On their arrival home, we placed an opaque perspex divider into our six foot tank which divided off a two foot section for our new arrivals. The water temperature was 25C, had a pH of about 7.4 and there was quite a bit of shellgrit in the gravel. They were fed garden worms, locally caught live freshwater Shrimp and Daphnia magna (Daphnia), frozen Artemia salina (Brine Shrimp), dried Tubifex rivulorum (Tubificid Worms). and flake food. Their favourite was definitely the earthworms and lumps of dried tubificid worms.

 

The rewards were fast. for only three evenings later the two larger "Moggies" were side by side on the back wall, spawning, one laying eggs and the other (close by at all times fertilising them and when spotted, at least 100 eggs had already been laid. Their sexes were impossible for us to tell apart, only in this case the female was slightly larger. The male must have let his guard down at one time as a third "Moggie" got into the act, the smallest one looked to be laying eggs also in the same place, but as soon as the male noticed this, the littlest member of the spawning activity was ousted. The egg laying ritual went on for a few hours.

 

Days 1 & 2. Next morning the male was lying against the back wall protecting and fanning the eggs like a good Dad to be. In the few days to follow only a few of the eggs went white. They were all supported by a thin thread attached to the wall and when he fanned them you would see the little eggs waving back to him.

 

Day 3. A black spot in the eggs was noticed, they were eyeing up, so this meant they were well on their way. We decided to artificially hatch some of the eggs, as we were not sure if they would be eaten when hatched.

 

We held a net under the eggs and scraped a few off with a razor, cutting only the threads. We left him with three quarters of the eggs. All during this movement of the eggs. Papa moggie just moved aside and when we were done, he returned as it nothing had happened. We took these in the net inside a bucket of water to a waiting tank filled with the same water they came out of. It had a temperature of 26C and a bit of shell grit which had been added earlier. We placed the bet horizontally in the tank and fastened it, so it was one to two inches under the top of the water and set an airstone next to it, so bubbles were moving the surface around the eggs.

 

Day 4. On the morning after the eggs had been moved it was discovered that the little "Moggies" had hatched. It was-a tunny sight seeing them through a magnifying glass, they were just eyes and tummy, two big black eyes on a big egg sac and a thin sliver tor a tail. They were still in groups as we had taken them off the glass and they had not begun to swim freely.

 

Day 5. The morning after there were already free swimming try in both tanks, although, not all were yet. Only 4.5 days after being laid and already we have free swimming fry, not bad.

 

It took from 4.5 to 6.5 days until they were all free swimming. They were spread all over the tank and were fed Euglena, Anguillila aceti (Vinegar Eels) and fine powdered food for the first few days, then newly hatched Brine Shrimp was added to their diet. Also a variety of fine dried foods and live foods as they grew.

 

In the tank with the adults, the eggs were all hatched and fry were free swimming. A number had been caught in the filter but lots of them were still swimming happily around. None of the adults seemed interested in them even after we added Daphnia, amazingly the adults picked out all the Daphnia and left the fry alone which was almost the same size.

 

After having the Mogurnda adspersa for only four weeks we had had four spawnings with four lots of free swimming fry, these were swimming amongst the adults not being bothered at all. The two larger adult "Moggies" were the only ones doing the spawning and each spawning sight was a different one. The third spawning was done on a Saturday evening and by Wednesday evening all the fry were free swimming and the same two were at it again, at a new sight and these eggs were free swimming by Monday morning.

 

The young seem quite hardy and the adults are definitely hardy, and easy to breed when in their breeding season. They are also quite an attractive looking fish, however we would not trust them in the same tank with anything smaller than there own size, as they have a reputation of being fin nippers and probably more so at breeding time.

 

degrees celsius and neutral. Our male Melanotaenia splendida splendida was showing off, dancing around with his fins wide open wide in front of his female. But, there was nowhere for them to spawn. In a flash we grabbed some spare Java Moss we had floating around and broke a small 2" x 2" piece of foam off and hung the moss over it in a corner of the community tank, to form an instant spawning mop of moss.

 

Prom then on we had two programmes to watch. The male kept dancing around the hanging Java Moss and darting back and forth to the female trying to entice her to come up and see him some time, which she did. This went on for ages, he never seemed to tire.

 

Next morning the Java Moss was inspected and unbelievably there were a large number of small clear eggs there, we thought for sure they would have been cleaned up by the rest of the tank's inhabitants by this time. The moss with eggs were transferred into another tank for hatching and another moss mop was set up, which was then removed from the community tank the following day with even more eggs in it. The temperature in the 2' hatching tank was 27 degrees celsius.

 

We did not keep the light away from the tank, (in fact it received about 2 hours of sunlight a day). A small amount of infusoria was put into the hatching tank on the 4th day in readiness and the eggs started hatching on the 5th day and were still hatching up to 9 days after being put in. The try are free swimming upon hatching and from only 2 days worth of Java Moss being hung from the community tank we were no doubt pleased when about 200 fry hatched. A small number of eggs went fungus but most of them hatched. A number also would have been eaten by other fish in the community tank, before being removed, but at the time we did not want to disturb the breeding pair.

 

Intusoria, liquid fry food and other micron dried foods were given 4-6 times daily and increased as more hatched. The fry mainly swim in the top 3" of the tank and we always left some Java Moss in the tank because they seemed to be feeding from it. From 3-4 weeks old they grow quite rapidly and are able to eat live Daphnia and Cyclops. Their rainbow shape and fins become more noticeable at 6 weeks old.

 

I call them "an intermediate -sized cichlid", as both sexes grow to three inches. About the only way to find the sex difference of the curviceps is, with mature fish, the dorsal and the anal fins of the male are more elongated in typical cichlid fashion. With conditioning the female will be a little plumper, and if they are of the same age a little shorter maybe.

 

They are a quiet peaceful fish and non-destructive of plants which merits a place in any representative collection. It is not well to place them with lively fishes, and it is important to provide them with sufficient retreats if you want to view their normal habits. I personally find that if you keep them in a smaller tank (two foot) they can't get "lost from your sight" as far as picking out the sex or dominant fish difference, and what is going on in the tank. Of course a two foot tank like this would have to be a species tank. If you want a community tank it would have to be much larger, to permit individual territories to be established.

 

My attempts at breeding the curviceps:

 

First, I found out, that you need a male and a female. (Editor's note: this is not as silly as it sounds. Many's the time that two fish have been thrown into a breeding tank together with never a single fry resulting: quite often It is caused by not having a true pair.) Healthy onesat that. (Well conditioned).

 

Just previous to the Society’s 1983 Sydney fish buying spree, I bought a female curviceps at a club auction and I managed to buy a well-dorsalled male (as compared to the female). On returning home I set my two curviceps up in a two foot six inch tank in my bedroom, and let them grow to maturity. And do what all good cichlids do, or so I thought. But alas, the male, for reasons of his own, perished.

 

It was some time (back in those days, and still is today) before I was able to locate more curviceps, locally. I was unable to sex these specimens as they were only half grown (I can't remember which shop 1 bought them from) and much time passed before they grew to maturity. Counting the original female, I now had one male and four females. The male paired up with one of the females so 1 removed the other three fishes.

 

The curviceps is a bottom spawner, preferring a flat rock and my first three to four spawnings saw the eggs being eaten by the male, about one day after the eggs were laid. I submersed a net breeder at the top of the tanks and on the next spawning (approximately three weeks) I moved the egg covered rock to the net breeder so that the eggs could not be eaten by the parents. Water circulation over the eggs was maintained by an airstone in a corner of the net breeder and the eggs hatched in three to four days. However, as the eggs hatched, and the fry wriggled to the bottom of the net, their parents tried to rescue them by sucking them through the fine mesh, which killed the fry (probably by bruising).

 

On the next spawning I did the same but removed the parents to join the other three females in a twenty inch tank. When the eggs hatched I turned the airstone bubble velocity down to reduce the water movement within the net breeder so as not to risk bruising the fry. They became free-swimming after another four days so I started to feed with Liquid Fry (emulsion fry food). Seven days later their number had dwindled to zero, due either to over-feeding and polluting the tank or just plain starvation. (I did not do any water changes in the tank during this spawning.)

 

The male had again paired up in the twenty inch tank (I don't know if it was the same female). I removed the others and let the pair spawn freely in the twenty inch tank as the twenty-six inch tank was now being used for Angelfish. I did not remove the eggs and after two spawnings the fry reached the wriggler stage before being eaten. With the next spawnings I alternatively tried removing the male or the female but the fry still perished. Then from one spawning, the fry were free swimming for a whole week before being eaten or vanishing.

 

At the next spawning I took no chances, and removed both parents and placed an airstone near the eggs. At this stage, all my tanks were filtered with undergravel filters and the filter-plates in this tank were covered by approximately two inches of crushed gravel, about 3/16ths of an inch in diameter. crushed gravel makes for larger spaced cavities between the individual pebbles than if 'rounded' river gravel was used.

 

A few days after free-swimming I noticed that the fry were going 'caving' between the gravel and the glass sides of the tank. Either by natural instinct to 'go to ground', or chasing minute food on the pebbles, they appeared to get lost or stuck in the gravel about three quarters of an inch below the substrate surface. With my attempts to dig or syphon the fry out of the gravel I found that I was only hurting them so I let them be and after a couple of days had lost the lot.

 

Whilst visiting David Barnard, an aquarist who had raised curviceps fry with their parents, I found that he mixed his Liquid Fry in a cup of aquarium aquarium water before pouring it into the tank, whereas I had always just dribbled a few drops into the tank and swirled it around with my finger to mix it in. Sometimes I would miss a drop or two and this would settle in a globule on the bottom of the tank, and shortly turn to fungus.

 

So it was about this time in my hobby that I started to take everything into perspective and was eventually successful in raising curviceps fry (away from their parents) with the knowledge perceived by personal experience and seeing other aquarist's versions of 'doing the same thing'.

 

My useful information about dwarf cichlids:

 

  - They require regular water changes, as they are apt to become diseased in old water

 

  - For maintainance, they require a temperature of seventy-four to seventy-six degrees F and a ten gallon tank minimum. For breeding, a temperature of eighty-two to eighty-six degrees F.

 

  - You can use a peat filter in the fry raising tank, keeps the water crystal clear and bacteria down to a minimum. (Editor's note: Don't try this one with Tanganyikan dwarfs such as Julidochromis or Lamprologus, it makes the water go acid.). This is better than using dyes such as Methylene Blue or Acriflavine, but I have used both in combination with Malachite Green in the form of Aquarium Pharmaceuticals' 'Multi Cure' with success.

 

  - If the adults have not been properly conditioned, the finest dyes will not keep the eggs alive.

 

  - Kribs (Pelvicachromis pulcher and relatives) and Nanochromis nudiceps have large fry which accept baby brine shrimp for first foods, can use under-gravel filters.

 

  - Apistogramma sp. and Aeauidens curviceps have small fry, capable of being lost in filters. They need small first fry foods but once they are big enough to accept baby brine shrimp the hobbyist has then achieved a major advancement in his or her 'Aquaristic Knowledge'.

 

Editor's Note: Thanks to Doug for sharing his long struggle with curviceps with us. No wonder he now concentrates on Rainbowfishes, something he does very well.

 

The 4 Emperor Tetras are in a 2 foot x 1 foot x 1 foot community tank. Their tank mates consist of a small Bristlenose Catfish, 2 adult Neon Tetras and a small Silver Shark. For the time being they get along together just fine, but things may change as the Shark and Catfish get bigger.

 

Filtration is by undergravel. Lighting is provided by a home-made wooden box containing a 25W clear incandescent light bulb. Tank furnishings consist of a few rocks and numerous plants both planted and floating. Conditions in this tank must be good as the plants grow at an amazing rate, something I cannot achieve in my other tanks. pH is 6.5 and steady and temperature 19 maintained at approximately 26 C. I still have to purchase hardness, nitrite and nitrate test kits, so 1 can't tell you any other readings.

 

My son Matthew first noticed a couple of fry approximately 12 mm in length, and after sitting beside the tank for over an hour his mum spotted 6 fry in all. I stated before that the tank is heavily planted so there may be more fry. I feel very lucky to have had 6 fry survive as feeding on eggs and fry by other tank mates must have been almost a frenzy. Constant observation shows 1 male guards the fry closely and woe betide any of his tank mates crossing over any of his invisible (to me) territorial lines. I don't know if this is normal behaviour for Tetras (Editor's Note: very few Tetras have this paternal streak in them, but we are lucky that one so freely available as the Emperor has it) but it is enjoyable to watch. For the fry to be this large I feel that they have been in the tank a long time, and I may have siphoned any number of them out in the 20% water change that this tank is subjected to only once a month, as against weekly in the other tanks. As the fry weren't noticed until recently, they were not fed any special fry food, but I presume that they thought it was Christmas when I occasionally fed the baby Brine Shrimp to the community and it's my guess the fry found come form of live food growing amongst the vegetation and made the most of whatever flake ete they could find. Fearing more predation I had fellow members and friends the Keenans verify the spawning (I normally wait for Doug or Andrew) and I feel guilty claiming spawning points but a spawn is a spawn is a spawn! One day soon I will separate the pair and have a serious attempt at spawning them. I'm not sure if it's only wishful thinking but Matthew believes the female Emperor is ripe with eggs again - only time will tell. In the meantime the tank sits in Matthew's bedroom and gives him many hours of pure enjoyment, as any fishoholic will testify.

 

On their arrival home they were placed into a tank (temporary) of their own with an addition of 1 teaspoonful of salt per 4 litres of water. A short time later we acquired a 20" tank at an irresistible price at Jim Atkinsons' Auction, so we set this up for the Bumblebees. We placed gravel, an assortment of plants, 2 empty Mystery snail shells, 1 ceramic ornament and 1 clay pot in the tank. The shells, pot and ornament were covered with Java moss, cascading down and around giving privacy without obstruction to the entrances of the items placed in. The water mixture was the same 1 teaspoonful of salt per 4 litres. The pH was about 7.6, the temperature 25C and the only filtration and aeration was supplied by a corner box filter. There was duckweed and some watersprite floating on the surface.

