My tank to small for an Angel?

[Indian Woods Angels]

Angels are a very complex fish. Most people who breed them just do so to produce a fish or a fish that looks like so.

Beyond this there is another way to breed angels. To breed for calm and peaceful angels. It does a breeder no good to have angels that damage their partners. To spend 9 to 12 months raising perfect specimens to breed together is an absolute waste of time if you place them together and they destroy each other. A wise breeder chooses them like the breeder of every other form of domesticated animal, for docility.

I will raise 50 fish from a chosen spawn and slowly choose the ones I want until I am down to twelve after 10 months. The final twelve are chosen for shape, genetic expression, and conduct. My very best male has had over 30 different female partners in 14 months. He has never marked a single one, not so much as a torn fin. He is very large, his body is the size of my hand, his dimension is 11" from top of dorsal to lowest pint of anal fin. He is a lover in a genetic form. I cross many of my lines into his genes to get this trait of tolerance into my fish.

Those fish which attack each other and can not play nice have no place in my collection. This is why I can place my angelfish fish together with no incidents.

Just as a vicious wolf is now your lap dog, the angel too can and does exist as tamed.

Yet my wild ones do not attack or even damage each other. They posture for certain but rarely make contact. In the wild I suppose the insane ones just do not find a partner and do not reproduce these insane fish.

And so I blame poor breeding by humans and do not blame the fish.

[Dave Waits]

Indian Woods is correct, I used to breed them myself a long time ago. I had six full-grown adults in a 55 gallon show tank. Happy, peaceful group, never any aggression.

But, they do need some room.