Breeders are now producing angels which have more blue on them than ever before. How long until they're as blue as Discus, wonders Matt Clarke.
While they're not really my cup of tea, I do find it quite impressive than fish breeders have managed to take a species of cichlid that was originally brown and turn it into something much more colorful.
"Blue" angels, a selectively-bred variety of Pterophyllum scalare, are turning up in the shops all the time now and the blue on them is getting much more dominant. Like many so-called "blue" fish, they're not really blue yet, but they're definitely getting there.
Maybe it's not going to be too many years before we might have angels that are genuinely a solid blue colour, like the selectively-bred forms of Discus or the newer Electric blue ram, Mikrogeophagus ramirezi.
Some breeders are clearly going for just this trait as there are a number of breeders, such as Ken Kennedy, who are already producing named varieties of blue angel, some of which have just gone on sale over here.
Give it another decade and we might see the shops full of genuinely bright blue angles. You never know...