 

We had 8 Bumblebees in the tank and only one of them appeared to us to be a definite male, so he had his own harem. The females seemed to have their own little spots in the tank, but the male went anywhere he wanted. They were fed exclusively on live foods, such as Daphnia magna (Daphnia), Cyclops, Mosquito Larvae, Tubifex rivulorum (Tubificid worms) and the occasional live Artemia salina (Brine Shrimp). The tank was the easiest to maintain out of all our tanks and as it was the only one by itself, we sometimes forgot to do its water change.

 

One weekend while we were doing water changes we realised that the bumblebee tank had somehow missed out for a month, so we promptly rectified this by giving it the usual 20% water change. It had entered our minds of course to one day try and breed these eye catching little fish but it was going to be sooner than we had thought.

 

The next evening one of us just happend to be sitting in the right place at the right time looking into the right tank. The only male Bumblebee kept disappearing into one of the empty Mystery snail shells. He would then turn around inside and with his head sticking slightly out would then begin to flap his pectoral fins. This looked very interesting to us, so we looked even closer. We could not see inside the shell as we had done too good a job at giving them privacy but could see a few things on the edge of the shell that looked like eggs. We watched him for quite some time and he never went far from the shell, frequently he went inside, turned around, and whilst stationary in an upright position, would fan.

 

We quickly re-read all the articles we could find on Bumblebees and discovered that it we left them there they would probably be eaten when free swimming. Also, we couldn't leave it too long if we were going to do something about it as they would hatch in a couple of days.

 

We figured the eggs to be 1 day old (as we found out a while later we were wrong). We decided to artificially hatch them in a separate tank.

 

Day 2 - The next afternoon we could wait no longer to see what was actually in the shell. We had prepared a separate 8x14 inch tank with water that was mainly from the breeding tank and placed clean, snail free, Java moss on the bottom and it had a temperature of 25C.

 

Next we moved the shell in water into the tank sitting it on a plastic vial with sinkers and an airstone in. We got a fine stream of bubbles going in front of the shell and we then set about having a good look at all the eggs we had happily seen in there on their trip down. Another empty snail shell was placed where we stole this one from and the male made a bee-line for it, went in and continued to fan non-existent eggs until the next day when he must have realised there was something funny going on.

 

Now back to the eggs. We moved them just at the right time as they were all eyed up, approximately 85 of them on the inside of the shell, all stuck in their own place individually. The eggs were now approximately two days old, we thought. Later that same night we looked in at our surprise catch and notice that several had hatched and were moving around in the water with their full egg sacs, this made our night.

 

Day 3 - The next morning, we were surprised even more, as about 80% of the eggs had hatched, some swimming around, others just laying around and the rest still in the shell not yet hatched. A small amount of Euglena was added to the tank, as an article we had read said "they need to have food within 36 hours of hatching".

 

Day 4 - Was similar to day 3 only now there were a few swimming around without egg sacs. There were still quite a few lying around, still some moving, others not, we had already lost some. There were still some in the shell not yet hatched. A number seemed to have hatched and died, we couldn't work out what we had done wrong. While watching them swimming jerkily around it was noticed that the heater was on, as there was a heat haze rising up. Helplessly we watched 2 fry in a moment of rest land on the heater or near it and in a second they were dead, this seemed to be the reason for so many dead fry. As soon as this happened the heater was moved off the side of the tank to the back with the heating element end in the back corner that was the darkest. Hopefully now as most things are attracted towards the light none of our fry would be fried. We had never seen this happen before nor had we even thought of it happening, but hope it will help others to prevent anything like this.

 

Day 5 - There seemed to be about only 20 little Bumblebees left, they were being fed Euglena. The fry did have particularly small mouths but they should have been able to handle Euglena. We could not understand why we had lost so many. A couple of snails were added to keep the tank clean.

 

Day 6 - Nothing new in our Bumblebee fry tank but where the adults were we noticed the male acting strangely again. This time in and out of the clay pot. We placed a mirror and torch behind at an angle so we could see in and were vary pleased to see him guarding and fanning another clutch of eggs. A second chance for us.

 

We moved the clay pot with eggs to a nine inch tank immersed in another tank so there was no exposed heater. The temerature here was 26C and the water was all out of the tank the eggs came from as a 9" tank doesn't hold much water. We placed an airstone down the centre of the pot that was placed on its end, with wide opening up. A fine mist of bubbles would fan the eggs. Looking in over the top with a torch we could see the eggs for a daily check at least (more like four to five times a day). We waited and waited for them to eye up, it took about four days until we could see them eyeing up, so the first lot we had were laid before we thought and the books we had read did not seem to match what was happening for us. It took six days for the eggs to start hatching and a further three days for all to hatch. It only took about 24 hours after they had hatched for their egg sacs to be absorbed. As soon as they hatched they were trying to swim around with jerky movements.

 

We placed the other previous spawn of Bumblebees in with these- as they had not grown much and their numbers had dwindled to only 12. They seemed to be lazy eaters and although there was plenty of food tor them they were fussy. We fed them Euglean, green water, vinegar eels, liquifry and a small amount of Brine shrimp which the first batch could now handle. We added liquifry this time as the fry are very small. They were clear little slivers with little black eyes and a small black mark in their tummies. This time we did not lose anywhere as many fry, probably because there was no heater to fry the fry.

 

We had about 60 swimming around slowly but happily. A lot of their time was spent pretty much motionless then all of a sudden they would dart forward then stop again. They are very slow growing and didn't seem to eat much no matter how much food we gave them. Once they were able to handle Brine shrimp then they would fill themselves up on this and it was easy to pick the ones who did as they had full red-brown tummies. Don't think we found their perfect first food for them, maybe they need something different as they do come from slightly brackish waters. They did seem to go better in the warmer water of 27C and once able to handle Brine Shrimp which was at about one and a half weeks old then they ate their fill each day. When the Bumblebees were large enough fine cyclops and daphnia were added to their diet. By the way the male is happily guarding another clutch of eggs in a different place this time, think we will leave him to this lot as we have that usual problem of not enough tanks and no room for anymore.

 

I have used the method described by Frank, i.e. lowering the temperature and then raising it again, and with the Bronze Catfish (Corydoras aenus) this worked fairly well. I might add that watching these fish spawn is absolutely fascinating – much more interesting than any other fish I have spawned. All the fish (I used 2 pairs at a time) go berserk and dash around the tank for ages, only pausing to produce another egg or batch of eggs. This may go on for hours at a time.

 

Perhaps I should start at the beginning. The first cats I decided to spawn were aenus - the bronze. I had 2 large females (about 3 years old and about 6 cm long) and two smaller and younger males. The fish are easy to sex - the females are much stockier than the males and when full of eggs look like they have swallowed a marble. The males are sleek and very much slimmer. The males often have a taller dorsal fin as well (particularly in the Peppered Catfish Corydoras paleatus).

 

All the fish had been kept in a community tank and the only real concession I made to them was avoiding a lot of salt (I still add 1 teaspoonful per gallon in their water), feeding tablets or pellets that would sink to the bottom or slightly overfeeding the other fish in the tank, as the Catfish were really bought as scavengers. When I decided to move the tank to another location I took the opportunity to catch the Bronze Catfish and put them in a different tank. Anyone who has tried to catch a big Catfish in a well planted community tank will realise why I hadn't really tried to catch them before.

 

So they were put into a bare tank until I could set up a breeding tank. However the new water and the slight change of temperature combined to induce the fish to spawn within a couple of days (and before I had got around to setting up the planned breeding tank). I set up another tank with gravel, undergravel filter, and aged water and transferred the fish to the new tank. They spawned again a week later. I counted about 300 eggs all together (in both tanks). The Bronze Catfish lay large clutches of eggs at a time - 20 or 30 is quite common. These are stuck in clumps all over the place. A lot of eggs are not fertile and cloud over and fungus within a couple of days. I assume this is why they are so well scattered, as one bad egg in a bunch can infect those nearby. In the first tank I left the eggs as they were and lost most of them (the tank was not filtered so I lost a lot of the fry). In the second tank I removed all the cloudy eggs as soon as I spotted them and the success rate was much higher. I raised about 100 to saleable size. They were fed on the usual mix of live foods as often as possible. Water conditions don't seem to be that important - I used half old (from the community tank) and half new (aged) water. Hardness was about 6-10 degrees DH, pH 6.8-7, and temperature 72-76 degrees F. I put a handful of shell grit into the growing tank - supposed to help in the bone formation in the growing fry.

 

To spawn other species (C. paleatus, C. metae, C. hastatus) I use a slightly different method. A tank was set up with gravel, undergravel filter, a heater, and water partly from a community tank and partly new. The fish to be spawned (all I had - 2 to 8 of a species) were introduced and fed the best food that I had - mainly worms such as white worms and Tubifex (live). If the fish are mature they will start to spawn within a week. I don't bother to lower the temperature or change any water (the tanks are fairly large and only contain a few fish). The Peppered Catfish produce a cluster of from 2 to 5 eggs while the metae and hastatus produce single or pairs of eggs. Again they are stuck all over the tank (which also contains several large rocks and an Indonesian Fern). The tanks don't have lights on them so the plant selected has to be a low light preference type. The fish often deposit eggs on the plant. Eggs are produced once a week - 20 to 30 at a time. To prevent the parents from eating them I transfer all good eggs to a small net-type fry trap within the breeding tank. The eggs, which are quite sticky, can be carefully removed from the glass etc. and dropped into the net trap where they take 4 to 5 days to hatch at 72 to 74 degrees F. Feeding on Microworms and newly hatched brine shrimp can begin after another 3 to 4 days. I leave a piece of the plant in the trap as the fry are very timid and need a bit of security. As long as the parents get really good food they seem to go on spawning weekly for as long as I want.

 

Corydoras hastatus don't eat the eggs or fry so they are left in the same tank all the time.

 

Editor's Note: Corydoras pygmaeus (another dwarf species) can also be trusted with their fry. Ours lived in a 30 cm cube full of Java Moss and there always seemed to be fry in the tank. For any of our newer members looking for a deeper involvement in the hobby, they could do worse than specialize in the Corydoradinae (Corydoras and relatives). For more Information ace "A Complete Introduction to Corydoras and Related Catfish" by Dr Warren E. Burgess (TFH 1987), which is in the club library. We used to have a few specialist Catfish breeders in the Society, but now it is a rare night that two species are up for auction in a single night.

 

The next problem was that our tank broke at a joint. Mum and I were madly grabbing whatever we could and putting water and fry into them - although a majority both ended up on/in the carpet. Later on I checked the breeding trap and found a small fry (I did not know if it was a Danio or a Black Tetra) I don't know how he survived - so I called him lucky. When it was about 3 or 4 weeks old I found out that it was a Danio. During our mad rush to save as many fish as possible, we had also saved some Danios.

 

Since then I have bred them twice more - we now have lots. There are three types; spotted, striped and gold with stripes (perhaps Renee can explain this). I've got them in my tank with neons and Black Tetras, all are doing fine.

 

 

Preparation for breeding: If you are not keeping the adults on live food, it might not be a bad idea to hunt up some mealworms, earthworms, water boatmen, or feeder Goldfish or Guppies to plump up the females (watch feeder fish to ensure they don't snack on the Axies feathery external gills). Do this in July/August in preparation for the breeding season, which runs roughly August to February in our cold corner of Australia, although we have had them spawn In July in years past. When they are ready to spawn the females will fill up with eggs, while the males (the ones with the longer, narrower heads) seem to swell around the vent.

 

The Spawning: When the pair are properly conditioned spawning should follow as a matter of course. Sometimes, however, they will need a nudge along. A good water change will often do the trick, but if a change of more than 30 % is contemplated then please use aged water. We have never had any trouble getting ours to spawn, even when on a sole diet of trout pellets (they must have been really keen!).

 

After waltzing or dancing around the female, the male deposits spermatophores (sperm packets) on rocks or driftwood. The female then picks these up, and soon begins to look for a place to lay her eggs. Bushy plants such as Foxtail or Java Moss are preferred (the latter for a preference, it seems to do better in lower water temperatures and light), but any available surface can be used. Tank walls, gravel, filter risers, rocks, all are strewn with the eggs. The eggs swell up overnight, roughly doubling in size. Usually the first indication you will have that they have even thought of spawning will be to come out in the morning and find the whole tank littered with lines of eggs! When they have finished swelling (to about 8-10 mm) they can be removed to the hatching tank. Don't worry if you have to wait a couple of days to set up your spare tank, the parents may eat an egg or two accidentally but won't actively hunt the youngsters until after they are hatched. Hatching takes as little as a week, or as long as a month, depending on water temperature.

 

Adding Methylene Blue to the hatching tank seems to accomplish nothing. Simply place the eggs in their own tank with gentle filtration and pick out the rotten ones as they appear. Dead in shell/infertile spawn seem to go opaque fairly quickly, and should be removed as soon as possible. Axolotyl eggs are clear, so It is possible to observe the embryos developing. It is interesting to see the single cell divide by meiosis into many cells over the course of days, and finally become recognisable as a growing larva. When they get close to hatching they start to thrash about, eventually tearing the outer membrane of the egg.

 

The Youngsters: Axolotyl larvae seem to need food within a day of hatching. We have tried all sorts of first foods over the years and have yet to come up with a better one than Cyclops, courtesy of our local farm dam.

 

We have tried shredded beef heart (turns the water foul), powdered trout pellet (ditto the foul water), brine shrimp nauplii (die in the cooler water too fast, and always seem to be hunting the light at the top of the tank, which places them out of reach of the lazier, younger larvae) and frozen foods of different sorts that never seemed to work that well. We have never killed off a spawning with disease brought in 'from the wild', but suppose that there is some risk of this. It is probably likely that we never will bring a disease home that will affect the Axies, owing to a decrease in wild amphibians, but the risk remains. Maybe if they were cultured in a backyard pond...

 

For older larvae Blackworms are good, provided your tank is free from any substrate (gravel), and will take them right through to three months of age, when they can go onto Mealworms. Blackworms are a close relative of the Tubificid (Tubifex) worms, but are much cleaner in their habits and correspondingly easier to store. At three to four months, if you have done your job well, they are ready to go off to their new homes. We cannot recommend placing a juvenile with an adult of more than a third greater body length, because all you have then is an expensive breakfast for the older Axolotyls.

