Celebes Rainbowfish By Deborah Ralph
Spawning the Celebes Rainbowfish Telmatherina ladigesi is very similar to spawning the rainbowfishes of Australia and Papua New Guinea. The Celebes also likes to spawn in fine leaved plants, such u lava Moss, or even in nylon spawning mops. We used the mops and we had 3 males and 3 females in a brackish water community aquarium. Not wishing to move the now adult Celebes as we had read from the little information available to us that they were sensitive in this regard, we chose to place mops into the community aquarium. Realising that we could probably not get many eggs, because of their egg-eating habits well as those of the other inhabitants, we still thought it was worth a try, rather than risking the lives of the fish.
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.