Anyone keeping true Altums

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if they are in fact coming from oversea's then they "might" be tank bred. i member watching a video on youtube and people in taiwan has bred them i believe. but for some odd reasons they dont look exactly like the wild altums. have same body shape but the bars are off. also like 3dee said. sometimes people get mixed up with wild peruvian and altums as they have a lil similiarities.

as for my altums, i have no idea what my water parameters are. cuz i never check. im old school and check water quality based on the looks and smell of my tank. i did treat them when i got them. and they are kepted at 84 degrees with other tetra's. afew of them did looked sick cuz they werent eating and the other ones outgrew some of them. i didnt do anything to them and now they are fine and eating aggressively.
 
I keep altums- have for over a year. I have a couple bought larger in March last year from a seller on this site which live in a 45 gal. and I have 8 smaller ones that have been growing out since early Dec. 2009 in a 29. The 8 are what remains of 10 I purchased. One came in bad shape and did not last 24 hours and another vanished w/o a trace after about 3 weeks. there remaining 8 are doing great.

I would also add that my first try at altums went miserably. I got 8, lost 4 inside a week and the last two made it about three weeks. And then I was taught how to deal with newly imported altums to keep them alive.

1. Never put them into an established tank, start a new tank just for them. Keep them on their own- no other tank inhabitants. Live plants and wood are a good idea.
2. Get the TDS down by mixing ro or distilled water with your tap. It is even possible to start them in 100% ro.
3. Start them at 80F and then raise it to about 84 in the first week.
4. Slowly ween them off the ro/distilled mix over several months to get them to 100% tap. (This assumes your tap is not way off paramwise for them.)
5. Only medicate if you see specific symptoms which need treatment.
6. Tankmates can be added once you are at your final water params for them.

One observation: I have been told by altum folks smarter than I am that altums are a social fish and should be kept in groups. I was further told that many believe that these fish communicate not only by visual cues but that they also use chemical forms of communication. It was suggested that I might want to use Purigen as a precaution to insure there could not be an chance of a toxic build up. I never followed that suggestion but I doubt doing so could hurt.

My tap params from our well are: pH 7.4, Gh 5-6 dg (a friend recently tested my water with her TDS meter and told me I was at about 90 ppm). I took from early December til some time in April to move the small altums from 50/50 tap/distilled to 100% tap.

When I first got the small imports they would all huddle together and hide in the back left corner and were scared of their own shadows. A year later they come out when the see me because they figure food is coming and I often have to shoo them away when working on the tank. I have them with about 7 or 8 rummy nose tetras now.

I am very skeptical about claims of naturally spawned altums in any tanks. I will never buy "farmed" fish from Asia- I consider it to be a high risk behavior. I will buy buy wc though.

Jeff Rapp is a reputable seller/importer. My wc L-134 group came from him. That said, I am highly skeptical of any report of TR altums.

My final observation is that if you can keep these fish, do so. They are magnificent looking and unlike any other angel I have kept or seen.
 
I posted a question about them in Jeff's vendor forum. Hopefully when he has time he'll be able to answer a few questions. At $45 for a dime-size body, I'm going to have to pass. That's more expensive than most discus.
 
I was not impressed with the pictures that were posted on the site. Now I notice that both the picture and the fish listing are no longer there. Anybody know whats up?

Were the fish all sold? Was the listing removed for some other reason?
 
I'm pretty sure all the fish were sold. I think he mentioned having a limited quantity. I posted a thread about them in his vendor section last week and he replied with a picture -- it's still there.

I know a discus guy who is trying to put together a group order of tank-raised altums from Taiwan. It appears that Tony Tan, a well-known discus breeder, is spawning the altums. From the pictures they actually look like decent fish. They'd still work out to about $40 for 3.5cm fish though, and it would require a pre-order. While I have faith in the guy importing, it's still a lot of money for angelfish (although I guess it's cheap if you consider how many hundreds of dollars people spend on wild-caught altums that die a week or so after import).

So the fish are real, but everyone's still being secretive about the conditions that induced spawning, or whether or not it's completely natural...
 
Sorry for my poor picture skills--

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TwoTankAmin;4802586; said:
I was not impressed with the pictures that were posted on the site. Now I notice that both the picture and the fish listing are no longer there. Anybody know whats up?

Were the fish all sold? Was the listing removed for some other reason?
Click to expand...

Yeah the fish sold out. I missed the boat and e-mailed Jeff the day after he sold out. He is planning to get some more in a few weeks so I will be getting some then.
 
We are putting together a group order for F1 altums at SimplyDiscus. If anyone's interested, drop me a PM and I'll fill you in! This could be a chance to get some decent tank-raised stock.
 
I've kept Altums for over ten years. The first couple of years were disastrous. 100% casualties on my first batches. However, I've progressed to a more successful phase keeping them. I brought in a batch of wild caught dime and nickel sized fries August of 2008......I've sold most of them.......Still have 15 from that batch....been travelling a lot lately and left them unattended for up to a month at times with no casualties...just had somebody feed them 2 to 3 times a week when I'm gone.....

Once they acclimate to tank conditions, they're very hardy fish to keep and enjoy...
 
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