Fundulopanchax filamentosus *Ijebu Ode*

African Juwelery, which came to me at a meeting in Augsburg in the year 2004. It was my first semiannual killi and at this species I had the pleasure to learn a few things about maintaining and hatching. The only difficult thing is to get them used to your place/your water - and the raising of the young can be a thrill too, sometimes.
They are quite agressive to each other - males and females are both no pacifists to others of their kind ;-) - but if there are enough places to hide away, it works.
In my filamentosus tank you find a pice of wood with lots of Anubias on it. This is the perfect environment to maintain a group of them.
I use a plastic-box filled with coconut-fibre to spawn them. They are quite profilic - the eggs are easy to detect in the substrat, if it's dried up a bit - the colour of the eggs is like honey and no substrate is adhering to the eggs.
This fish get their colour early - the males will develop the red line in their anal fin at the age of 6 to 8 weeks. I never had problems with bad sexratio, but problems with young fish passing away after a change of water. It's wise to use water out of a running tank, and it's wise too not to overcrowd a tank with young fish.
A tank with a group of filamentosus is a beautiful spot in every fishroom - this fish get almost exactly two years old.
The long filaments at the caudal fin will grow, if you keep a male for his own. I'll do this maybe, when I'm a retired person.

My way of hatching SAA's

At first I prepare my jug with water: I always take the water out of a running tank, and put it on the floor - to get it cooler. I don't use very cold water - at my place temperatures around 20° C are working very good. I add always about one gramm of sea-salt per litre water, so the artemia nauplias will survive much longer in this water. I never monitored any bad influence to the fry by using sea-salt.



Then I put the TA into a box - I put about half a pill of oxygen-tabs on the substrate - I make crumbs of this pill by using a scissors.
One important thing I had to learn during my killi-years: I never use a fresh box - my hatching box is filled with water, some leaves and sometimes a small plant and a few snails all over the year. Before hatching I put all the old water and all the snails out.

750 ml of water is just the rigth amount for my box - so the level will be at about 2,5-3 cm. Now I add one or two snails - and a little BBS (baby-brine-shrimp) - so the fish have something to eat from the very beginning.

I put the box always on a warm place - 24-26°C are a good idea, the raising temperature in the box and the falling oxygen-level in the water will help to hatch the fry - the oxygen-level is quite high, so one don't have to fear to get too much belly-sliders out.

I did not develope this method at my place - many thanks go out to quite a few Killi-Maniacs, who helped me to solve problems in hatching.

Simpsonichthys punctulatus - she's doing well

Finally I got a shot of one of the females of my S. punctulatus. It's very funny - the camouflage of this fish is very effective - the camera has problems to focus on this fish - they blend perfect into the background with this stripe-pattern.
At the moment I have three females together with one male in the spawning tank. At the second punctulatus-arena - the males-tank - there I have a quite sad story to tell: After I put the biggest male out, to the females, the left three boys began to kill each other - so there is only one male left. I did not think, that they are that agressive - when they where younger, nothing happend - it seemed to be peace all over the place.
That's it for today - the punctulatus story will go on, I'm looking forward to see their eggs.

Austrolebias affinis egg - ready to hatch

I made this picture to show, how an egg of an annual killifish looks like, if they are ready to hatch.
I have a small microscope, best magnification is x 20 to see this in a proper way.
The eggs are ready, if you see the embryo move inside the egg - this is a very amazing sight, don't miss it - it's stunning! The eye is fully developed.
Ah - I almost forgot to say, which species laid this egg: is it from Austrolebias affinis "Durazno" - the species is a fairly easy one, compared to other SAA.

Chromaphyosemion bitaeniatum - Benin 2003

A small jewel: Chromaphyosemion bitaenitaum - I got this strain from a friend in Austria - and he got his fish from Anton Lamboj, who is known as an expert for chichlids in western Africa. Lamboj brought them to Vienna, as far as I know, there are not much strains of bitaeniatum from Benin in our hobby.

The fish is really easy to keep - even in company with other fishes in the tank. I kept them together with A. primigenium and with Epiplatys. Every changing in their tank causes a period, where they are hiding. As an example: If you move a few of them from a tank to another tank - they will hide - you won't belive that you put them in the new tank...but two weeks later: everything will be nice - the males have a nice way to show off their colourful fins.

At my place, breeding with mops failed. I'm sure, they are eating their own eggs. The eggs are pretty big compared to the size of the fish:


Best method is seperataing a pair in a small tank with peat on the ground. After one week I put the fish out and poor away the water - I store the peat very wet and put it back into water after two weeks. Sometimes I hatch two or three fry, sometimes nothing - but sometimes I get 12-15 fry out - which is enough for my purposes.