 

The other requirement when raising Axolotyl larvae is space. They go through a highly cannibalistic phase, between six weeks and three months. They need to be sorted according to size. It is not too ridiculous to allow a square foot of tank bottom (i.e. surface area) each. otherwise you will end up with a whole lot of legless Axies (which opens them to fungal infection) because they will snap at anything that moves, including their siblings. This is not a bad thing in and of itself, (although hard on the larvae concerned), but it can be a real job convincing a prospective buyer that the missing limbs will grow back.

 

If you can't get hold of Blackworms, the youngsters can be raised entirely on Daphnia to the three-month stage, but you must be prepared to take a couple of trips a week to the dam or sewerage works. The same goes for Water Boatmen, or Backswimmers as they are also known, which are relished by all ages, right up to and including adult Axies. Bloodworms are good, but hard to find in sufficient numbers to feed a hundred hungry mouths. Mosquito larvae tend to move too fast, thus filling the fishroom (or family home) with buzzing Mozzies. If you were really keen you could put Earthworms through the kitchen blender, but like the aforementioned beefheart this would go off quickly. We did raise eighty odd youngsters a couple of years ago entirely on trout pellets, but it meant an hour a day, every day, siphoning off the half rotten uneaten stuff, and believe me, the novelty soon wore off.

 

It may sometimes happen that some of your youngsters will lose their frilly external gills, their tails will become narrower, their eyes looking like bugging right out of their heads. These are metamorphosing into the 'adult' salamander form, in fact are properly called Mexican Salamanders. This happened to us for the first time this year, and was quite a surprise. We were raising this year's larvae in fiberglass vats outside in our back yard. A lot of leaves fell from a neighbour's trees into one particular vat, turning it very acid. When this was noticed the larvae were already on their way to adulthood. They need to breath atmospheric oxygen to survive, so are in different accommodations with shallower water and rocks to crawl on to. I am building them a palludarium (another article) so that they can enjoy the best of both worlds, wet and dry. There are not a lot of references to the metamorphosed form in the literature so we are experimenting to find the best possible housing for them. They continue to feed in the water so larger aquatic insects and Mealworms are sustaining them at the moment.

 

The raising of Axolotyls is not an easy task. They need about the same level of care as large tropical fish fry. But don't let that discourage you. If you have access to live food, have sufficient tank space, and apply yourself, you can breed and raise Axolotyls.

 

I decided not to and they were dumped into a tank with all my other Dwarf Cichlids - these fish which I knew nothing about and could find very little on.

 

A bit of research revealed that they were from the Nile region of Africa and had been kept in aquaria since the late 19th Century. The water should, I was told, be between 7.4 to 7.8 pH and temperature 23C for keeping and 7.6 to 7.8 pH and temperature 25C for breeding. Oh well, I thought, pH of 6.8 is too low. So much for breeding....

 

One month later the male was circling the female over the substrate, spitting bits of gravel out and digging a sizeable hole. Closer inspection revealed that her throat pouch was bulging slightly and more eggs were on the gravel below her. About 30 minutes later the female retreated and spawning finished. The pH was 6.6 to 6.8 and temperature 26C. Their diet was simply flake food.

 

I removed the female to her own 18 inch tank where fifteen days later sixteen fry were released. There are now nine left, growing well on a diet of Brine Shrimp and finely crushed flake. Two weeks after the spawn was released the female had another mouthful. So much for high pH and live food!

 

Oh, and the 'Multicolour' shows in more than name when the male settles down - he is beautiful.

 

The fact is, this fish is a very attractive tetra with an elongated dorsal fin, reminding you of a much smaller version of the popular but expensive Bleeding Heart Tetra. It comes from Guyana and lower Amazon tributaries and looks great when placed in a tank with a dark background and natural plants. When males start to perform their fighting 'dance' with stretched dorsal fins, the admiration of a visitor is fully captured.

 

The colour of the fish is a sort of pale grey body in combination with a black flag like dorsal fin and red fins and tail. The behaviour is similar to other tetras as with the body shape of this fish. Phantom, callistus or bleeding heart tetras even neon tetras all move, hide or eat in a similar pattern. They withstand hard handling and fast changes in temperature or pH range. Simply they are one of those ideal fish for anyone.

 

But, there are troubles encountered when breeding this fish. When I saw these fish tor the first time in some years, during the Society's trip to Melbourne, the shop was the very first stop and considering the risk of two days cold storing (winter) and quite high prices, I decided to shop around. It was a mistake and I have not seen any in any other shop.

 

After nearly a year, Bates Aquarium and Pet Centre of Fyshwick introduced this fish to Canberra. The fish was better priced than in Melbourne and the well stocked tank offered better choice of young healthy specimens.

 

Before my first tries to spawn the fish, even before you buy any fish, it is recommended to read as much as possible about that particular fish. As it is known, this fish presents a problem having a high percentage of males without the egg fertilising capacity. This was a reason to buy seven males and five females, to increase the chance to have at least one performer. The selection of a male is easy, as they have a much longer dorsal tin than the female.

 

The real nightmare started when spawning after spawning produced fungused eggs. None of the males performed and my heavy investment went sour.

 

Finally, by shear luck, I had found a single fry in a spawning and isolated the male for further trials. That tiny fry was the reason to forget the other males and concentrate on this particular one.

 

The next spawning, which was given all care and cleaness of the bare tank with nylon fibres as the spawning medium, the pair produced around fifty unfungused eggs, this was an excellent success, the eggs were a brownish colour, the usuall tetra size, hatched in 24-36 hours and the young were swimming in five to six days after hatching. All great and easy in that time.

 

But problems were to come, the little try tend to hide, and are very shy, spend most of their time in corners or parallel to glass walls. They do not move freely around the tank or close to the tank bottom to search tor food. This makes feeding of fry difficult and even when very good natural food, nauplia of cyclops, was available the growth was disappointing. Some of the cyclops matured and were attacking the fry, daily I had lost a few until I removed all the growing cyclops.

 

The shyness of the fry disappears after five to six weeks when the colour and body shape starts to imitate the adults.

 

Finally I have finished with twelve young fish only, a pretty miserable result. But on the bright side, I have always experienced the first generation of imported fish give a lot of problems, which is similar for many other species. The second and following generations brought up locally was much easier to breed.

 

The following spawinings were much better after good care in removing any fungous eggs, I managed around 80 fry. But after 14 days, I had to leave tor three days and expecting the same problems which are encountered as with many other fish, they would survive for this short time on the introduction of some green algae and infusoria as the emergency rations for those few days. The result was another disaster as these fish need much more pampering and care when very young. The whole lot disappeared even when everything looked well.

 

It is not very easy fish to breed indeed.

 

I placed these fish in a tank by themselves and fed them heavily on chopped earthworms and minced beet heart for about six months until the males were six inches long and the females about four inches long.

 

One of the males grew much faster than the others and very quickly killed two of the females and one of the other males. The remaining pair were definitely compatible, they showed spectacular breeding colours, I kept them in a tank by themselves out nothing happened for months until I moved them into a 6'x2'x2’ tank stocked with other cichlids.

 

They soon took possession of a corner behind a rock and spawned on a piece of slate within days. Most of the eggs went fungi. The female was a very bad mother, she didn't mouth or fan the eggs at all. After a couple of water changes and several weeks later the pair spawned once again and this time, I took no chances and placed a piece of slate for them to lay their eggs on.

 

After spawning, I took the slate out and placed it in a small tank suspended in the community tank with an airstone, a little salt and lots of acriflavine, and watched the eggs hatch.

 

They took about four days to hatch and another 3 days to get to the free swimming stage. I fed them on hard boiled egg yolk for two days and then on newly hatched brine shrimp.

 

The fry are fairly slow growing up to a certain size and then grow quickly when they are large enough to take tubifex and minced beet heart. The water was always slightly alkaline and around 25C.

 

The parents spawn regularly, about ever three or four weeks, with adequate water changing and a temperature at 25C.

 

Convinced that they were brothers and sister, I had no intention of spawning them until I could obtain some ‘new blood’. This came in the form of a magnificent 3.5' male from Karl Puse. The one female and Karl's male were put together in a 20 gallon tank of their own, with a cave (made from rocks), which Richter in his "Dwarf Cichlids" (T.F.H. - and in the club's library), assures readers would make the Lionheads more comfortable. Also provided was a flowerpot, ceramic, with the hole at the bottom enlarged to about the size of a 20-cent piece.

 

The female was most taken with the flowerpot and immediately took possession of it. The male was seen shortly after, displaying to her and the two entered the flowerpot. As the latter was lying on its rim, hole upwards, the actual spawning was not witnessed. By the next morning, the female was still in the flowerpot and the male had moved back to his cave. Three days after this, I lifted the edge of the flowerpot up enough to shine a torch inside and was greeted by the sight of the female fanning a clutch of eggs, attached to the internal wall. As the male was making no move to assist his mate in any way, he was removed a couple of days later. A week after the spawning, the young hatched, wriggling on the glass floor of the tank.

 

We used no live foods in the rearing of the young, just bottomfeeder tablets, sinking cichlid food and flake food that had been rubbed between the fingers so as to sink.

 

The Lionhead is a nice little fish that is ideal for the beginning cichlidist, but it likes its water kept clean and as with most fish, it breeds more readily when fully mature.

 

I have kept the Electric Blue Cichlid (Sciaenochromisahli) on previous occasions and marvelled at the brilliant colours and fascinating spawning practices. However, as anyone who has kept a spawning Electric Blue male realises, this is a particularly aggressive fish apt to kill females of its own species and any other fish that gets in the way. Unless you have a large tank, preferably 4ft x 2ft x 2ft, and/or large and pugnacious tankmates, it is probably best to concentrate on other more docile types of Cichlid.

 

Early in 2002, I prepared a standard 4ft tank (190 litre) and placed an Electric Yellow (Labidachromis caerelus), some Bronze Catfish (Coryadoras aenus), a pair of Bristlenoses (Ancistrus temminicki) and an Upside-Down Catfish (Synodontis nigriventris). I was looking for a species of medium size African Cichlid that was colourful, had interesting habits and would not be too hard on the other fish in the tank. With the possible exception of the last of these traits, finding such a fish is not a hard task, the problem is always deciding which. While at Jem Aquatics, I noticed that some nice Sulphur-Crested Lithobates had arrived. None had coloured up and so, trying to pick a male fish, I asked our old friend Evan Needham to net the largest one (around 4-5cm). This fish appeared to have a few egg spots, a good sign. As luck (bad) would have it, the fish was female but I was not to be sure of this for a month or two - Lithobates are difficult to sex at a young age.

 

When dealing with a wild form species, I always prefer to source fish that I wish to breed from separate shops, preferably different sides of town or even different cities. By breeding fish with different genetic backgrounds, the chance of breeding deformed or substandard fish is minimised. Although, I should note that breeders of fancy fish such as Guppies and Mollies often “line-breed” their fish so as to reinforce particular traits that they are they are attempting to select. For club members, CDAS trips to Sydney and Melbourne offer the breeder an excellent opportunity to access different genetic lines.

 

Thanks to Eejay, a trip was organised to Sydney in April. Among other things, I managed to buy several fish including a Black Ghost Knife that has grown from five to about 18cm in around six months and two more Upside-Down Catfish for the four foot tank. Importantly, I also purchased three Sulphur-Crested Lithobates from three separate shops. Subsequently, I discovered that these were two males and one female.

 

Some of the websites that I have accessed on Lithobates claim that they are slow growers and that patience is needed. I quickly discovered that nothing could be further from the truth. They are voracious eaters and mine grew from 4cm to around 12cm in a matter of months. Sulphur-Crested Lithobates will grow to over 15cm when fully mature. The males are slightly larger but the size difference is not as pronounced as what it is in most other Malawi Cichlids. The fish have three dark spots on their flanks, one just below the shoulder, one at the base of the tail and one roughly midway in between. These spots are prominent on the females and immature fish. The male also has these spots but, similar to the Venustus, they virtually disappear in mature fish unless they feel threatened. The male displays a blue colour similar to the Electric blue but more subdued and generally darker. The most remarkable feature of the male is a bright yellow blaze which runs from the tip of the nose right through to the tip of the tail. The bottom tip of the tail is also yellow and the anal fin tends to an orange colour with non-distinctive egg spots.

 

With two male Cichlids in a tank it is often quite normal for one of the males to become dominant and the other sub-dominant. The dominant male will display bright colours, elongated trailing dorsal and anal fins, and will monopolise the females for the purposes of breeding. The sub-dominant male will display a subdued brown colour very similar to the female. This is what occurred with my Lithobates. With my sub-dominant male, even the general body shape remained somewhat similar to the females.

 

Although not a large cichlid, I would still recommend a minimum four foot tank to keep this fish. They do not appear to be diggers and so it is possible to run an undergravel filter with them. My tank has an undergravel filter and a internal Fluval filter to remove any suspension from the water. I have some Anubias plants on mangrove roots, and these get left alone by the fish. I keep the water hard (Carbonate hardness of around 250ppm) and alkaline (pH around 8) simply by adding a teaspoon of Rift Lake water conditioner (various mineral salts) for every 10 litres of water put into to the tank. I do a 30% water change and vacuum the gravel every three weeks.

 

The breeding ritual for Lithobates was a little surprising. Instead of building a concave gravel pit for the eggs to roll to the bottom as most Malawi mouthbrooders tend to do, the male selected a flat rock and used colour and body shaking to attract the female. Then they quickly circle each other, the female laying eggs on the rock and the male fertilising them as the female picks them up in her mouth. The incubation occurs in the females mouth for around three weeks. I have found that one of my females tends to hold the eggs quite well whereas the other one spits them out after a few days when she decides that eating is more important than raising young.

 

Around 18 days after breeding, I captured the female in a net and placed her in a bucket of water from the tank she just came from. While gently grasping her in the net, I use my index finger to delicately open her mouth. Some people advocate using a cotton-bud stick stripped of the cotton or a sharpened pencil to open the mouth but I think that by using the index finger, there is probably less chance of exerting undue pressure on the fish. After opening the mouth, most of the young fish will be spat out but it is worth persevering to ensure that they are all gone. Around 40 to 50 fry are then placed in a separate tank away from the adults that would otherwise surely eat them. Although, I have now successfully raised two lots of young using the separation technique, not one fry has survived when I have left the female in the original tank.

 

When separated from the parents, the fry are quite well developed, at around 4mm in length, even displaying the three spots so distinctive in adult Lithobates. They are fully independent and will accept crushed flake food but daphnia small enough to go through the mesh of an ordinary green fish net are perfect for growing healthy fish. Three to Four small meals a day seems ideal but they will survive with just one or two.

