P. Scalares wanted

Any size considered but medium to large preferred.

Hi Flossie,
The majority of angels seen for sale in the UK are P. scalare, do you mean that you're looking for wildtype fish, as opposed to domestic varieties?

Sorry I find all the names a bit confusing. I mean wildtype fish but not the Manacapuru (hope I've got that right).

OK, so what you're after is generally referred to as a "silver", silvers fall into 3 categories, wild caught, fish that are bred from wild fish or their descendants, and domestically bred fish without a known line of descent from wild fish.

Angelfish in the wild are distributed over a very wide area and some of the different populations are quite distinctive. As a general rule, most wild caught fish sold in the UK belong to one of these more distinctive populations, primarily because the cost of importing and therefore buying a wild caught fish is far higher than that of a domestic angel.
Probably the most common wild scalare you will encounter is the so call "Peruvian altum" this is not an altum, but a very attractive form of P. scalare from the rio Nanay in Peru, these are some....



other varieties are sometimes available and you might find looking at Heiko Bleher's article on p24 of this link helpful
http://edition.pagesuite-professional.co.uk/reef_to_rainforest.aspx?eid=7b978cec-83d8-428e-9a2e-56c13504f6bf

With tank bred fish that are recently derived from wild fish they will probably be described as f1, f2, etc. In this case f1 means that the parents were wild fish, f2 that the grandparents were wild fish, etc.

Most domestically bred fish can't be traced back to their wild ancestors, the modern domestic angel is almost certainly derived from wild fish from many different wild sources, and depending on the care and skill of the breeder, in some cases finnage & body shape can be pretty poor.
The other factor to be aware of is that most domestically bred silvers sold today are produced as an accidental byproduct of breeding one or more of the domestic colour varieties. Because of this, if you intend to breed silvers, don't be surprised if some other colours "come out in the wash", gold, half black, albino, (Philippine) Blue & pearlscale, could all be lurking in what outwardly appears to be a standard silver.

As to where you might get a silver from, at present I don't have any, but I know some of the other breeders on this forum have been working with them. There's a chap called Mick Wright on the "Only Angels" facebook page who seems to breed some very nice ones, but he's in Manchester.

Hi Flossie,

I have some F1 young that are from my wild pair that are from Peru but are not the 'Peruvian Altum' type. They are the original type Pterophylum scalare and in mine the male shows a nice reddish/orange accross his back. My avatar is of the male.

As I said I have a few young left from the last batch that are average around 50p size but some are bigger. I know you would prefer large fish but they grow well and develop into really nice fish.

You're welcome to call me on my mobile if you have questions or ask them here. (07977130379)

Trevor

thank you Pterophyllum and Trevor. I now have some new fish, bought them before I saw your post....sorry!

congrats on the new fish, I look forward to seeing photos!

I bought some angels from Trevor and I am more than happy with them ... thumbs up for Trevor as is such a nice guy



Once more Thanks Trevor

Aww they look fab!

They are lovely....and just what I was looking for. When mine get a bit bigger and if I can work out how to post photos I will do so.