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.