keeping altum angel with discus

[lampro]

I have 2 discus but the bigger is always picking on the smaller one so i gave one to my friend annd im planning to keep an altum angel with my discus to add more collection into my tank.
Have anyone try keeping just one altum angel and one discus together before? Did your fish get along well?

im planning to get a wild altum

 

[OrionGirl]

If the tank is big enough, should be fine.

 

[TwoTankAmin]

I keep wild altums. They are one of the most difficult fish to keep alive and even harder to spawn. After several failures, I finally learned how to keep them alive. The ones that lasted when they arrived they went into a tank with a pH of 4.2 and it took me six months to bring them up to when I now keep them, at 6.0. I use an ro/di unit and have a continuous monitor for pH, TDS and temp. on the tank.

I normally do not like to send members to other sites, but in this case it is important, There is an amazing site dedicated to wild angels and it includes info on domestics as well. It is where I learned how to keep altums. This site is unusual as you can only read the forums there if you are a member, Normally this puts me off of any site and I refuse to join if I cannot look first. I made an exception for this site. However, there is more to the site than forums.
http://www.finarama.com/

If you are really interested in altums, there are two great vids on them both in the wild and then being sent to Simon Ferkel in Germany who is one of the very few people in the world who does so, Watch them in order:

Many angels in the wild tend to live within larger groups of discus. In a group of discus there is a perimeter guard of the fiercer larger discus who act to protect the group. The angels take advantage of this. There are no discus where altums are found. Have a read here https://www.practicalfishkeeping.co.uk/features/do-angels-and-discus-live-together-in-the-wild/

 

[OrionGirl]

I'd listen to TTA...he knows way more on this than me.

 

[fishorama]

Good info TTA! I raised small discus once but never thought I had what it takes to keep altums. Maybe someday...

I think both discus & altums prefer to be kept in groups, except maybe for breeding...

 

[lampro]

I keep wild altums. They are one of the most difficult fish to keep alive and even harder to spawn. After several failures, I finally learned how to keep them alive. The ones that lasted when they arrived they went into a tank with a pH of 4.2 and it took me six months to bring them up to when I now keep them, at 6.0. I use an ro/di unit and have a continuous monitor for pH, TDS and temp. on the tank.

I normally do not like to send members to other sites, but in this case it is important, There is an amazing site dedicated to wild angels and it includes info on domestics as well. It is where I learned how to keep altums. This site is unusual as you can only read the forums there if you are a member, Normally this puts me off of any site and I refuse to join if I cannot look first. I made an exception for this site. However, there is more to the site than forums.
http://www.finarama.com/

If you are really interested in altums, there are two great vids on them both in the wild and then being sent to Simon Ferkel in Germany who is one of the very few people in the world who does so, Watch them in order:

Many angels in the wild tend to live within larger groups of discus. In a group of discus there is a perimeter guard of the fiercer larger discus who act to protect the group. The angels take advantage of this. There are no discus where altums are found. Have a read here https://www.practicalfishkeeping.co.uk/features/do-angels-and-discus-live-together-in-the-wild/

Thank you for the heads up! So i guess it is better if i get an altum that's not straight from the amazon, maybe a tank adapted WC altum?
Is driftwood enough to lower the PH lvl? how do u mannage the PH? I thought angels are hardy fish, why do they need rodi and tds monitor?

 

[fishorama]

Altums are NOT regular angels.. like I think I said before, they do NOT want to be kept as a single fish.

An angel can be kept alone, but not altums or discus. Don't make that expensive & frustrating mistake so many have made. (me too, back in our olden days). It truly doesn't work, no matter how hard you wish or hope for it.

 

[lampro]

my discus likes to follow my finger and eat a lot more when hes by himself. hes now in a discus tank with 4 others but hes on the smaller side like 5". He is not as active as he is by himself. I feel like every discus is different and unique.

 

[TwoTankAmin]

Re altums and the issues. The fish live in very acid water in the wild. We are talking 4.0 type levels. If you are a nut about cycling you know that as the water becomes acid, the bacteria involved change. That is because virtually all of the ammonia in water is in the form of NH4 aka ammonium. The normal bacteria in tanks do not do well in such low pH. Acid water is also hostile to many of the disease related bacteria. So, where the altums live they are not exposed to a lot of the typical bacteria in other aquatic systems and especially in tanks. When an organism does not have to fight off a specific disease threat, the immunity it might have against such a threat decreases. Wild angels have compromised immune systems in terms of to what they will be exposed in tanks.

The acid water also makes spawning them in captivity extremely difficult. You can probably count all of the people on the planet who spawn altums in captivity on your fingers and maybe a few toes.

The greatest difficulty with wild altums is in the earlier days/weeks once it is in captivity. They cannot be handled in the same fashion as most other fish. It took a lot of effort by altum keeps to teach the exporters how to handle these fish between capture and export. The importers also needed to learn what to do on their end. This has only happened in the more recent past. Because there are so few altum breeders, getting tank raised fish is not easy. I have acquired altums both from importers and from people who got them that way and they did the work of getting them stable. The latter is a lot easier.

Then there is the issue of how one wants to keep them. Some folks go all in and work with low pH, stained water and RO/DI. As with most fish, the TDS is actually more important than the pH. But with altums both matter. In order to lower pH, one has to lower KH for it to work. RO/DI water has virtually 0 TDS and KH. It is what allows one to have acid water and to keep it that way. Almost none of us have altum water coming out of our tap, so we have to create it. The harder your tap water and the higher its pH, the greater the change you need to make to it.

I have only ever wanted to keep two angels- double dark blacks and altums. I kept the former and they taught me why I did not want to spawn angels. But I was in the hobby for a decade before I was even willing to try keeping altums. I had an awful lot of them die initially. The six I have now have been with me for a few years. Half I got as imports and half from the person who originally got them. I have them at about 6.0 pH which will rise a bit between water changes and the TDS tend to be in the 60 ppm range. I stain my water with almond leaves, alder cones and rooibos tea.