 

I have recently purchased, through the trading post, another four foot tank as a “growing out” tank for young fish. I find that having this amount of space means that the fry are able to grow very quickly. Also, there is nothing quite like watching a large school of young fish moving as a single entity in a spacious tank. Young Lithobates are fast growing fish that always demand to be fed. Again, I find live and frozen daphnia a fantastic and cheap way to quickly grow young fish. An added bonus has been that local aquariums have been quite happy to purchase Lithobates and so my growing out tank has already paid for itself.

 

I was quite surprised to find out that Sulphur-Crested Lithobates had not been recorded as being bred by anyone in the CDAS as they are easily found in most of the local aquariums in the ACT and surrounding districts and seem quite easy to breed. I can recommend this fish to anyone who keeps or is thinking of keeping African Cichlids. This spectacular but relatively peaceful fish has many of the endearing qualities that makes it perfect for the medium sized aquarium.

 

Further information on Otopharynx lithobates can be found at the following informative site: http://www.cichlidae.com/tanks/t044.html

 

Only a few eggs were salvaged, every other day, and the mops were placed into a clean tank with aged brackish water. One week's yield of eggs were collected but this was not very many. After that it was thought that further eggs would be too disparate in age, so back to the books. One told us that eggs would hatch in 2 days; another said 11-13 days. So all we could do was to wait and watch. The temperature was 27C and we had a sponge filter, plus a bubbling airstone in their tank. On the 8th day after the first egg-laden spawning mop was introduced, the first fry were seen. They were free-swimming and ready to accept food, which was given in the smallest size as they were very tiny. In a few days they could accept vinegar eels. In a few days further, they were filling up with microworms and at about 8 days they accepted newly hatched brine shrimp. Although we had only a small number of swimming fry, the hatching rate relative to eggs was about 50% and we were pretty happy with it. The fry grew fairly slowly over the first month.

 

We have learned that as these fish come from fast flowing waters, they need plenty of aeration, plus clean water, with regular partial changes. They do not like prolonged exposure to a temperature of 27C but do respond in spawning better at this temperature. 24C to 25C is adequate for the most part. The fish are happy in alkaline and fairly hard water, containing approximately one teaspoon of salt per gallon. To maintain both alkalinity and hardness, we added shellgrit to the filter. As yet we have not moved the adults to test how sensitive they are and without any good reason, we probably won't.

 

As to why these fish are called Rainbowfish, well that is still a mystery.

 

Desert Gobies grow to about 60mm long and are usually mottled brown, grey and olive green in colour. They are bottom dwelling fish which prefer shallow water because they are forced to. The little fellows evolved without a swim bladder, and to remain in midwater they swim constantly in a headup fashion. As soon as they stop swimming they sink back to the bottom.

 

When the male Desert Goby decides it is time to find a mate, settle down and raise a family, the colour change is dramatic. They change from their normal colouring to an overall olive green which lightens to yellow on the head. The head grows larger in proportion to that of the rest of the body when compared to the female. The pectoral, second dorsal, anal and caudal fins become black fringed with a narrow border of stark white. The first dorsal fin becomes royal blue and yellow fringed with a narrow border of black. Picasso couldn't have done better if he had designed the colour scheme, which is truly a magnificent sight.

 

Water conditions are not important, according to Merrick and Schmidals book "Australian Freshwater Fishes" they will live in distilled water through to marine conditions. Temperature tolerances are from 5 to 41 degrees C and they are often found in artesian springs and bores where the water is so hard you can almost walk, on it. Any creature that makes its home in Central Australia has to be this tough.

 

The specimens I had were put into an aquarium of 160 litres with aged tap water, about four desert spoons of marine salt and one of epsom salts. The water was kept at 22 degrees C and they were fed chopped earthworms, frozen Artemia salina (Brine Shrimp), pea and prawn puree, (see Tank Talk Vol. 9 No. 2 page 21), live Daphnia magna, and flake food. They have huge appetites for their size and grow very quickly.

 

Rocks with spaces underneath to form caves were placed in the aquarium and soon some of the fishes, the males, began to change colour. The females' bellies began to swell and the males' heads grew larger. Early one morning one of the male's colours had intensified and he was darting in and out of his cave chasing the other males away. When a female came near his cave entrance, he would try to entice them into his cave by erecting his fins, wagging his whole body then swimming back into his cave hoping that she will follow.

 

After a couple of days of this behaviour, one females would follow him into the cave then swim straight of the back out again. Unfortunately, time didn't allow me to stay and watch. After eight hours (normal period spent at place of employment) the rock was lifted up and there was a patch of about 150 oval shaped eggs hanging from the ceiling of the cave and attached by little short threads. This first spawning went fungoid and I think it must have been infertile.

 

The second spawning was taken away from the male after about six days when the eyes were clearly visible and placed in a small 15 litre aquarium. After about eight days they started to hatch. It took about another five days before every egg case was fee of its occupant. The fry were very large and easy to feed. They took Turbatrix aceti (Vinegar Eels) and Anquillula glutinus (Microworms) as a first food and were eating Brine Shrimp within a week. They grew quickly and always seem to be looking for something else to eat.

 

The male guarding the eggs allows other females to enter his cave and up until the last time I looked, under his rock, there were about 1000 eggs, all in various stages of development.

 

Anyone with a community aquarium which has some space for a bottom dwelling species should include some Desert Gobies. Their antics and some of the positions they get themselves into will keep you amused. They are peaceful towards other fish, and the males that have a cave to protect only chase fishes that come within a few Inches of their home and even then only chase them a very short distance before returning to their cave.

 

Editor's Note: Desert Gobies will always hold a special place in my fishy memories. They were the first of nearly a thousand points worth of fish that Julie and I bred, yet I will never forget them. They deserve better than to have been totally forgotten by Canberra’s aquarist community. For those interested, TFH magazine of August 1988 has an excellent article by Deborah and Rodney Ralph, former Society Treasurer and President respectively, which has some photos of Deborah’s of Desert Gobies in various stages of their lives.

 

They were not placed into the traps until they were very ripe and as luck would have it, both lots had not been in the trap any longer than 24 hours before spawning took place. To get a good quantity of fertilised eggs we left them in tor two to three days then the parents and trap were removed. The eggs hatched in 2 days and in another 2-3 days were free swimming.

 

Infusoria, liquifry and Sera micron food were given until they were big enough to accept newly hatched brine-shrimp, small daphnia, cyclops and dried food. With this type of food their growth is quick and relatively troublefree.

 

Our first few batches were a disaster. They would hatch, then die. At the time we were feeding them a commercial fry mixture. A few attempts led to the death of both male and female from the oily scum that develops, and it happened quite fast overnight. Finally we had some young fry. We didn't even know that they were there until I decided once more to strip the tank and try again. There were seven. They must have been at least three weeks old as all had developed their labyrinth organs.

 

A few more failures and we were close to giving up. Then we bought a beautiful turquoise male. We decided to have another go, but my breeding tank was full of molly fry. My l0 year old's silver molly regularly produced many fry, but on this occasion had produced 107. We decided to use the 'sick' tank. It has an undergravel filter and was planted with lace plant and floating jenny. I told my daughter that I couldn't be bothered taking out the filter as the tank had been completely stripped the previous day, and I wasn't about to do it again. We sloped the gravel quite steeply from front to the back, so we could put the female in a coffee jar at the back of the tank. I didn't bother with the pH level, as this wasn't a serious 'go', just an attempt to keep one daughter happy. The temperature was 30C. I purchased a long, wide riser tube to cover the riser and tubing of the filter so that the bubblenest wouldn't break up.

 

The male made the biggest bubblenest I have seen, being several inches in diameter, and at least an inch high. The mating was successful. I mated him to one of our 'undiscovered' bunch. We left the male in until he was a nervous wreck in one corner. Success! We had 18 viable fry, 17 of whom are now 2 1/2 months old.

 

Spurred on by this success we tried again, this time with a male from our original seven. We had two ripe females, so I gave him both. He obliged by stripping them both. It seems we now have approx 30-50 viable fry.

 

They are in their third week and labyrinth organs are developing well. They are just over a centimetre long. Their food for the first week was frequent feedings of home-made liquid fry food. It makes the tank mucky, but cleanable. Now they have 4 feeds a day, 2 of liquid fry, 2 of Brine Shrimp nauplii. I also think that the success is due to the fact that whenever I put fighters and floating jenny together, the latter rots. Instant infusoria culture.

 

As a footnote to this, we cleaned the tank when the fighter fry were 4 weeks old, and we have 75 fry! OK, any suggestions from anyone as to how we separate them all, 'cause I don't have 75 small jars'? We also have a tank full of 2 week old fry. HELP'

 

Editors Note: An excellent article which should inspire the others of us that haven't stuck with Fighters over the years to give them another go. One of our more experienced members who has bred a lot of fiddly fish has been quoted as saying "if you can breed the Siamese Fighter in reasonable quantities, you can breed anything!" Like Father Thorofare used to say, "I think there's something in that for all of us, don't you.

 

In the past I have bought, tried to breed and wasted probably well over 300 dollars on Cardinals. The visit to the shop tempted me once more. With Bob's (the owner’s) permission I was able to select 2 pairs by myself because my 'spending spree' would stop a shop assistant from doing business for a long time. At home I conditioned the Cardinals with live food only and they quickly grew to the spawning size of the Neon Tetra. Mature Cardinals are larger when well fed.

 

The rule for breeding Tetras is to try to spawn young fish as soon as possible to avoid egg-bound females.

 

The Cardinal Tetra was discovered in 1952 in the upper reaches of the Rio Negro in Brazil. After being given the initial name of Hyphressobrycon cardinali, there was a genus revision in 1983 and they are now known as Paracheirodon axelrodi.

 

Cardinals live in coloured water and shaded areas with slow water movement. These quiet parts of the river are known as remansos. The local collectors know well "no remansos - no Cardinals". The richest spots can yield 5-8 fish per metre square. The remansos are typically 1.5 - 6.0 metres long and 0.8 to 2.5 metres wide. Depth of water 0.2 to 0.4 metres with a maximum of 0.7 metres, water temperature 26.5 C.

 

The water is extremely poor in food. The Cardinals live in schools of mature specimens (23 - 28 mm long ~ ready to spawn) and juveniles around 13 mm long. The largest Cardinals in the wild are 30 to 33 mm. Aquarium fish grow to 50 to 65 mm and live 6-7 years while the Cardinals in nature only manage 12 to 16 months.

 

Young Cardinals should be grown in soft water (Canberra water is perfect) to stop degeneration of their kidney. Spawning conditions require (according to European breeders) pH 4.6 to 6.2 (optimum 5.8), hardness of 40-60 mS.

 

Cardinals lay their eggs in darkness, thus darkening of the spawning tank is required. Eggs are laid in 8-14 day intervals with up to 150 even 350 eggs. They are ready to spawn at 6-7 months of age.

 

With all the knowledge available from the hobby literature and my European friends I have set up spawning tanks for this species probably a hundred times, without much hope. It was extremely demoralising when someone in our Society claimed a spawning of Cardinals and raising them in a community tank. It puzzled me as I have bred hundreds of Neon Tetras, and fry up to 3 weeks of age are sensitive and require properly sized food.

 

The spawning tanks were little 200 x 200 mm by 150 mm high (hold 4 litres of water) similar to those used in Europe. On the bottom I placed a stainless steel gridmesh to protect the eggs from their hungry parents. The water used was from the Snowy Mountains, melted snow creek, pH 6.8 and extremely soft. I didn't bother to lower the pH or add peat moss. If the fish spawned, then 1 would adopt a more scientific approach.

 

I added the fish and spawning medium, a bunch of nylon fishing line. I darkened the tanks, each containing a pair of fish. I prefer spawning Tetras in pairs. This gives perfect control of productive pairs and limits interference from other fish. The tanks can be very small. This is not applicable for spawning Congo or African Flag Tetras where the spawning 'run' is fact and long or some aggressive Tetras where larger tanks are better.

 

My friends in Europe tell me they keep each pair in the spawning tank for 3 days (remember no food) and then they try a new pair. With my two pairs it was easy, 3 days in, 7 days out. After a few cycles, checking daily revealed eggs under the gridmesh. It was great. A few eggs were fungussed but most were glassy. The pair was removed. Water temperature was 26 C.

 

After 1 1/2 days around 60 fry developed. I kept them darkened by the fourth day started to observe when they needed food. The problem was they kept standing vertically against the glass when the light penetrated. Determining when to start feeding was a nightmare. A magnifying glass and careful observation of the egg yolk tummy size helped.

 

I was expecting very small fry as the eggs are smaller than Neon Tetras'. They were 3-4 mm, similar to Neons. Growth is described in the literature as slow. I found it disgustingly slow and to provide tiny live food I had to collect nauplii of Cyclops (freshly born small Cyclops: crustaceans that live in the paddock ponds) on a daily basis, strain them to the required size and not overfeed. Future followers please note: Brine Shrimp are monster food and are taken only after 4 to 6 weeks, so big are they!

 

In that time I quashed the claim of breeding Cardinals in a community tank. The fry would be wiped out in no time by the other fish.

 

After 3 weeks I introduced by mistake some larger food, some still very small Cyclops. The fry were attacked by a few adult Cyclops and I quickly lost 30 fry.

 

In 4 weeks the Neon Tetra fry shine like their parents and their length is 10-12 mm. The little Cardinals were 8-9 mm and at that time the red colouration started to appear dully, but the neon strip wasn't shining at all. They took another 5-6 weeks to start looking like miniature adults. Still, feeding was a problem. Microworms were not taken terribly enthusiastically. Introduction of larger Cyclops was always a disaster with the loss of a few more fry. Neon Tetras, once they have their full colours although still small, are pretty tough and are willing to eat relatively large food (the same size as their eyes) but Cardinals are finicky.

 

With all the problems of getting two Cardinals willing to spawn, fulfilling the requirements of water chemistry, extremely slow growth of the fry, and the feeding difficulties I have very little patience left to breed them in larger numbers. This is a pleasure that I leave to others.

