Light filters down through a maze of driftwood, tree roots, and dead branches in the Rio Xingu tributary in Brazil, creating the perfect natural habitat for angelfish.
The water conditions where P. scalare are found in the wild are generally soft and acidic and allow for some variability—pH of around 6.5 and hardness of 4 to 5, and a temperature of 75 to 80 degrees Fahrenheit. Variations in both pH and hardness are small at a single location but can be significant from one place to another. The situation is very different with altum angels. These are found only in locations with a pH of 5.0 or lower, virtually no hardness, and temperatures ranging from 80 to 85 degrees Fahrenheit. Fortunately, all of the angelfish you will see in local fish stores adapt very well to any conditions around neutral pH and moderate hardness, since all of the fish you will see in the hobby have been commercially raised under those conditions.
Diet
In the wild, angelfish are pretty much the top of the piscine food web, in that the only fish that would eat an adult angel would be a red-tailed catfish or another of the larger catfish. Baby and subadult angelfish, however, are prey to larger fish throughout their habitat, and angelfish of all sizes are fair game to other animals, such as caiman and other fish-eating creatures avian, mammalian, and reptilian. In the wild, angelfish are omnivores, eating anything that they can. Their diet varies by the season and by what is available. Their wild diet would normally consist of a variety of crustaceans and insects and their larvae, as well as any small fish they can catch; angelfish will also eat fruit and other forms of vegetation if that is all that is available.
Large shovel-nosed catfish such as these are found in the wild along with angelfish. These catfish will prey on angelfish of all sizes, along with anything else they can catch and swallow.
Shoals, Not Schools
Angelfish occur in large groups called shoals, not in schools. The two terms describe very different kinds of behavior. Schools are usually considered to be many fish that move almost as one; they all swim in the same direction, turning and darting as a single entity. Shoals consist of many fish that basically are hanging out together but not necessarily pointing in the same direction and definitely not all moving in the same direction. Shoals of fish generally muddle around together, and the entire group gradually flows from one place to another instead of moving as a unified mass. To illustrate the difference between a shoal and a school, I think of my 300-gallon display tank, which contains seven large altum angels and around 150 rummy nose tetras (Hemigrammus bleheri). Eight large wild discus and many catfish and algae eaters also live in this tank. The angelfish are in a shoal, usually spread out within roughly a third of the tank, either looking for food individually or sparring with each other or some other fish. The school of rummy noses, in contrast, is always on the move, often in a line, its members streaming as one from one end of the tank to the other.
A fine shoal of young angelfish shows a number of the different color varieties that are available.
ANGELFISH IN YOUR TANK
Because I wholesale fish to local fish stores in the greater Boston area, I frequently chat with hobbyists and store owners about angelfish. I am always amazed that very few of them—not even the store owners—have any idea where angelfish come from. Store owners usually tell me, “Angelfish come from you—you deliver them to my store,” and hobbyists almost always say, “I dunno—I get them here at Joe’s Pet Place—that’s where they come from.”
From the farms where they are raised on the other side of the world, the fish are brought to a local central broker or holding facility where they are prepared for shipping. Fish are shipped by air freight in cardboard boxes roughly three feet long by two feet wide and a foot and a half in height. Inside the cardboard box is a Styrofoam box to keep the fish at a steady temperature, and inside the Styrofoam box is a heavy-duty plastic bag. The bag is one-third filled with shipping water and angelfish—a typical bag holds between 150 and 200 small (dime to nickel body size) fish—and then inflated with pure oxygen. Heat packs may be added in the winter to keep the fish from freezing in transit; ice packs may be needed in the summer to prevent them from overheating. Shipments consisting of many boxes of fish are then air freighted to the United States to importers and distributors in the primary ports of entry, New York and Los Angeles. From the importer, the fish go on to local wholesalers, who sell fish to the local fish stores, who sell them to you, the hobbyist.
FISH FROM ALL OVER THE WORLD
Most of the angels in the hobby today come from Florida and the Far East, meaning Singapore, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and China. Unlike in Florida, which is dominated by large fish farms, fish cultivation in the Far East is a cottage industry, with families specializing in one or two species. I visited the section of Singapore where fish farming is centered; there, the man in one house specializes in, say, albino Corydoras, his next-door neighbor raises fancy swordtails, and the next guy Mickey Mouse platies.
Angelfish are shipped from the Far East or Florida to wholesalers in plastic bags filled with water and oxygen; the bags are placed inside a Styrofoam box, which is then placed inside a cardboard box.
The time interval between netting an angelfish from a holding tank at the fish farm and putting it in your tank at home can be as short as a few days or as long as a week or more. Shipping fish across such great distances puts them under incredible stress. The pH of the water in the shipping bags is often dangerously low, and the level of ammonia and nitrites very high. Many improvements have been made in shipping practices, primarily those by the Singapore fish breeders but also those by the Florida Tropical Fish Farms Association (FTFFA). Inevitably, some fish do not survive shipment, but considering the tremendous volume of fish shipped all around the world every week, the actual losses are negligible. When you realize how far the fish you buy in your local fish store have traveled—halfway around the world or farther—you can appreciate how hardy tropical fish in general, and angelfish in particular, must be.
HABITAT DESTRUCTION
Even though their angelfish most likely come from commercial farms rather than from the wild, folks who keep tropical fish—and who usually care about animals and the natural world—should be aware that the natural environment of angelfish is under tremendous destructive pressures. The Amazon rain forest is the largest pristine jungle and rain forest in the world—sometimes called the lungs of the planet because the huge amount of plant biomass it contains absorbs so much carbon dioxide and gives off so much oxygen. This vital resource for all the inhabitants of the earth is being systemically destroyed on a major, and constant, scale. Economic interests such as logging, mining, and farming are cutting down the trees of the rain forest by clear cutting, destroying ecosystems by mining for minerals, and then dumping chemicals on what is left of the land so people can grow forage crops and raise cattle.
A group of angelfish spend some time at a holding station in Manacapuru, Brazil. These fish display unusual patterns of stripes on their bodies, typical of recently caught angelfish acclimating to an aquarium environment.
A fisherman does his job along the Amazon, amid the typical tangle of fallen trees, branches, and driftwood, where angelfish are found.
Many groups are actively trying to preserve and protect the Amazon rain forest. One that is integrally bound with the tropical