although i can't tell you where i've heard this from and therefore have no evidence to support it (happy to be corrected......) but i'm fairly sure that they can interbreed and we do end up with a bit of a mish mash, most likely just from scalare and leopoldi because of the size and rarity of altums.

.... await Tolak's corrections

 

[waterdrop]

Tolak has lucked into a whole brood of perfect Gold Pearlscales but they are at one of those stages where its all he can do to water change and feed them tiny brineshrimp
(just kidding, I'm getting phenotypes on the brain)

 

[Tolak]

Family would be Cichlidae, genera would be Pterophyllum, species would be scalare, leopoldi, or altum. Dumereli was a species at one time, as I recall it was determined to be a sort of leopoldi variation. The same goes for eimekei.

The phenotypes shown in those articles are scalare. The Amazon is a big place, crossing between species is improbable, but nothing is impossible.

Species is generally determined by scale & ray count, it's tough to do genetic testing in the middle of a jungle. I have some scans from an old book on angel identification, this is old school stuff;

If you look through it there is some crossing over of counts, differing areas and times can account for this, but you can't discount a cross between two species.

Altums do grow to be considerably larger, and do have a distinctive brown striping among the black. As you can see over time, leopoldi/ dumereli/eimekei are considered a variation on the same species, maybe. This is still being debated, often aquarists/naturalists will make a trek through the Amazon for collecting and research, coming up with differing or collaborating data.

 

[waterdrop]

Fascinating! So the "known universe" of angel species gets a little bigger and a little more blurred than I thought before.

Can't thank you enough for the trouble of putting those up. I read them all. And also quite interesting to think of how necessarily crude our science is, as we can only get the occassional "snapshot" from somebody trekking in to the jungle.

So it sounds like Scalare were still probably the most common angelfish brought in and introduced to tanks in those early years. Wouldn't leopoldi/dumereli/eimekei have probably been much less common? And Altum, wouldn't that also have been much less common during the introductory period of the early 1900's?

~~waterdrop~~