 

Andy did not even remember the name of the fish, although he said that the fish were peaceful. At first I intended to decline the 'gift, - not having a free tank.  Then I realised I could do a little reorganisation, ending up with a spare 15 litre tank. In an hour I had the "last fish in Australia". They did not look much like killies, but were quite pretty. The males are approximately 75mm long, metalic blue body with fins rather square in shape. Red spots are on the fins and the tail. Females are less blueish, more silver, plain, and approx 50 mm long. One was badly deformed. This was to my thinking the sign of an old fish, therefore useless for breeding. I was thinking that I could put her out of her misery but fortunately, I postponed the act for sometime later.

 

Receiving the fish with very little information, I consulted the CDAS library copy of Axerod's atlas of fishes. There are pictures and descriptions of this genus and species but the description is very sketchy. The following is written there:

 

"The larger type (of killies) as Proatopus and Lamprichtys are colurful and will spawn in the aquarium but they tend to be short lived and not very hardy.  Many or most Lampeyes place their eggs in crevices such as floating pieces of natural cork or behind airline tubing in the darkest corner of the tank. Identification is almost impossible for specimens and they are poorly covered in available aquarium literature."

 

That was all. There were some good pictures showing the difference within Proatopus genus. It consisted of ProatopusUgracilis, P. similis, P. abberans and P. nototaemia species. Both Proatopus and Lamprichtys are called lampeyes in the aquarium hobby. Lamprichtys live only in Lake Tanganyika. My limited knowledge was enriched by Andy's information that this fish sprays eggs into rock cravities. He also brought a nice looking slotted PVC pipe which he said was used successfully by the original owner.

 

Adding to the description of this fish (recently learnt), the Procatopus family is distributed through West Africa to Southern, Central and East Africa. Procatopus abberraus is from Cameroon and Nigeria, where they live in streams of the rainforests and savannahs, in water 40 to 150 dH hardness, ph 6-7 and a temperature 20-24C. My guess was that water with less hardness and a temperature up to 28-30C, considering the proximity of the equator, would also be ok.

 

I placed the six fish in a tank (300 x 200 x 400 high) where just an airstone was the only luxury (no filter). The fish settled down quite well and were fed live food. They adore daphnia and white worms. The cyclops are not hunted and are the last food eaten. I am sure that tubifix, mosquito larvae and bloodworms would also be taken very keenly.

 

As I have mentioned, I have received the special spawning slotted plastic pipe. It has a removable core wrapped in filter wool mattress. I love these gadets where the inventor shows a flair of imagination. It A very creative toy.the was a real "beauty" but (I found out later) was totaly useless. Equipped with a total lack of knowledge and without any lead how to spawn the fish, it was disheartening. I started to see the whole exercise as a waste of time. Stuck with the fish occupying a tank, I started to check the slotted pipe for eggs of unknown size and numbers. With no discoveries, my enthusiasm plummeted down.

 

Then I found a male fish dead. It did not appear that the males were fighting, but there was a clear dominant male that was occassionally chasing the others. Now with only two males, the dominant fish started to be more aggressive I had to take one male out. To complicate things, one female, the better one, showed development of ulcers and died. It is known that killies stay more healthy in harder water (say 80-160 ppm,) but spawning and development of eggs is better in softer water. This is the pattern of the dry and wet seasons in the tropic where killies live.

 

To prevent the crank male chasing the remaining two females, I placed a few larger bunches of Indonesian fem to provide hiding places for the fish. The fern was old bunches with massive stalk and a lot of black roots. After the loss of a female I decided to maintain a higher hardness in the tank. I prepared a 200mm long part of a ladies stocking filled with shell crit. To keep the grit inside, I tied a knot at each end and then hanged this piece of art on the side wall of the tank.

 

Passing weeks were increasing my frustration, despite checking the slotted pipe reguarly - no eggs. Then the sunny summer changed into storms and rainy days. I felt that this could be chance because this type of weather increases the mating activity of all fish. The killies were not any exception and the male started 'hanky-panky' with a female. I tried to look for released eggs. The fish behaved similar to corydoras cats with some control of the egg deposition. The myth of 'spraying' eggs was gone. But I could not find any eggs. There were so many simulated laying of eggs by the pair interrupted by wrong approach or wrong place or something else - still the pipe had no eggs.

 

But sheer chance, while looking for attached eggs to the leaves of the fem, I spotted some transparent debris within the twisted fem stalk deep in between the hairy roots. I pushed a small stick into that area and the first egg came out. It was round, pale yellow approximately 1.5 mm in diamenter, and not particularly sticky - which was the key discovery. Using the magnifying lens, I examined many other possible locations and found two more eggs. I reduced the fern bunches to the best three. In a few days I had collected more than 10 eggs. Under normal conditions the female deposits 1 to 3 eggs each day, but this will continue for many weeks.

 

The collected eggs (by fingers) were placed into a plastic container (150 x 150 x 100 high) with water 50 mm deep (this depth of water is not what I started with - explained later on). The water specs were pH 7.5, hardness 16ppm and temperature fluctuating between 22'C to 28'C. The container was in a shaded (not dark) area. The methylene blue was used as an anti-bacteria and fungus protection - the colour of the water in the container was light blue.

 

After a week the eggs showed the development of eyes as two black spots and later the dark body of the fry was clearly visible. The eggs were about 60-70% fertile with the development to hatching of the fry 35 to 40 days. The fry are dark, 4-5mm long. From the first day they swim horizontally - the yolk reserve is minimal - and on the second day after hatching theyy must be fed. Some fry did have difficulties swimming horizontally, probably due to a slow development of the air bladder function. The hatching is continuous, daily 2-5 fry (from two females). This required a number of small tanks to keep similar size fry - born within a week to 10 days of each other. Each tank only had a slow airstone.

 

To my great surprise, the fry are not keen to eat small live cyclops - they prefered microworms (I do not cultivate brine shrimps or other food). The microworms were sinking relatively fast to the bottom of the fry tanks and presenting a bit of a problem as the young fry swim at the water surface and would not descend. It required frequent swirling of the water to get the mircoworm to the fry - very irritating. After some time I had the idea to lower the water level - this would bring the fry closer to microworms. I reduced the depth to 50mm and won. The young fry would pick up food without any assistance. The feeding should be careful - do not overfeed.

 

With a depth of only 50mm, the fry only had 1-2 litres of water. This required careful changes of the same source water - very important. The fry grow relatively slowly. I tried to increase the water hardness from 16ppm to 80ppm. However I could not observe any difference with the fry, therefore I returned back to my tap water (16ppm).

 

As the parent fish did not eat the eggs, I reduced the egg collection to once every 2-3 days. I was puzzled how the female got the eggs into the very obstructed hiding spots. I tried some experiments with slotted mangrove wood, but these offerings were not successful I was now finding less and less eggs - I thought that is was a resting period in the egg production.

 

By chance, during a regular cleaning of the tank, I handled the stocking with the shell grit. 1 felt a typical rolling movments of a fish egg on my fingers. I realised that the fish had often been making "false" spawning around the suspended stocking bag. I examined the stocking's knots and to my surprise 1 found tens of eggs placed in gaps and overhangs of the knots - at both ends of a vertically hanging bag. The eggs matched the stocking colour (light beige) and were nearly invisible. The puzzle was solved. It all now became routine work - the number of fry were increasing, ten, twenty, fifty... it was easy.

 

Some may consider this article to be a bit long winded, [I don't ... editor] with too many minute details and descriptions of fish not easily obtained. I have done this to show the fascinating difficulties facing a hobbyist trying to achieve a goal without already having the applicable knowledge. It is very satisfying to crack problems of any magnitude. Some may say "A fish - so what". But life is full of challenges and any of them being successfully accomplished brings the ultimate satisfaction. [Others may also say "A job well done"]

 

The Turquoise Rainbow is aptly named, as its colour suggests a bluish/turquoise which varies in intensity according to lighting conditions. The top half of the fish is blue and the lower a silvery white. These colours are then divided mid laterally by a dark blue lateral band.

 

The fish attains a 'standard length' (tip of nose to base of tail) of 100 mm (approx. 4 inches), although they are capable of reproduction at the much smaller size of 40 mm. The male, as in most Rainbowfishes, is a little larger than the female. The largest have seen, very old specimens, Were approx 125 mm or 5 inches in length. A dominant or spawning male in a sight to behold and a true wonder of nature. His forehead turns a really bright orange in colour and then flashes various shades of blue, green, purple and violet. These colour changes may last up to about 1 second for each shade but continually change whilst the male is spawning which in turn can last for 30 minutes or more. These colours are almost as bright and attractive as a series of neon lights. Spawning may take place at any time of the day but mine spawn mostly during the evening.

 

Sexing these fish by finnage can be rather difficult and I find it easier to sort by body shape with the female's body being more torpedo styled, and the male's head is of slightly different appearance. Once they are spawning the difference becomes very obvious.

 

These particular Rainbows are placid by nature and are suitable for community tanks. However, they should not be spawned in a tank with other Rainbows present as cross spawning is highly possible and totally undesirable.

 

Once I have conditioned my breeding fish (5 in all) with extra titbits of live food etc. I introduce a synthetic wool mop which is suspended in the water at the top of the tank. Rainbows will deposit their eggs in this mop in preference to an assortment of living plants! After much chasing of the females by the males the females will inspect the mop and then quiver over and around the mop whilst expelling their eggs. This will usually happen within 24 hours of introducing the mop and will be immediately followed by the male quivering and shaking his head over the mop, expelling sperm to fertilise the trapped eggs. He will be wearing his brightest and best colours at this time. As soon as they have finished spawning I remove the mop (New Guinean Rainbows are avid eggbeaters) to a separate small tank 250 mm x 200 mm x 200 mm to which I have added aged water, 1/2 a teaspoon of rock salt and about 1 teaspoon of shellgrit and a small airstone, bubbling gently. Filtration is not necessary at this stage, nor is gravel, but a small amount of Duckweed is optional.

 

Once you have removed the mop replace it with a clean one if desired. I repeat this process for about 5 days, always placing the egg-laden mop in with the previous one. Hatching takes about 5 days at 27 C and up to 15 days at around 20 C.

 

Once the fry have hatched and are free-swimming, feeding begins. Green water and the tiniest amount of egg yolk (hard boiled) are very suitable for the first couple of days. I then add Vinegar Eels to this diet and maintain this feeding for a good week. After the first week Microworms and Brine Shrimp are substituted and I feed this for another week or so. If you have no cultures of live food and do not wish to keep them very fine commercial food ouch as Sera Micronä and

TetraMinä may be substituted but be careful as the water may become polluted if these preparations are overfed. At 2 to 3 weeks of age Daphnia may be fed but only a small amount at least 3 times daily. Do not overfeed live food as it can easily lead to a high mortality rate as I discovered when I overfed my Glossolepis incisus fry.

 

Finally you can progress to other foods such to finely ground flake etc. Water changes should be carried out regularly and when necessary. The pH is not critical, somewhere around 7 is OK, and it is now time to introduce a small filter ouch as a Corner box type containing filter carbon, shellgrit and filter wool. Be patient as their growth rate is rather slow especially when Compared to guppies. A word of warning here: do not put them in with their parents too soon as they will consider them live food and scoff down the lot. Maintain your fish at around 24 C and feed flake, Daphnia, Brine Shrimp, chopped earthworms, small ants, Cyclops, plenty of vegetables (crushed green peas are good), and vacuum away what is not eaten. They even enjoy Micro Vit pellets intended for the catfish that help clean their tank. I also keep Duckweed in the tank as a food source!

 

The future of this fine fish is somewhat debatable as heavy metal pollution from the Ok Tedi mining project has reached Lake Kutubu, and also many other river systems in New Guinea. The Government of New Guinea denies that this is happening, but with the dollar today seeming more important than ever, who knows? Oil has been discovered nearby and roads now seem imminent (previous access was by helicopter only) and to top it all off the government wants to establish a settlement of 2000 people on the lake's foreshores. This will also be disastrous in the long run.

 

While we have this fine fish let's try and maintain it. Remember 20% water changes carried out weekly is not overdoing it. Use aged Canberra water for the changes, don't overfeed, and do supply a heavily planted environment. Lighting is at your discretion and give them plenty of growing room.

 

For further reading on New Guinean fishes see Dr Gerald R Allen's book Freshwater fishes of New Guinea. Additional information on keeping Rainbowfish may be gleaned from Australian Native Fishes for Aquariums by Ray Leggett and John R Merrick. Both are available from our Society's well stocked library. Better still, join the Native Fish Study Group (see me, Doug Williams or Andrew Boyd for details).

 

I was given a superb trio of this type of tetra, all mature and the male was definitely he best Diamond Tetra I had ever seen.

 

Some months ago, I had tried to spawn a few acquired Diamond Tetras but the females weren't filled with eggs and then I lost the only two males I had and that was the end of that. There were some mysterious reasons in he loss of the older fish.

 

These beautiful fish originally come from Lake Valencia in Venezuela and grow to 60mm in length. They are extremely lively and eat all sorts of food offered to them. The metalic silvery grey colour is dotted with irregular mirror like spots and the male has an elongated dorsal fin. As to the water conditions, they are not demanding except for spawning, as a harder water with pH of 6.5 is preferred.

 

After the Melbourne trip and a short acclimatisation to their new environment, I placed a pair into a 450x250x250min tank. I learned a few lessons from previous trials. The fish are very shy and run wildly in a very small tank.  For this reason I used a large bunch of Java Moss as the shelter and spawning medium. Being quite suspicious about this natural plants, during a check of the cleanliness of the bunch, I discovered a lot of planaria worms. These creatures can eat a whole lot of eggs and non swimming fry in a few days.

 

The difficulty was to clean out a living plant of the worms and not kill the plant, which was solved by placing the plant in a container and the submersion of a copper plate into the container for a days. To see a positive result, I left a few snails in the same tank, until they were killed by the copper which was dissolved in water. Then the Java moss was rinsed in fresh water and freed of anything that was living or dead.

 

As mentioned before, the fish were panicking very easily. I used a towel to cover the front of the tank to prevent any disturbances.

 

On the second day they spawned, the only indication of the spawning were some fungused eggs scattered close to the Java Moss. The parents were removed, tank completely covered to keep eggs in the darkness. During an occasional check on the second day I saw a few wriggling fry. After 5 days the fry started to swim and eat.

