The secret color-code of angelfish.

[InvisibleTouch]

(I dare someone to copycat that title! ;) )

I recently added 3 young angelfish to my aquarium. They're close to the wild-type in appearance, silver with several vertical black bars, except that they have longer fins ("veilfins"). It's impossible to overlook that they change color intensity very quickly, within seconds, and quite often; they can go from intense contrast (very dark bars on pale background) to almost pure pale silver with barely a trace of banding.

Try as I might, I haven't been able to pick out any sequence or pattern yet. Are the changes an expression of emotion, an attempt at camouflage, an interspecies social signal? Probably all of the above, at different times. But I'll see them change pattern when no others are nearby, and while staying in the same place among the plants. There may be some dominance hierarchy involved (these are cichlids, after all), but I haven't been able to figure it out.

Lots of animals use color to signal inter- and intraspecifically. Probably the most dramatic examples are groups of squids, who flash signals back and forth to each other. Sometimes a ripple of color and pattern change will run across the whole group at the same moment. Likewise there's some meaning to the changes in my angelfish, but I'm too dumb to read the code.

Other species have no trouble communicating; we just have trouble understanding them!

[Deja Q]

1. You make me wish I still had my aquarium... (almost!)

Angelfish die in the high pH conditions in my area.

[Shell Beau]

2. I haven't had any luck with angel fish in my aquarium.

We've had kissing fish now for a while and they are thriving. We also have a dragon fish and it is just HUGE. It was about 3 inches when we got it. It is now about 11 inches or so.

[Kali]

3. Ever notice how plants and animals with sweet or cute sounding names are often quite the opposite?

Angelfish - mean little bastards to other fish
Muffy - the cute little doggy that bites
Trees of Heaven - god-awful, building-destroying, stinking gigantic WEEDS
"W" - evil moran bent on world domination
etc etc

[femmocrat]

4. What an incredibly lovely, refreshing post!

Thank you for educating me about angel fish! I always loved them, and had one that grew to be quite large. (When he died, the kids and I gave him a "funeral" and buried him in a flower garden.) They are mesmerizing creatures. Do you think you can post a picture of yours sometime? Thank you!

[InvisibleTouch]

9. I don't think I could take a good picture...

...with my little old dinky digital camera, but here's a link that shows a fish very similar to mine:



Mine are still young babies, though, and I haven't had any problems with them picking on the tetras.

This is the wild-type, so you can see how similar it is:



Pretty much the same colors, but the domestic veilfin has the beautiful longer fins.

Here's a page that shows lots of different color variants:

http://waynesworldangelfish.com/gallery.htm

Most of these were produced by selective breeding, and while they're each pretty in their own way, I can't help but wonder how a solid black fish, for instance, can use color change to communicate with its fellows the way the wild-type does. I wonder if this leads to mixed messages and behavioral problems - much as a dog with a cropped tail has a much harder time communicating to other dogs. I'd be interested to know whether the aggression between fish is much higher in the domestic color variants who can't signal dominance and submission. I don't have enough personal experience with them yet to answer that, but it's a question to keep in mind for the future.

[MonkeyFunk]

5. gawd

I once had the Angelfish from hell.

I put it in my tank and it just abused every fish I had. I gave it to a friend who had a tank with big cichlids, and I figured they'd work it out. Now... the angelfish killed or blinded three of her fish.

I gave it back to the shop.

Every now and then I get the urge to start up the fish tank again, but when that happens, I just go and flush a $20 bill down the toilet. Same feeling.

[Shell Beau]

6. That is amazing that it beat up the cichlids. Cichlids are part of the

aggressive community while angel fish if I remember are part of the semi-aggressive community. Now Oscars on the otherhand are downright mean!

[HarukaTheTrophyWife]

7. Angelfish are cichlids.

The aggression varies among species of cichlids. Oscars aren't nearly as mean as other species of cichlids, such as Red Devils. Even within pretty closely related groups of cichlids, such as mbunas, aggression levels can vary greatly amongst species. Yellow labs and aceis are relatively non-aggressive mbunas, whereas demasonis often will kill everything in the tank, even though they are a very small mbuna.

In one of my cichlid tanks, the tiny brichardis would have everyone else occupying only a third of the tank everytime they bred, including the huge Malawi Eyebiter and pair of Livingstonii cichlids.

[Shell Beau]

8. I still have a lot to learn about fish and aquariums. The angel fish

I had didn't live long and we moved on to a different species. We also had some type of cichlids that I don't know their technical name, but they died in Katrina since we were without power for so long and the tank was left with no oxygen. Now, as I posted earlier, we have kissing fish and a dragon fish and have had them for over a year (barely). They are doing great. My husband is the one who really knows what is going on in the tank. I just watch the fish and feed them.