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 :-)