Angelfish History - The Short Version
by Bob Berdoulay
First published in Gravel Gossip, newsletter of The Diamond State Aquarium
Society.
Aquarticles
The "winged leaf" fish, that is the
meaning of the Genus name of the common freshwater angelfish. Not a bad name for a fish
with long fins and flattened laterally. The angelfish was originally described by
Lichtenstein in 1823 and he named it Zeus scalaris. Georges Cuvier later changed
this to Platax scalaris in 1831. It was changed again in 1840 to Pterophyllum
scalaris by Heckel. The last change was in 1862 by Gunther who changed the species
name to scalare. Thus we have today the angelfish: Pterophyllum scalare.
Their native habitat is the Central Amazon. The first angels were imported into Hamburg,
Germany in 1909 but early attempts to breed them were unsuccessful. In 1924 a new type of
angelfish was imported by a German dealer named Wilhelm Eimeke. The new import was named Pterophyllum
eimekei in honor of this German. The new angelfish was originally classified
differently from the first group, but in 1967 P. eimekei became known simply as a variety
of Pterophyllum scalare. This remains to this day as the taxonomic name of the
common angelfish. But who knows, with all the revision occurring in the cichlid world
maybe even this old standard may change names.
Today ichthyologists recognize two different species of angelfish and a third which is a
subspecies of P. scalare. They are Pterophyllum dumerilii, P.
scalare scalare, and the Altum angelfish, which is P. scalare altum.
In 1915 angelfish arrived in The United States from Germany, but the price was prohibitive
for all but the wealthy. A pair sold in the early 1900s for $75; imagine what that would
be in today’s coin of the realm. My guess would be well over $1000. ($75 in 1950
would be over $500 today.) A few individuals even at that price attempted to spawn this
beauty. The first successful breeders in the U.S.A. were from neighboring Pennsylvania.
William Paullin and Franklin Barrett both achieved the impossible in 1921 by spawning and
rearing about 100 fry. With this feat the angelfish became more available and thus the
price began to drop.
Pterophyllum scalare today is one of the most popular of the aquarium fish. Most
people are unaware that the angelfish is a member of that large group of fish, the
cichlids. Because of its long years in the hobby, many varieties have been developed from
the original wild form. Dedicated hobbyists working for years cross-breeding and back
crossing have developed an amazing assortment of choices in color, finnage, and other
traits. We now have a choice of silver (original), gold, black, chocolate, veil-tails,
blushers, zebras, half-blacks, leopards, calico, marble, German blue, koi, pearl-scale and
combinations of the preceding. Blacks were developed in Germany in 1955, and veil-tails
followed the next year, also from Germany. Marbles showed up in 1963, but the trait was
not fixed; it took Charles Ash in 1969 to fix the marble trait, which we have today. The
gold was developed by Carl Naja in the U.S.A. in the 70’s.
That brings us to date with this short history - the variety now existing should give
everyone the chance to pick one type of angelfish
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