 

Daily visits to a farm pond to collect small nauplia of cyclops solved those 10 critical days before the fry started to take microworms and grindal worms. The small fry are not fussy about their type of food. They grow reasonably quickly and after 4 weeks they were around 5mm long, at this stage I transferred them to a larger tank.  It seems amazing to me how young fish can fill their tummies nearly to bursting point without actually bursting. At this age, the young fish are looking rather a drab silvery colour.

 

There was a very low loss of fry (hardly any) and finally around 200 young fish are still swimming, with hopes of bringing them up into maturity to form a few good spawning pairs.

 

I would like to give thanks, once more, to the Melbourne hobbyists and the beautiful fish provided by Mr. Ron Bowman.

 

I had always a sort of an affection for this fish and occasionally bought a few fish with the intention to breed them. Some Sydney shops had rather poor stock and the results, considering the investment, would be very poor. A year ago, I had discovered a tank full of these fish in a Canberra shop, which were extremely small but promised more in the long term because the fish can be conditioned and brought into maturity with some care. The cost was a fraction of the Sydney price.

 

My first purchase was 15 fish and as a matter of disease prevention have I accommodated them in a small tank, to save an additional heater. Feeling they should be fed well from the beginning, I have added a good number of Cyclops. As usual, Murphy’s Law proved correct, little fish get irritated by the number of cyclops in the tank and during the night I had lost half of them. Only the few who jumped out of the small tank into the big tank were saved. The next day I went, for the second time, to buy some replacements and the immediate investment didn't look so attractive.

 

This or similar problems happens to me frequently,I know all about it, but never learnt the lesson. After that, all fish survived and developed into very nice specimens. At least the start was made.

 

The fish originate from the basin of the middle reaches of the Amazon and Rio Negro rivers. In nature it keeps close to the banks near water plants and decaying wood. It grows to about 60mm long. In captivity it prospers best when kept by itself but I have found no problems when kept it with other tetras.'

 

They always swim at an angle of about 45 degrees, the water should be low in hardness and the pH kept between 6.5 and 7.5. The male is slimmer than the female when mature and its pelvic fins have white margins and white tips. The body is mostly black with a silvery underside.

 

For breeding, a small tank of 7-10 litres, clear soft water and a pH reading of 6.0-6.5. Place in the tank a broad leaf plant like Cryptocoryne or an Amazon Sword, wash it and place it with the bare roots held by glass strip on the tank floor. The fish spawn on the underside of the leaves and during the spawning act the female ejects 1-2 eggs and sticks them to this surface. Spawning yields usually 30-40 fry but higher numbers under ideal conditions are possible.

 

The water temperature range for spawning should be between 24-28 degrees celsius, fry hatch within 24-36 hours and in 5-6 days start to swim. They are very unusual by swimming nearly vertical and being black they are very visible. The advantage of the try feeding is they collect micro-worms from the tanks bottom which solves the problem of lost food once fallen down. They require very small food for at least a week to ten days then micro-worms can start to supplement the diet with small Cyclops or Daphnia.

 

In a month, they reach 7-10mm in length and appear quite hardy as to the quality of water and to pH fluctuations. It takes 3-4 months to bring them up to the size not to be swallowed by other tetras. This exotic looking, peaceful fish is worth keeping in our tanks and gives a lot of satisfaction when one can maintain a school of this bizarre fish.

 

Many people are put off keeping the large range of Neo-tropical Dwarf Cichlids for two reasons. The first of these is availability, many of these fish are difficult to locate and fairly expensive when available. The second is the reputation they have gained as difficult and sensitive fish which are problematic in their keeping. For a determined enthusiast neither of these should present a problem. Many species are available sporadically through local outlets and are reasonably common in the larger specialist stores in Sydney and Melbourne. If these fish are provided with the basic level of aquarium care, most will do well in their captive environment. With a slightly more concerted effort, most can, be spawned and raised in captivity with little difficulty.

 

The first step in successfully keeping these fish is selection of the keeping tank, which should also serve as the spawning tank for at least the initial few attempts. The best tanks for these fish are of large surface area, square based tanks of 45 x 45 cm or 60 x 60 cm. While these are good choices, the best tanks I have found are 90 x 60 cm. In tanks of these dimensions, individual fish are able to stake out a reasonable territory and feel secure. A tank of 45cm² will enable one male and several females to establish a reasonably peaceful spawning community whereas the 60 cm² tank will allow 2 males and half a dozen females to establish neighbouring, and in places overlapping, territories. A larger tank allows more of each sex to be kept and interesting territorial rituals and displays can be observed. Often a female will establish a territory between rival males and spawn with either whilst the other is not looking her way. In Apistogramma I have observed this behaviour, in borellii, cacatuoides and macmastefi and have experienced it also with Nannacara anomala.

 

Regardless of the size of tank selected, there should be plenty of cover provided in the form of driftwood, river rocks (NON-CALCIFEROUS), slate walls and caves. Any tank containing dwarf cichlids should have the rockwork placed directly on the base of the tank and pre-soaked driftwood placed following this. The substrate is added fast, along with any small stones or driftwood pieces you may wish to sit upon it. All dwarf cichlids are great excavators and any object placed upon the substrate is an invitation to them to dig beneath it. By placing large rocks directly upon the base the danger of a collapse is much reduced. If you are not sure of the security of a rock, try another in its place or in place of the base rock. Never allow unsecured rock piles to remain in place. It can not be overemphasised how important having cover in the tank is. Not just low down but to about 2/3 the height of the tank through the rear 1/2 of the tank and about 1/3 the height through most of the front 1/2 of the tank. The irony of dwarf cichlids is; the more places there are to hide, the more often the fish will be out in the open. The feeling of security is gained through simply knowing there is a bolt hole nearby. Far from substrate hugging, shy fish, dwarf cichlids in the correct environment will swim at all depths confidently and without fear.

 

Because many dwarf cichlids prefer a dim tank, and because of the lack of easily accessible substrate due to all the structure, plants which will grow on the driftwood and rockwork in dim light are required. Java fern, Java moss and a number of Anubias sp. suit these requirements and should be planted as thickly as space or budget permit. Where possible, crypts should be planted in what substrate is visible in the front of the tank. None of these plants are native to South America and as such this is not recommended planting where a bio-typical aquarium is desired. For a tank where the primary interest is the well being of the fish, better plants can not be selected.

 

The best way to encourage spawning is to keep the fish in good condition at all times. The temperature of the tank should be around 25-26 degrees Celsius for general keeping, pH 6.5-7 and as soft as possible, no more than 5 DH of General hardness or 3 DH of Carbonate hardness. (90ppm Gh, 55ppm Kh). There must be no trace of ammonia or nitrite and nitrate must be kept as low as possible though regular water changes. Because dwarf cichlids are not tolerant of fluctuations in water properties, small regular changes are more beneficial than larger changes on a fortnightly or monthly basis. 5% changed every two or three days is perfect. Feed the fish three or four times a day with a mixture of frozen brine shrimp, bloodworms and a mix of three or more quality flake foods, at least one of which should be weighted in the vegetable department. I feed boiled, skinned peas twice a week and the fish seem to enjoy this food and benefit from it.

 

Because of the large amount of organic material being passed into the water and the cichlids’ intolerance of waste products, a good quality filter unit must be employed and maintained. This filter should not be of too high a flow if the fish are to maintain their health for any period of time so select two small internal powerfilters for the smaller tanks (rated to ½ the tank capacity per hour) or a small canister filter operating in conjunction with an internal filter on larger tanks. Any filter used will require regular cleaning and will be heavily reliant on mechanical filtration as there is limited bacterial activity at the low pH often required for spawning these fish so biological filtration cannot be relied upon.

 

In an aquarium that is in an area that has heavy traffic or regularly has people nearby, it may be necessary to include dither fish to encourage the cichlids to come out of cover. This can also be done to liven the tank up a little. Remember that if the time comes for spawning the cichlids, it is best done in their own tank so whatever fish are included must be either timid enough not to brave the defences of spawning cichlids yet tough enough to withstand constant harassment or easily removed from the tank, keeping in mind all that cover. Tetras such as glowlights and flame tetras are good for the purpose as are Neon Rainbows (Metanatonia praecox) and, surprisingly, other dwarf cichlid species. A community of several species of dwarf cichlids works very well in a large enough tank, I use the 90 x 60 cm tanks for this. In the past I have had up to nine species of South American and West African riverine cichlids, a total of approximately twenty five adult cichlids in pairs or trios, in a tank of this size. All species but one (Microgeophagus ramerizi) spawned and reared their fry successfully on numerous occasions in this tank and aggression was at an all time low for cichlid tanks, not one fish was lost as a result of fighting. Do not attempt to keep less than three species that are dissimilar in appearance and habits. My tank had:

 

  Microgeophagus altispinosa

  Microgeophagus ramerizi

  Apistogramma borelli

  Apistogramma cacatuoides

  Apistogramma macmasteri

  Apistogramma nijsseni

  Nannacara anomala

  Nannochromis transvestitus

  Pelvicachromis subocellatus

 

Provided the fish are maintained in good condition, they can usually be triggered to spawn by simply increasing the temperature by a few degrees. This should be done in conjunction with a water change, although this is not generally required to trigger the spawning, it can help with stubborn spawners and means the water is as clean as possible prior to the act. I find that it is often best to cease all tank maintenance for a couple of months before a serious spawning attempt. Food is offered once every two days during the first month and a half of this time and then 3 times a day for the final 2 weeks. At the end of this period, a 50% water change is performed and the heater readjusted up a few degrees. For the next week 10% of the water is changed daily and heavy feeding continues. At the end of the week, change 25% of the water. Most species will spawn with this treatment and then the real difficulties begin.

 

The first thing to do after eggs have been acquired is to decide if they are going to remain with the parents or be removed for artificial incubation. The only real reason they need removal is to prevent predation from tank mates that are too large for the parents to dissuade or from one or the other of the parents themselves. It is common for the first few spawns to be devoured by the young female but, if given the opportunity, they usually figure things out and prove to be excellent parents. If the eggs are not being devoured but are infertile and fungusing there may be several causes. The most common problem is that the pH and carbonate hardness are too high. Most dwarf cichlids require a pH of 5.5-6.5 and a hardness of less than 2 KH to have a reasonable viability level. If these parameters are met and the fertility is still very low, use a new male as there may be a problem with infertility or low sperm count. The last reason commonly encountered is inadequate care given by the parent responsible. The developing eggs require a supply of fresh water to be fanned over them by one or the other parents. Eggs that die fungus and are removed, along with other dirt particles, by the mouthing the parents subject the eggs to. Some parents never do very well at these tasks, others require a little practice. In this circumstance, or with parents that continuously devour their spawn, there is no option other than to incubate the eggs artificially.

 

In order to incubate the eggs it is necessary to have a small tank or breeding net into which the surface containing the spawn is placed. An airstone is placed just in front of this so that there is a constant stream- of bubbles rising past, not over, the eggs. The eggs must be inspected regularly and any infertile or dead eggs, these are generally white and opaque, must be removed before they develop fungus which will spread quickly to viable eggs and destroy the spawn. After the eggs have hatched, remove the spawning surface to remove the egg remains before they rot.

 

The majority of species are large enough to take microworms and brineshrimp naupiii when they become free swimming and these foods should be offered in abundance. It is crucial the water quality is maintained during the early period of these fishes lives as all young dwarf cichlids are susceptible to pollutants, and fluctuations in pH and temperature. After the first couple of weeks, white worm, small mosquito larvae and finely crushed flake are added to the menu and the fry should grow rapidly. Regular water changes and adequate filtration will ensure good health.

 

Provided with good conditions and adequate quality feeding these delightful little fish will live and spawn happily for several years. If space is at a premium and cichlids are on the wishlist then try keeping some of the dwarves. They will repay their cost and the difficulty in locating them many times over with their beauty, interesting behaviour and character.

 

We were lucky enough to see two of our five Angels pair off in our community tank. The pair were identified, the gold Angel was easy, as it was the only one we had and it turned out to be the female. She mated with one of our marble angels and as we had two the same size, we had to make sure we had kept the right one. The selected pair were given a two foot tank with a gravel bottom, tall plants and one tall wide leaved plant tor the eggs, all of their own. The water temperature was a constant 27 degrees celsius and of a neutral pH. They were conditioned on live and dried foods and had laid eggs a number of times before we were successful.

 

This time things would be different, as usual they chose the tall wide leaved plant and she laid the eggs and he followed closely behind fertilising them. This started at about 3pm one afternoon and went to about 7pm, before we said we had had enough. This time instead of removing the eggs, we removed the parents. We added a dose of promythesal and an airstone, which would keep the water circulating around the eggs to help stop them from going fungui. We waited and hoped that they had been well fertilised. They were. In two days 74 eggs had hatched and the rest were going white. The next few days were the hardest for us, watching them jiggling and wobbling on the leaf, but our main worry was the white eggs, whether or not they would harm the already hatched eggs.

 

Eventually, we could not stand by and do nothing, so most of the hatched Angles were siphoned off the original leaf, a few were carefully placed on a nearby clean leaf, a few on the front glass and we left a few on the old leaf just to see where the best position was. it turned out that all places were alright and five days after hatching they were free swimming. We fed them infusoria, strained egg yolk and newly hatched brine-shrimp. In the two foot tank it was very difficult to see whether or not they were getting enough tucker. The numbers seemed to be decreasing rapidly, so at eight days old we moved them by siphon to a 14 inch tank with only one loss in the move. here we fed them brine-shrimp, small daphnia, cyclops and dried foods that they eagerly ate, especially the live foods. They grew very fast and at 3 weeks old, looked like miniature replicas of their parents. Although we only had about 20 left, we had almost half gold and half marble or a mixture of both, it was really an unusual sight for us. They out grew the tank and were moved to a larger tank at a month old, still preferring small live foods. They seem to be quite sensitive to pH changes and prefer the temperature to be at 27 degrees celsius.

 

Therefore, without much ado, I shall get down to the fundamentals and suggest that beginners would do well to refer to my Book No. 1, under the heading "Introduction", which provides a general background to the keeping and care of Killifish. In it I have indicated the spawning habits, the level in the water at which the eggs are laid and the country of origin for each species and, wherever possible, the common name.

