Altum versus Scalare angels, how to distinguish them

Hi;

Question: I noticed my P.Scalare Angel dropping its color like on Page 1 and returning to full color within a matter of seconds;

This can happen when all the tank lights (3 x 37W T5, 1x 6500K and 2x 14000K) are on or off;

Thanks;

Why is this happening? Is it normal behavior or should I be concerned?

 

Hi Hennie,

And this is where the confusion begins again, those angels should be called "Surinam" red spotted angels and not Surniam, the wholesaler does not know what he is supplying and has them on his list with this incorrect name, I despair. How must the average aquarist be able to know this. Again they are definitely NOT altum, that is just plain wrong! I have not seen pics of these so-called albino altums, but they are unknown to persons who know about altums in the USA and UK, so I would like to see some pics please.

mnrdelange, I think that if you switched on all those lights over me from the dark, then I would also skrik myself completely white. Angels come from dark backwaters and switching lights on all of a sudden like this, places them under tremendous stress which I would not advise. 14000k lamps are used for marine tanks and cause incredible algae problems in freshwater tanks, so I do not know why you are actually using them.

Kind regards,

Dirk

 

interesting thread, thank you @Dirk, will definetly be following for my breading project

 

Albino angel

Here is that pic @Dirk

 

Hi Hennie,

That pic is the pic that has been sent around to everyone but I want to see the pics of the actual fish that are being sold as albino altums. I just don't trust this business at all any more, because of all the nonsense going on. Has anyone bought any of these fishes?

Kind regards,

Dirk

 

Hi Prof, not sure if you remember this thread? Tropical Aquariums South Africa

 

Yes this is just a pic I had, but the actual fish looks exactly the same....I will post a pic tonight....there is really no differece between the actual fish and that pic.

 

They look exactly the same @jedigenie, have those albinos spawned to date yet? Do you still have them?

 

Hi Eugene,

Yes, I checked that thread again and my opinion about what was posted by Danziger remains unchanged. What are your fishes, those albinos, looking like now? I would like to see. Obviously with albinos we can't see any shadow stripes, or barring or anything else, so this makes things difficult, but if your fishes were larger, then we could at least see better what they get like when they are larger.

Kind regards,

Dirk

 

@HennieRoux, yes Ive had a few spawns of which 2 were successful. In fact I have a large batch of wrigglers that hatched last night.

@Dirk, I will post some pics later tonight Prof, they have grown somewhat. I want to add that the behavior of these angels, in general, is vastly different to other scalare angels I have had.

 

OK, just did a bit of a search and found this:

Albino Scalare X Altum - Page 3 - The Angelfish Forum II - Focused on Freshwater Angelfish.

and this:

Danziger Discus 2012 - YouTube

Just a quick flash of the albino angels.

Will comment later.

Kind regards,

Dirk

 

Hi Eugene,

Thanks for the information.

If you say they have grown somewhat then they are not 30-35 cm tall, I guess? If they are not that size, but they are spawning then they definitely are not altums.

I would also be interested to hear under which water conditions they have spawned, because altums need extremely specific water conditions for spawning, very acid and soft water, and even then are a challenge so this all indicates that these are not true altums.

I also want to state that if I make these comments, I am not trying to be negative about your fishes, but I am trying to clarify whether these fishes have any altum origin in them or not. So I am not saying that your fishes are not attractive, because many of these intermediates certainly are pretty, also the red spotted peruvians are very pretty in my opinion. You say they are very different to your other angels, what do you mean if you say that?

Kind regards,

Dirk

 

Here's a pic taken yesterday of the remaining offspring.

The parents are roughly 15cm tall when measured from tip of the dorsal fin to tip of the anal fin and not very big in my opinion. I would call them average sized. In fact I have another angel in the same tank which is much bigger than the dantums. This other angel is massive though, I have not seen another angel that is even near a similar size.

As far as water parameters go we are extremely lucky in PE to have very soft water. Measured last Friday in my main tank where the angels are at pH 5,1 TDS 114. The TDS straight from the tap is 82, so I don't have much to complain about.

I will take some pics of the parents tonight and post them.

 

Hi Eugene,

Thanks for the pics, that helps us a lot although they are not entirely in focus, but they are good enough for what I want to say. If you compare your fishes to those of the advertisement pic, in post no 24, then there is a big difference. The fish is the advertisement has longer fins and looks more like an altum than your fishes do. If you compare the first picture of the altum that I posted in this thread then you can see that the albino fish in the ad in post 24 does have some similarities, but the pic is also out of focus so we also cannot see it clearly. The ad fish has long tail fin extensions like an altum and has this upright pose which does remind one of altum. Your fishes are not the same as the ad, which is typical of these first generation crosses, one does not know how they are going to turn out, they could be similar to the scalare or the altums, but your fishes look much more like scalare than altum.

I see no justification for selling them with the name of "altums". They can call them albino "dantums" if they want to use their funny trade name, but calling them altums is wrong and these fishes are therefore being sold under false pretenses which I have a major problem with. Within the South African consumer law, you may not sell something that it is not, and this boils down to this and I hope someone will inform the wholesaler that he could strictly speaking be prosecuted for this.

I would like to see some of what are called normal "Dantums" so that we can decide what these are and I think we are going to see the same thing here.

Kind regards,

Dirk

 

Just clicked on a couple of the links of the other page that I indicated and came up with this, check it out and see the comments right at the start of the first post:

"They came to me as Scalare x Altum, of course they're not"

So there are more people that agree with my interpretation.

 

These are my guys

Not the best of pics, had to do a quick snap and upload with my Galaxy Tab. The spotted is allot larger and more dominant then the albinos, they are also allot taller and tend to stick together. My current ph is about 6.5.

 

Hi, here are some pics as promised.

I tried to capture the metallic green shine, the overall shape and the fin extensions.

 

Hi Eugene,

OK thanks for the pics, Hervé also sent me some by WhatsApp.

Somehow, I can see some altum blood there, but it is mainly scalare, and claiming that they are altum is not right, but I think that this is the general agreement world-wide. That they are interesting no one can doubt, they look completely different to P scalare golden angels for example and they hold a sort of weird attraction.

Now Eugene, on the previous pics, what were the red-spotted ones sold as? Were they sold as Peruvian altums or Dantums or what?

Kind regards,

Dirk

 

I got them as Dantum angels from my LFS, the normal and albino ones were in the same tank and there were no red spots visible on any of them. Subsequently my fish developed feint orange spots and the metallic green sheen and to my understanding the normal non albino angels have dark red spots. I have only seen this in pictures though.
If I were to speculate I would say that these angels are very close to being wild, maybe a couple of generations removed.

 

OK, I realize that I did not post this link earlier, but Eugene have a look at these fishes and tell us if yours look the same:

Wild type albinos