Raising the fry is very easy: They eat Artemia, but if you don't give them food for one or two days it does not matter: they are hardy - feeding on infusorias and other things in the tank.
They are growing in batch - sometimes you don't recognize them again in the morning.
There are always a few more males than females in the offspring.

I find regulary one or two pretty big grown youngs in the tank of the mature fish - there are much plants in the tank.

This species grows old - I'm sure they get three or four years old, maybe even older. And this are excellent jumpers - the tank has to be coverd very well and all the time!

Austrolebias nigripinnis MSL 91/2 Ceibas

May I introduce this nice Killi-species to you? Austrolebias nigripinnis is one of the standard-species, which are kept in our hobby for more than 30 years. This is a really hardy species - almost ideal to start with, if one wants to give an annual species a try.

I got the eggs from a friend in the Netherlands, he sent me eggs - the two males on the picture are my second generation - it is a little to warm at my place, so the lifespan of this fish is not much more than 7-8 months. I was told, if you keep them cool at temperatures below 20°C - they can live for more than 18 months.

Breeding is fairly easy: I put a small box filled with coconut-fiber in the tank. They spawn at a very early stage - maybe with 2 months - they are not full grown, but they leave their first eggs.
I store the eggs about 4 month, I never had problems with belly-sliders, the fry grows fast.

Last generation died away very fast - at the actual generation I use 1 g sea-salt per liter water - as far as I can tell, this is very good - my fishes bite each other, they are quite agressive - so the salt is very useful to prevent the wounds from going worse.

At last a few things for all who want do try it with nigripinnis: use big tanks - 60x30x30 is just perfect - at this size you can keep serveral males and its very beautiful and interesting to watch this guys - give several spawning-boxes into the tank and you'll always have action with this fish.

Another thing is the food: don't fed to big amounts of food at once. I's a pity: the most beautiful and dominant males are in danger of eating too much - so they become belly-sliders, and you'll lose them for sure.

Use some plants in the tank with A. nigripinnis - smaller males and females can hide away. I use a wooden root with Anubias and Microsorum on it - so I can keep the tank tidy, I use no gravel for the bottom of the tank, only a few oak-leaves.

Change the water often - they like much oxygen in the water and they like it, when the pH is on a level above 7. You can put them into a tub in the garden during the summer-months. The cool temperatures and the sun and the food will help you to get gorgeous and big fish.

It's easy to watch them spawning - I tried to make pictures, but: that is not as easy as i thought.
Maybe later this year I can manage to get pictures of a spawning, for now I had to quit, it was not possible to get beautiful pictures.

collecting eggs of Rivulus magdalenae

This days I spent every evening a few minutes to search for eggs in a spawning-mop, which I put into my tank with a pair of Rivulus magdalenae.
The tank has plants in it too - but - they go to the mop to lay some eggs.
The harvest is poor - most time I find only 2-4 eggs, sometimes six of them and only once I found ten eggs. This happend on thursday evening - I almost did not belive my eyes :-).

I tried to store the eggs in a small box of water - don't do the same - it's no good idea. All water-stored eggs went fungus - at last at day three of storage. Even when I added alder-uvula to the water and even by using sera mycopur!
This was a frustrating experience.

At the moment I store the eggs in peat - the very-wet-peat did not work too - best was not-so wet peat (no water at the edge of the box!) - and even there, a few eggs where lost to fungus.

So for now I'm wondering, why this species is called an fairly easy species...
I will take my time to monitor the egg-production - it seems to me, that it does not matter how much food they get and which kind of food I give - the amount of eggs does not change.
A change of water does NOT animate them to lay more eggs - I receive the impression, that fresh water is not good for egg-production - very strange for a killifish...

The Rivulus species are generally not often seen in the hobby - I have to find a way to get more healthy eggs to spread them to some friends around...

My first Post

Oh my god: I managed it to get this Blog started - I'm happy and I find it was not too difficult at all.
Let's start with some Killi-Storys:

...here you see the first picture of my still young Simpsonichthys punctulatus - this species is quite new to our hobby, I got it as eggs from a friend in Italy.
They lived in a small tank and where hiding all the time. Last week I counted them - I feared to have only one female - nope - I found three females, they are much much smaller than the males - so I divided them in a male-tank and a female tank.
Raising the fry was not diffichult - the young fish had a nice size - similar to young Austrolebias affinis - food was artemia Nauplia and soon they managed to eat grindal-worms too. Growing was quite fast!

Now I've to wait, that the females grow a little bigger and then I'll try to get some eggs from them. They have a Code: "Goias NP 03/07"
You see: Collected in year 2007 :-)