ANGELFISH AIDS/VIRUS

Question
Dear Mr. Robbins,
I firmly agree with your response about the person ask why his Angelfish were acting strange and dying.  The symptoms you described were exactly the same as mine.  I have an Angelfish (Scalare) who is beautiful vivid, active, smart and is as healthy-as-a-horse.  We call him "Eddy" and he's been in my 80 gal. tank for over 7 years.  Ed must be about 10 yrs. old as I very seldom see an Angelfish as big as him.  Ed's girlfriend died from a natural occurance called Egg-Bloat, which is somewhat common for female Angelfish.  I've lost 5 female Angelfish in the past month (one at a time) who, I'm convinced, died of that Angelfish Plaque/Virus.  None of the other fish in my tank show any signs of any illness; they are all quiet healthy and active.  But everytime I introduce a new Angel to my tank, within 2-3 hours, they begin to act strangely, like the strangeness you described.  So Eddy will remain in my tank by himself until he dies of old age.  He seems very happy and contended anyway.  I'm investing in a 150 gal. tank in a few weeks and any new Angels will be living there, not with Ed.
Thanks for your time and knowledge about this Angelfish Virus, which many people know nothing about.
Dave M.  

Answer
Hi Dave;

Thank you for visiting! I appreciate your input. What a shame that you have to keep Ed alone. My experiences with this nasty disease have been similar. We would get several babies in the store from a wholesaler and despite all efforts we would lose all or most of them. Mixing them with older ones became disastrous and we went several months with no angels in the store at all. We learned as much as we could about it at the time but it was tough since no one knew what it was. Farms were losing thousands of them. We encouraged people not to mix a lot of angels together so they don't have to lose so many if a new one is carrying it. Very sad.

Keep up the good work and have fun with your new tank!

At Your Service;
Chris Robbins