Angelfish. David A. Lass
generic name the indigenous inhabitants of the Amazon River basin give to any small fish, especially the less colorful species that swim with the cardinal tetra (Paracheirodon axelrodi). The motto of Project Piaba is “Buy a Fish, Save a Tree,” and the mission of the organization is to support the local fishermen and their families who make their living collecting ornamental aquarium fish, the most important one of which is the cardinal tetra. In a somewhat counterintuitive manner, Piaba wants hobbyists to buy fish that have been responsibly collected in an “eco-friendly” way from the Amazon by these fishermen.
The Amazon rain forest is one of the last untouched pristine jungles left in the world, and humankind is doing its best to try to destroy it. Logging, mining, and farming interests destroy huge tracts of rain forest daily, in the name of “progress.” Project Piaba and other organizations are working hard to preserve the rain forest; please support these efforts.
Project Piaba had its origins in studies on the fishing industry around the town of Barcelos on the Rio Negro, conducted by ichthyology professor Ning Labbish Chao in the late 1980s. Barcelos is the center for the collection of the cardinal tetra, which are collected by the millions and shipped by boat from Barcelos down to Manaus at the confluence of the Rio Negro and the Solimões. Dr. Chao has begun to organize the local fishermen in Barcelos, and he has established a system of permits for the collection of ornamental fish. That was the first step toward making sure that the products of the Amazon rain forest, a large share of which are ornamental tropical fish, are harvested on a sustainable basis and ultimately that the rain forest is preserved. If the fishermen can make their living by selling the ornamental fish, which are essentially a renewable rain forest resource, they will protect their fishing grounds from destruction by the loggers, miners, and farmers. Local fish stores in the United States are beginning to offer eco-friendly fish from sources approved by Project Piaba. When you see fish in your local fish store that are labeled as being wild caught from the Amazon—cardinal tetras, rummy noses, hatchet fish, Otocinclus, and bleeding hearts, to name a few—you can feel good about buying them and doing your part to protect the Amazon rain forest.
Dr. Ning Labbish Chao spends time out in the field, working with the fish.
Scott Dowd, of Project Piaba and the New England Aquarium, and I ran a test project involving some of the local fish stores to which I wholesale fish. We wanted to know if retail customers of the fish stores would prefer cardinal tetras that were taken from the wild in an environmentally responsible manner, as with Project Piaba, over commercially farmed cardinal tetras. Unfortunately, we had trouble keeping the commercially farmed cardinals alive, which we presume is only a temporary problem, one that will be solved eventually as it has been with most other ornamental tropical fish. Even though we didn’t have a full opportunity to test the actual choice, we were very pleased to see from our surveys that the vast majority of the customers, once they understood why it is better to purchase wild cardinals—because the fishermen protect the rain forest—preferred the wild-caught cardinal tetras. Many of the respondents said that they would even be willing to pay a premium for the wild-caught fish, knowing that by doing so they would be helping preserve the Amazon rain forest.
Wild-caught cardinal tetras swim in a home aquarium. These fish are a good choice for the hobbyist interested in helping preserve the Amazon rain forest.
| CHAPTER 2 | Angelfish Groups |
There are a number of learned ichthyology books and papers, as well as a great number of Web sites, about what are called the meristics of angelfish—scale and fin counts, minute measurements of the lateral line, and other anatomical details. Most hobbyists (and I include myself in this group) are not much interested in these arcana, and I will not go into them here. If you are interested in the in-depth study of angelfish, a list of Web sites is provided at the end of this book. For now, a basic discussion of angelfish characteristics is in order.
THREE SPECIES OF ANGELFISH
Dr. Sven Kullander of the Swedish Museum of Natural History in Stockholm has done the most recent, and so far the definitive, work of classifying the species of angelfish. Today it is generally accepted that there are three species of angelfish, collectively assigned the genus Pterophyllum. The three species considered valid by Kullander are P. scalare, P. altum, and P. leopoldi. According to Kullander, Pterophyllum scalare are sometimes referred to as P. eimekei and P. dumerilii, names he rates as “junior” synonyms, which means that fish called by these names are, in fact, P. scalare and that the first published name (in this case, P. scalare) takes precedence over the names that were published later. (The other two species names, P. altum and P. leopoldi, are considered valid by Kullander. For excellent documentation of the history of scientific nomenclature of the angelfish, see http://www.finarama.com/tba/timeline.htm.)
A P. scalare angelfish displays its silver coloring with hints of blue. This species is the original angelfish, and all of our modern color varieties were developed from it.
Scientific names are traditionally given by the scientist who first describes a species and are often revised by followers in the profession of ichthyology. Often, the scientific name is chosen to honor the discoverer of the fish or a friend or relative (lots of fish are named for the namer’s wife, to placate her for putting up with a fish nut). Sometimes a fish species is named for the location where it was discovered. Finally, a species name may describe some characteristic of the fish. This is the case with the angelfish. The name of the genus Pterophyllum comes from the Greek and means “winged leaf,” referring to the overall impression that the angelfish gives of floating through the water. The species name scalare means “staircase or flight of stairs,” describing the front edge of the dorsal fin as it ascends from the forehead of the fish in steps to the tall top of the fin.
The black lace, shown here, was one of the first color variations of angelfish to be fixed into a strain that breeds true.
The wild angelfish, from which all of the many color varieties available today come, is a basically silver fish with some highlights of a bluish cast over parts of the body. There are three prominent vertical stripes in all three species, with extra stripes and markings as noted for each species. There are broad distinct black lines running vertically on the fish. The first line runs through the eye, from the forehead down to under the gills. A second line crosses the middle of the body, and the longest and thickest line runs behind that one, from the rear of the dorsal fin down through the rear of the anal fin. Finally, on some fish there is a small black marking around the caudal peduncle, where the tail joins the body.
EVERYONE EASILY RECOGNIZES THE ANGELFISH
The thin body, tall fins, and elegant way of swimming have made the angelfish one of the few fish that everyone knows the name of. Its popularity is well earned, as it makes an excellent aquarium fish. Even beginning hobbyists can successfully keep angelfish if they implement proper care.
A pair of wild altum angelfish swims gracefully.
Angelfish