Breeding The Hyphesobrycon Bentosi By Rene Jez

 

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.