 

For those wishing to break into this field seriously, I would strongly suggest starting with the genus Aphyosemion, with the two relatively easier species A. gardneri and A. marmoratum, together with the comparatively difficult Epiplatys annulatus. A. gardneri (either the yellow or the blue form) is the easiest to breed. The common name is "Rocket Fish" because there is a red streak stretching from the caudal peduncle right through to the end of the caudal, fin. Keep the male and female separately and feed them live organisms, such as Tubifex worms, Daphnia and White Worms. The breeding tank should be a small one, say 12" x 8" x 8", and I generally cut a piece of polystyrene about 2" square, to serve as a float. Wash some Java Moss and then drape it over the polystyrene float until it touches the floor of the tank. The water should be slightly on the acidic side, say pH 6.6-6.8 and the temperature should be maintained at 24C.

 

When the pair of Killies are ready, introduce them into the small tank and if they are in breeding condition, they will start to spawn straight away. Aphyosemion gardneri is a "switch spawner' and the above arrangement of Java Moss will allow the pair to start at any level they happen to choose. The floor of the tank should be clean and kept as free as possible of fish wastes and other debris and as soon as the parent fish have finished spawning, they should be removed and put back where they came from. The eggs are generally difficult to locate but with experience of the particular species, one gets to know whereabouts to look for them.

 

The eggs start to hatch in about 16-20 days but hatching is rather uneven because the incubation period is quite variable and the fry do not emerge at any particular time of day. Frequent partial water changes are then very important and should be undertaken at least twice a day.

 

Replacement water should be adequately aged before use. I use 2 large plastic garbage bins, fill them with hot water from the tap and leave them uncovered for several hours. Before use, I treat the water with "water agec', obtainable in bottles from any pet store. I also use non-iodised common salt for the prevention of velvet disease (Oodinium sp.), to which Killifish are susceptible, the dosage being 1 teaspoon for salt to every 2.5 gallons of aged water.

 

Epiplatys annulatus is a very beautiful species but it is a difficult one to maintain. The fish are susceptible to bacterial infection and this can affect the eggs dramatically. Velvet disease can also be a problem but can be checked with the above mentioned salt treatment. Eggs that have obviously been damaged by infection should be removed promptly with a pipette and disposed of by burying and if the problem is a major one, treatment with methylene blue or acriflavine may be necessary.

 

Microworms may be a little too large for fry,at first, so the altemative of 'green water', which contains an abundance of infusoria, should be used as a starter. Set up a simple drip system to deliver 2 or 3 drops every half hour and use it for a week or so, before switching to Microworms and graded Daphnia.

 

As many of you would know, Lake Tanganyika is the home to some of the most spectacular and interesting aquarium fish available. This is Cichlid territory. Tanganyika is the sixth largest lake on Earth. It is 676 kilometres long and 64 kilometres across at its widest point. At 1,463 meters deep, Tanganyika is the second deepest lake in the world, behind only Lake Baykul in Russia. The water conditions encountered in the lake are somewhat unusual. While the temperature of a constant 26-27°C is reasonably typical of tropical climes, the water is very hard and alkaline. The pH ranges from 8.7 to 9.4 and the carbonate hardness is 200 to 240 parts per million. Fortunately, replicating this environment is a very easy task for the modern aquarist - but more on this later.

 

I first became acquainted with the Shell Dwellers by reading the Sydney Cichlid Society webpage (www.sydneycichlid.com). The owners of these fish wrote about them with such unmistakable passion and affection that I felt drawn towards keeping some. There are several species of Shell Dweller but one of the most readily available is Neolamprologus ocellatus (normally referred to as “ocellatus” or just “occi”).

 

Ocellatus grow to five centimetres, although females rarely exceed 4 centimetres. Colouration is basically fawn with a blue-purple blaze through the body, which is more or less apparent depending on the mood of the fish and the quality of lighting. Ocellatus are quite stocky and have a largish head. Further, there are two main subspecies. The “gold form” has a general golden hue whereas the “blue form” has distinct blue colouration around the head. The male of both subspecies has a dorsal fin with a slight gold rim. Females have a slightly more prominent white rim on the dorsal. Although, you may hear of the existence of the “black ocellatus”, this is actually another species, namely Neolamprologus meleagris.

 

I was determined to buy a pair of ocellatus on the 2002 CDAS trip to Sydney. Finally, I tracked some down at a reasonable price in Liverpool Aquarium. Upon arriving back at Eejay’s place in Canberra, I inspected my fish and while my other fish appeared very healthy, the ocellatus had that distinctive “if you want me to live then you’d better get me in a tank real soon” look. The fact I did not get a speeding ticket on the way home, I put down to good luck. While I did not have a specific tank set up, my 3ft community tank was slightly alkaline and hard enough that I thought that it would suffice as a temporary home.

 

For a month or so my Occis thrived. These little guys are real characters. I placed a few shells that I had gathered from beaches over the years into the tanks. The Occis would find the shell they wanted and basically bury it so that just the tip was sticking out of the gravel, with just enough room to afford ingress and egress for a small Tanganyikan Cichlid. They will take a variety of foods, including flake, but just love Daphnia.

 

While I have never actually seen them harm another fish, they defend their territory with much vigour. Any fish, fingers, cleaning magnets or whatever that stray within a few inches of their shell get the same treatment, a firm nip. Believe it or not, this grumpy behaviour is very endearing. The male and the female were quite interested in each other and would even tolerate the odd visit to each other’s shells. It seemed just a matter of time before I would have a brood of young ocellatus. However, fish keepers being what they are and Canberra winters being what they are, disaster struck. Yes, I left the heater off after doing a water change. Ok, I admit that this is a crime against fishkind but I bet that most of you have done the same at some time or another. Anyway, while the Tetras, Coryadoras, Glass Catfish and Rainbowfish were not happy about it, the 18° water temperature was quite fatal for my male Ocellatus. Big lesson, these guys do not like cold water.

 

For another nine months, I kept a very lonely female. It got to the point where I really felt sorry for her and so I set up a 2ft species tank. The substratum is white sand and I have placed several shells and some rocks for cover. The only special water treatment required is the addition of a teaspoon or two of “water conditioner” for every 10 litres of water. This is basically a mixture of various salts and carbonates that buffer the water. This increases the water hardness and stabilises the pH at around 8.5.

 

Now, while my occi liked her new accommodation, there was something she was missing. Despite the $35 price tag, I ordered some Neolamprologus ocellatus (gold form) from Jem Aquatics. The first lot that Bob ordered died in his quarantine room - this confirms for me that they do not travel well. He kindly ordered some more in for me and so I bought two Romeos for poor Juliet. Again, despite being a relatively short trip, they did not look at all healthy when I got home.

 

The romance was a torrid but quick affair. After about five minutes of jaw locking, tumbling around in the sand and generally antagonist behaviour, the territories were established. One of the males hid behind the filter and basically stayed there until I rescued him a month or so later. The other male claimed a shell and the female managed to hold on to her original shell. While I did not observe the spawning, two weeks later, I had just done a water change when I noticed a few tiny fish wriggling out of the shell. You little ripper!!! When mother gave the signal, the little fry of about three to four millimetres would swim out and sit on their bellies on the sand waiting for food but at the soonest sign of danger she would herd them back into the safety of the shell. No doubt a great defence against predators.

 

As is typical for me when faced with a situation where I need further information, I consulted the great electronic oracle, the Internet. The advice from the Sydney Cichlid Society discussion forum varied. Some said leave them in there and take them out when the parents spawn again (to avoid sibling predation) and others said take them out straight away. The latter view seemed to attract the majority of support and so I set up an 18 inch tank with a small air powered corner filter. Naturally, the water was sourced from the original tank. Apparently, the parent fish have a habit of diving in the shell after the fry when really threatened. The key is to distract the parents with a twitching finger. The parents shoo the fry into the shell and proceed to try to remove the offending finger (from their territory). While this is going on and using the other hand, grab the shell and place your finger over the opening, lift up and place in the other tank. As I found out, while this sounds difficult, it is in fact quite easy.

 

My first spawning turned out to be a large one, with 20 young fish (subsequently, 10 to a dozen seems to be the average). The fry are quite independent from a young age and will take small Daphnia, newly hatched brine shrimp and crushed flake. The easiest way to sort the big Daphnia from the small is to place a very fine fish net on top an ice cream container with a less fine fish net on top of that. Simply pour the Daphnia through and you will catch the big ones in the top net while the small ones will be caught in the smaller net below. The fry grow relatively fast when this food is supplied.

 

After three months, the fry have been moved into my four ft growing-out tank and are more than two centimetres long - they are starting to develop their very own grumpy personalities. Several have even taken up residence in their own shells. They are growing fast and there is another brood in the 18 inch tank. I have decided to leave the most recent brood with the parents in order to observe their behaviour when the fry get older.

 

Anyway, as you may have gathered, I can not recommend these fish highly enough. They are comical, tenacious and compatible with most community fish (I even kept them with Cardinal Tetras). They are fairly tolerant to a variety of conditions but I would not put them in soft acidic water. While they are not a flamboyant or overly colourful fish, their shell dwelling lifestyle makes them a fascinating pet. In a nutshell, occis simply rate 10 out of 10 on the personality scale.

 

This fish is amongst the easiest of all egg-layers to breed. They spawn in pairs on bunches of fine leaved plants after a prolonged courtship. Unusually, there is no need to remove the parent fish after spawning as they generally ignore both eggs and young. I have had them breeding in my fish pond and was surprised by the end of the season to see about 700 fish -starting from seven fish. The fish need a temperature between 16-22C. Unfortunately I lost about half due to an error in temperature and providing insufficient food.

 

It grows to about 7cm in length with the male being the larger. The basic coloration is brownish to salmon which under bright light becomes iridescent green or bluish purple. A black line runs from the eye to the central part of the three-lined tail fin. The male has longer central tail fin rays. Another important difference between the sexes is the colour of the eyes which are blue for the male and green for the female. This feature can be used to distinguish the sexes when in their juvenile stage. Besides it's attractive colouring, the species has a peaceful nature and is therefore suitable for a community aquarium.

 

I have kept Emperor Tetras since establishing my first tropical freshwater aquarium in Australia in the late 1960's. I started with two pairs who shared the tank with other Tetra species (Cardinals, Glow-Lights, Black Neons, Serpae and Lemon Tetras). The tank was always densely planted mainly with Cryptocorynes, Sword Plants, Ambulia and Ludwigia species. Soon after being placed in the tank the two males commenced mirror fights to determine dominance. After a week or so I discovered that one of the males defended a very densely planted corner of the aquarium against any intruders. After a further two weeks I noticed fry swimming amongst the plants near the water surface. Today, I still have Emperor Tetras. They have maintained themselves in the community aquarium. Sometimes only 3 to 5 juveniles survive, at other times 10 to 12.

 

As I was somewhat concerned about inbreeding, I purchased another two males in the late 1970's. I have not observed any phenomena associated with inbreeding to date. It should be recognised however that breeding in a community aquarium results in many eggs and fry being taken by other fishes and only the fittest survive. It is also not very productive.

 

The water conditions are not critical for Emperor Tetras. Ideally, my Tetra tank is kept slightly acid with water being fitered over peat (the new blackpeat granules are recommended). On occasions the pH has been as low as 5.4. Shellgrit put into the filter system or a small handful put into the tank ensures that the pH increases, sometimes up to 7.8. Because of these fluctuations, I now follow the strict rule to change 1/4 of the water weekly, which has resulted in a much more stable pH at the level required by the Tetras.

 

When fry are observed in the tank, the only extra food given are any of the micron foods and freshly hatched Brine Shrimp for a period of 5 to 6 weeks after which the normal variety of flake foods and freeze dried and frozen foods are given with some live foods when available.

 

There are two related species available also originating from Columbia, but each from a different river system. One species is much lighter in colour and the other darker with a fuller body than the Emperor Tetra. It is likely that the three species have evolved from the same forebears.

 

It would be interesting to obtain some comments from members regarding aspects of inbreeding of fish.

 

Editor's Note: This is the second Emperor Tetra article in as many issues, but I feel that it is important to get as many different angles on our commonly-kept species as possible. I can vouch for the fact that Emperors (and Kerri Tetras) will successfully spawn in a community tank, unlike some of their more ‘delicate’ cousins, albeit nowhere near as well as a good spawning setup in a seperate tank.

 

On inbreeding, this affects the two main groups of fishes that Julie and I have always kept, Cichlids and Rainbowfish. Both contain species not native to Australia that are not allowable imports (Australian Rainbowfish 'blood' can be freshened by Safari using several hundred dollars worth of petrol and a Land Cruiser, but this is not a journey to be undertaken lightly. You can't do this for the New Guinean species.) and basically, what we have is all we will ever get.

 

Inbred Cichlids have deformed mouths, kinky fins, washy colour, and basically aren't worth feeding. Inbred Rainbowfish seem prone to ulcers, as well as suffering from the aforementioned deformities. What do you do? Only breed from deformity free adults, try and get the parents from different sources (even if you are working with a species that is descended from only four specimens brought into Australia, there will still be local variations in keeping/feeding/temperature methods to ensure a little more genetic diversity than breeding brother/sister from your own tanks), and cull deformed youngsters mercilessly. If you can only obtain deformed stock to begin with, try spawning them anyway if they are extremely rare, because they are descended from deformity-free stock (in the wild) and may produce a couple of fry better than themselves. This means the harsh process of culling most of the youngsters, which shouldn't really be the point of any spawning.

Reprinted from Tank Talk Volume 11 Number 1

 

In July of 1985 we purchased a lovely pair of Peacock Gudgeons (Tateurndina ocellicauda) at the club's auction. Being new members then, our first intention was just to put them in our community tanks just another pretty fish. However we became more involved in the hobby and had seen two articles in the Tropical Fish Hobbyist magazine, Volume 31 Book 8 (# 326) April 1983 pages 56 to 60 inclusive, involving the Peacock Gudgeon. We decided then that we would definitely try to breed these lovely looking fish. We placed them in a 27 litre (6 gallon) tank with a 20 cm (8 inch) depth of water. Inside the tank we had put one and a half to two inches of gravel, a ceramic bridge and a corner filter. It was also well planted. The water was well aged tap water with a neutral pH and a constant temperature of 26 degrees C.

 

We conditioned the pair on a mixture of freeze dried foods and live Daphnia, fed alternately twice daily. About four months after purchasing, the pair were ready and willing to breed. The male was approximately one and a half inches long and the female slightly smaller. The female's tummy started swelling and turned a deep yellow Colour and the male proceeded to chase her and display around her at any opportunity. The male's colours became brighter as well as showing the contrasting red and blue colour at it's best.

