Silver Ghost Angelfish

Ghost angels have a single stripeless gene, which causes them to lose the normal vertical black body bands of a typical silver angel. The expression of this trait is quite variable, with some fish showing no sign of body bands at all, but retaining the tail and eye stripe. Whilst others have quite extensive areas of broken banding and/or random black splotches. The example above is a fairly typical example, the red dorsal fin will sadly fade as this young fish ages.

This variety is easily confused with the very similar clown angelfish, in general clowns have more, and more random, black patches, but the real key to telling these two varieties apart is to look at the pattern of dorsal striations. A mature ghost will have the normal horizontal striations of typical silver angel, whilst a clown with have the much more chaotic pattern associated with a zebra.

These days, ghost angels are not a particularly popular variety, and are not produced commercially, but they are sometimes produced by breeders as a by product, or stepping stone, in the production of other varieties. In particular blue ghosts and blushing varieties like "blue" koi