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Hi everyone,

Today I stop at my lfs and found out they had 2 altums angels available! I have not seen them in my life, accept through picture. They were about 4 inch tall with really nice stripe coloration...simply breathless. The best thing was the price, they were sold to me for $35.00 for one. Since both of them were a pair I had to buy two. Does anyone have experience with them? Like on how to keep them? Espescially how to BREED them, I heard they were hard to breed.

Thanks.

I can't help you with the keeping of these angels (I've heard that they are somewhat more delicate than P. scalare), but I can share some breeding information. As far as I know, it takes a very long time for these fish to pair off, at least a couple of years. If you are lucky enough to have a compatible pair, it is still really tough to induce spawning. The experts are still having trouble with spawning this species, I've only read about one actual spawning event. Only one fry survived that batch, which underscores how difficult it is to hatch P. altum eggs and raise the fry.

I don't want to discourage you, but these fish are tough to breed. If you actually had a breeding pair, and could raise the fry, you could do the hobby a service with raising captive-bred altums. That would make them more accessible, and more adapted to living in fish tanks. Good luck!

---

And when he gets to Heaven, to Saint Peter he will tell: "One more Marine reporting, Sir! I've served my time in Hell."

I've kept them and learned the hard way that they are very very e to Culminaras sp* and parasites.

I would recommend full treatment immediately for the parasites and at any sign of grayness on them (culmanaras). If you wait they will die.

I lost almost 20 of them like this and eventually gave up after tossing almost 300 bucks in the trash.

For what it is worth. The ones I've seen go for what you paid are normally more healthy.

This is one fish like Discus that need a low PH. around 6.0 will be fine. Especially if you intend on trying to breed them.

Also it's been reported that males will all but kill each other when competing for a mate.

Let us know how it goes, and get us some pics.

Sure thing,

http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y48/Aquatic_dynasty/altum1.jpg

http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y48/Aquatic_dynasty/altum3.jpg

http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y48/Aquatic_dynasty/altum2.jpg

Last edited by Trojan_man at 23-Mar-2005 23:30

How big are they? They look small.

I'm not 100% sure those are Altums. They do have the elongated snout, but the dorsal fin doesn't look right.

Altums should have very tall thin fins. Not short and fat. I could very well be wrong.

As I've never seen them small it could be a juvenile thing. Again I'm not sure.

I would go to [link=this site]http://www.simplyangelfish.com/forum/" style="COLOR: #000080[/link] and ask these guys about it.

Either way they are very pretty fish.

Have you gotten them to eat yet? If not try beef heart. I had good luck getting mine to eat the beef heart and frozen brine shrimp. They went nuts over the beef heart tho.

HTH

I have try to fed them bloodworms yesterday, They ate very little. I even try hikari cichlid pellets but not luck. But this morning when the pellets finally sunk to the bottom the angels snatch up the pellets and ate it sparingly. Very picky eaters.

They look like altums to me cuz of the thick bands. The dorsals are sometimes shorter than normal cuz altums usually have some sort of fin damage when kept at the LFS. Give them the proper care and they'll heal up.
Shannen is very correct about Altums being very susceptible to columnaris!

I'm keeping 3 altums myself, they didn't eat the first week, just keep trying. I feed mine frozen bloodworms, brine shrimp, HBH cichlid flakes and some beefheart.

Another knowledgable site on altums is http://www.finarama.com

Last edited by curvicep at 25-Mar-2005 20:35

Those markings are, without a doubt, those of P. altum.

100% altums. P. scalare doesn't have markings like that.

Also, look at P. scalare, when juvis, the fins are very tall, and are porportionally the same as adult altums, but when scalares grow up, they are not as long. I think altums are the inverse, short fins when young, long when adults.

And congrats and best of luck with the Altums

~Jorge

Last edited by Racso at 26-Mar-2005 11:46

Thanks for the clarification. Like I said I wasn't 100% sure. Now I know