 

The male at this time was searching for a spawning site and after choosing it under the ceramic bridge, he cleaned it out and spent his time either under the bridge or chasing the female. Eventually, he enticed the female to join him under the bridge. Over the next two days the eggs were laid suspended from the underside of the bridge. The female was then in no uncertain terms kicked out. There were approximately 50 eggs laid but it was difficult to see them while hidden under the bridge. They were yellow in colour and suspended individually by a fine thread. The male stayed under the bridge guarding and fanning the eggs, only coming out occasionally for food but mainly waiting until the live Daphnia swam to him. The eggs seemed quite small to us but it was our first introduction to the breeding of egg-layers. We had recently bred Guppies (Poecilia reticulata) 2-4 weeks before and these were in the same tank, thinking they were too small to eat the newly hatched Peacocks. Thinking to ourselves that the Peacocks, when hatched, would be about the size of a new-born Guppy. Boy were we mistaken! The Peacocks' eggs hatched in about six days, unfortunately we never saw any fry from that spawning.

 

When the male had nothing left to guard, he began chasing the female, once again, which had grown large with roe. We had another spawning a couple of weeks later and still had not learned to remove the young Guppies. Also to make it even more interesting the male decided the safest place in the tank was at the back and inside of our cartridge filter. The fry of this did not survive either.

 

By now the Guppies were large enough to be put into our larger community tank. Meanwhile, in the breeding tank, we had changed filters, removed the ceramic bridge and in it's place put in a rock to form a cave. Soon the mating ritual began again and they were in the rock cave side by side in no time at all. The female was ousted the next day and the male was guarding and fanning the newest batch of eggs. At this time we removed the female.

 

Seven days after the eggs were laid we noticed free-swimming fry (about one third to one half of the size of a new born Guppy) being herded by the male. Afraid that he may turn and cat them, we promptly removed him to the community tank.

 

The fry were fed at frequent intervals on Sera Micron food. At a couple of weeks old we also added some fine freeze-dried Brine Shrimp to their menu. A week later we tested them on small Daphnia just to see if they could handle it. They did, so we introduced very small live Daphnia and Cyclops to their menu, plus small bits of freezedried. The Peacocks seem to prefer eating in the lower half of the tank, so we tried a Tetra Tabi Min tablet, which soon breaks up into fine pieces and they got stuck into that in no time.

 

The only other fish present in the breeding tank at all times was a bronze catfish (Corydoras aeneus), to help with any uneaten food. We had read in Tropical Fish Hobbyist magazine that this catfish would not harm eggs or fry and this proved right for us. When the fry were spotted, we turned the filter to the lowest position to prevent the young from going in.

 

Editor's Note: Rodney and Deborah went on to breed quite a few of these great little fish, and for a time they wore quite common. I suppose that is why no one wanted to breed and maintain them. Now there are very few left. It is hoped that the next time they become available to the general run of Canberra aquarists more attention is paid to them.

 

Blue-eyes (the fish, not the singer) were once grouped amongst the Australian and New Guinea rainbow fishes (Melanotaeniidae), but recently have been re-classified to their own family (Pseudomogilidae) that contains some 10 species. This reclassification I understand is due to the fact that they are more closely related tot he ancestral Melanoteaemiid stock. Spotted blue-eyes are fairly common and according to Fresh Water Fishes of Australia (by Dr G.R.Allen) are found in those small creeks swampy marches, lily lagoons etc located at the 'top end' of QLD and the NT.

 

Digressing just a little from the main topic, my main fresh water fishy interest has been and still is with various tetras and South American dwarf cichlids. Sure, I have heard of, and seen, various types of rainbows during my many years in this hobby, but never believed they could measure up to the brilliance of tetras like the cardinal tetra or the diamond tetra. That was until I saw some slides of the neon rainbow at a CDAS general meeting; this fish truly is a sparkling beauty that I can highly recommend as a tetra alternative.  It wasn't long before I obtained some of these fish and became hooked on small rainbows. I asked around if anybody kept any other smallish rainbows and as a consequence was very generously offered a few different kinds including these spotted blue-eyes (an offer too good to refuse). SO thus I ended up with 5 of these cute little critters.

 

Back to blue-eyes. Being a small fish they do not need a big aquarium, mine went in an 18 inch tank holding approximately 18 litres of water. Aged water from my tetra tank was used (pH 7.2; TDS 120 ppm; total hardness 5DH). Furnishings are sparse with a clump of Java moss, a few bits of Java fern, and the all important spawning mop. Also, a small air powered sponge filter maintains water hygiene and a 25 watt heater-thermostat keeps the temperature at about 26 degrees Celsius.

 

After only one day in their new home I found a couple of eggs in the spawning mop, and this scenario of a few eggs a day has in fact become more or less the norm. Work commitments so far have prevented me catching them in the act of spawning, but one day I will (maybe). The eggs are fairly large, transparent and quite tough. I collect them every day or so by picking them off the spawning mop. The mop gets a good squeeze first to remove most water, making the eggs stand out by looking like little water drops. They are incubated in small drinking glasses that are floated in another small tank (this one only holds about nine litres of water). The glasses are filled with about 20mm of water from the parent's fish tank.

 

Waiting for eggs to hatch is a lesson in patience, in fact after two sveeks and no sign of any fry I thought the whole thing had become a miserable failure. But I was told to hang in there as it could take three weeks or more for the eggs to hatch. A long 22 days later, the first fry appeared. They seem to be free swimming as soon as they hatch, and hence require immediate feeding (no sign of any post hatching yolk sack as far as I could tell). Since the eggs are transparent it would be quite easy to observe the development of the fry with the aid of a good magnifying glass.

 

As soon as the fry hatch, I spoon them out of their drinking glass and transfer them into a feeding tank (also about nine litres). The fry are fairly small and initially are fed with dust foods like micro encapsulated 'artificial rotifers' and sera micron fry food. After a week or so this first food is supplemented with vinegar eels, and several weeks later, the initial fry foods are replaced by micro wortms and occasionally some baby white worms.

 

The fry grow very slowly (once again patience is a virtue), after 15 weeks the biggest measured about 12 mm and at this growth rate it would take at least seven months before they reach a decent size.

 

All in all, the breeding effort over some four months has resulted in about 50 tiny spotted blue eyes. I don't know if that's a good effort or not, but personally I am delighted with the results and that's what this hobby is all about.

 

Next I hope to try my luck with some honey blue-eyes as these are currently in danger of becoming extinct in the wild. If they are anything like the spotted blue-eyes the rewards in propagating this species will be even more rewarding.

 

As a summary, the spotted blue-eyes is a small and very interesting Australian native fish that needs only a small tank, requires no more care that the average tetra, and can be bred very easily provided you can spare a few drinking glasses, a couple of bookshelf tanks and a bit of patience. Ergo the spotted blue-eye is an ideal aquarium fish that deserves to be hugely popular.

 

There is a perfectly legitimate scientific reason for hybridising fishes (or birds, for that matter) of different species or genera. One of the old tests of whether or not two animals would fit into the same genus was to cross breed them and see if the offspring were fertile. But when trying to preserve dwindling stocks of rare cichlids, hybridisation is of no good whatsoever, and can even be quite harmful.

 

An aquarist may have a nice male Melanotaenia goldii, a rare New Guinean Rainbowfish. But perhaps he cannot find a female of this species and so is tempted to use a very similar looking female of M. herbertaxelrodi. So he cross breeds the-two species and obtains a batch of fry that are goldii x herbertarelrodi hybrids. Some of these he then sells to friends as goldii and the rest he grows up and disposes to the aquarium trade. What has he done wrong? Well for a start, his friends will be in possession of viable hybrids that they will be tempted to rear up and breed, goldii being as rare as it is. Other aquarists will purchase them from the shops in good faith and taking them to be pure stock, will also breed them. But these fish are not goldii at all and at some stage (maybe in the next generation, when the fry will not look like their parents) someone will work this out. The ultimate result will be a lot of wasted work in raising fishes of no real value.

 

Hybridisation is not always deliberate: with the Aulonocaras (Malawi Peacock Cichlids), most of the females are quite similar and in a community tank, the father of a particular brood of fry may not belong to the same species as the mother. Care must also be taken in this regard (similar females) with Killifish.

 

In the Australian cichlid scene at the moment, there is a great deal of concern about hybridisation because of the low available gene pool, that many dedicated breeders are devoting their lives to preserving. In the case of many of the Lake Victoria cichlids, which are now extinct in the wild, this work is quite literally of vital importance.

 

When buying cichlids, aquarists should make a point of getting to know what wild specimens look like, to guard against obtaining hybrids, or even 'pure' fish that may not be compatible with others in their breeding tanks. In the case of the African Rift Lake Cichlids, the club library has two excellent books by Ad Konigs, on the Malawi and Tanganyika species, respectively. These works give a good idea of what the fishes look like in the wild. It is a shame that no such book exists, showing all of the different populations of Australian Rainbowfishes. All the same, it is a good rule not to cross breed populations of such variable species as Melanotaenia tilfasciata, but rather to recognise and work within populations, such as those from the Goyder and Giddy Rivers.

 

Be wary of so-called 'new' species of fishes just on the market for the first time in many years. There have been cases of unscrupulous breeders deliberately crossing different species (particularly in the New Guinean Rainbowfishes and African Cichlids) in order to produce something more colourful. They then raise the hybrids and search, meantime, in the handbooks for something approximating their appearance. The hybrids are then released under this appealing name, to an unsuspecting public always on the lookout for something new and prepared to pay exorbitant prices. To be sure, some new fishes are smuggled into the country occasionally, but many people have been 'caught' by flashy hybrids that appeared to be prohibited species at the time.

 

However, the major trouble with hybrids is that they divert those serious souls who are trying to preserve what is left of cichlids that were formerly allowed into Australia. For once these populations are gone, we shall never see them again, except as pictures in old books! A while ago, I was privileged to hear a talk by Graeme Phipps (Curator-in-Chief, Taronga Park Zoo), who expressed the opinion that hybridisers of rare and provenanced (place of origin known) stocks were committing a "crime against the species" and should be prosecuted accordingly. So please do not hybridise fishes deliberately and ensure that you take every precaution to prevent its happening accidentally, thereby helping our hobby to survive.

 

The male and female were removed at this time as neither seemed interested in the eggs. The eggs hatched in about 36 hours and were tree swimming 48 hours later. This is when we started feeding them liquifry and Sera micron food, this was before we had an infusoria culture. There were a number of losses, probably due to our inexperience. The ones that were left grew quickly and they were not fussy eaters.

 

Several months later we tried our hand at the beautiful Dwarf Gourami - Colisa lalia. We had learned a lot since our first breeding of the Pearls. Their breeding conditions were a bare bottomed 45 litre 30 cm high tank, with a water temperature of 29 decrees celcius, pH of 6.9 and a number of small water sprites, duckweed and riccia all tloating on top, with a bundle ot java moss for hiding, sitting on the bottom. The sponge filter was at its lowest bubbling rate. Previous to this, the male and female were kept in separate tanks until the female looked ready, then the male was placed into the breeding tank two days ahead of the female. We ere given a real show by the male as his colours intensified and he did his duty. He would grab the roots of the water sprite in his mouth and tow them around to where he wanted them and blow a huge number of bubbles underneath, place bits of riccia and duckweed in the bubbles wherever he thought they were needed. He even gathered small pieces of Java moss to push up into the bubblenest. This kept going on even after the female was introduced. For about a week he kept at his nest and every now and then gave chase to the female.

 

Then late one afternoon things were different, he vigorously chased the female, then went up under his nest trying to get her to see his handywork. After a few minutes she did, and he wrapped himself around her. Nothing came of the embraces for the first number of times but then the eggs started to appear. They were very, very tiny and only a few at a time. If the. eggs were disturbed they would look as if they were going to sink

but when almost at the bottom they would slowly change direction and eventually get back to the top by themselves but mostly with the help of daddy dwarf. The pair were left for the night and next morning she was hiding, so she was removed. The eggs were very difficult to see being well hidden in his well made nest.

 

Later that, day we decided as the eggs floated we would remove the male also, just in case. The eggs hatched in 24 hours ard were free swimming 48 hours later, the air was then slowly increased. They were fed infusoria, Sera micron food and strained egg yolk. They had a fairy high mortality rate even though we were doing as much as we knew how. At about 10 days old they were eating newly hatched brine-shrimp and small dried foods.  At 3 weeks old the use of their labyrinth organ was witnessed. They enjoy brine-shrimp, small daphnia and cyclops, these also grew quickly on this type of food.

In my article in the last edition of Tank Talk (Vol.26 no.1), I wrote that I had purchased and subsequently bred Neolamprologus brichardi “daffodil”. After the article was published, one of the members said that I may have the wrong species name. Being curious about what he said, I started to do some homework – a task that I had thought I had left behind me 45 years ago.

 

Not having a computer and access to the Internet, I did my research the old fashioned way, searching though books. Not so easy. Whoever named this fish must have been a mate of Ed Konnings because it seems to me that the experts give a different name to fish when they have only slight variations in colour and markings. We are lucky they (the namers) were not let loose to name us. Anyway, back to the core topic of this article.

 

The two main species that seem to be the most common are the Neolamprologus brichardi (Fairy Cichlid). There are also others within the “brichardi Complex” such as Albino, Kasegera, Kigoma and Kiku. Several species within the brichardi Complex such as those named above are commonly referred to as “Fairy Cichlid”. It is worth noting that some of the above species were imported into the USA in 1995 but are not common or unknown in the Australian market place.

 

The brichardi Complex is made up of the following species: L. brichardi, L. pulcher, L. facicula, L. gracilis and L. crasus. As the picture to the left illustrates, the mark that seems to separate the above species from the L. species (Daffodil) is a black sideways “T” marking on the cheek/gill area. While this “T” marking appears on the other species in the complex, L. species (Daffodil) has two black parallel markings on or near the cheek/gill. Also, as the name “Daffodil” implies, these fish have a yellow colouring.

 

After all this homework, I have concluded that the fish that I have bred are indeed Daffodils. Regardless of their name, they are a great, beautiful strong-willed fish. They are also fantastic parents for their fry.