Epiplatys dageti monroviae

This easy species was my second species - I started out with a pair which I fetched by car from Augsburg. This fish gave me lots of pleasure and I still like them very much. Maybe there are beginners out there reading this: this is definitely a species to start with Killifish, or even to start to breed an egg-laying fish at all. My only trouble at the biginning: I had just one pair. I f you want to have real fun with them, keep more males together. Every breeder should be happy to get rid of a few males , because there are always much more males int he offspring, than females. Only if you can keep more male together (go for 5-6 males!) - you will be able to see the small fights beween the males, and they show more action and more colours too.

Have a look at this picture - this is what you will get by keeping more than one male. The second thing is the tank: don't keep them in very small tanks, a small tank is nice for raising the fry, but for keeping a bunch of Epiplatys the tank should measure at least 60 cm lenght of the egde.
Put your group in there, with an airation or a sponge-filter, you won't need a heater, feed micro-worms and some artemia and you'll find some fry at every water-change.
The adult fish will eat every kind of food, but the colors will be much better, if you give them some live-food or some frozen-food, once or twice a week.
They like Drosophila very much and an other goody for them are small house crickets. You can get house cricket in almost every pet-shop - they are not very expensive, go for the small ones!


If you want to breed them, you can choose lots of ways to meet the target. Keep them in a group in a tank for themselfes is one way - but be careful to get enough females out. Keeping a group in a small tank for a few days, feeding lots of frozen food and put the old fish back in their tank - after about 6-10 days the first frys will appear at the surface, eating artemia from the beginning.
Anotehr way is to collect the eggs from a mopp and put them into a small box with water or into peat. Be aware: sometimes all the eggs go fungus, but you will always have lots of eggs, if you have a group of them. Breeding with just one pair is more difficult, than breeding in a group. I harvested most eggs from a group of three females and two males, using a mopp in a 25l-tank.

The fry is hardy, it's not difficult to raise them. The big problem at every place is the sex-ratio among the offspring. I never met somebody, who got more females out, everybody has troubles to get enough females to keep his tribe going.

At my place I find sometimes males with very small stripes or no stripes.
I don't breed with them, kept in a group with males of the right colour, they cant compete - they always get lots of bites from the other fish.

This male was one without any stripes, he did not live very long - usually my dagetis live about four years, the fish without stripes are beautiful, but I lost lots of them before they are fully grown, and the fish on this picture was found dead at the age of maybe 18 months.

One last story: I tried to find a way to send eggs of E. dageti monroviae to a friend abroad. I tested some egg-storage methods at my place. If I stored them in water, there is a fungus-problem. About 50% of the tests failed because of fungus (about 20-30 eggs in a small tube with maybe 10 ml of water).
Second test: I stored them on a wet cotton-pad in a plastic-bag. Same result: either fungus or very quick development - the eggs hatched after 4 days (!!). So till now: I did not find a method to send eggs, in my opinion the risks are too high.

Aplocheilus lineatus

Today I want to tell you something about the very first killi-fish-species, which I kept and bred at my place. As luck would have it I got my first pair from a young man, who is a big cichlid-fan - he was happy to get a good place for his pair and I was happy to get them. I did not count exactly, it has to be the fourth or fifth generation till then, which is swimming actually in my tanks - I got the fish back in 2005.
This guys need quite big tanks - best experiences where made at my place in quite large tanks, 160 - 200 litres and: best is to kepp a group. I never had troubles with this fish if there are up to 5-7 fish together. If kept as a pair or with less than 5-6 fish, one of the fish will be the last in pecking-order. I had troubles with a very self-confident female, which killed several males in a big and well planted tank.

This days I spawned them again, it is still fun to collect the really large eggs from the mopp and watching them spawn is interesting too. If you want to watch, just divede the male and the famale for a couple of days, when you bring them together, you will see them spawning for sure.


They like to spawn on the ground - they also lay their eggs willingly in a mopp, they don't mind if its a swimming mopp or one which is fixed on the ground.
To harvest the big eggs has always been a thrill to me - almost 2mm in diameter, and if the female was fed well, you will find at least 15 eggs a day.
You can store the eggs in water - the young fish will appear on the eighth day at a temperature of 24-25°C. You also can store the eggs in wet peat, I did not notice any diffenece in the development-time - I just observed, that at my place more eegs go fungus in peat - so my prefered method is water-storage.
Raising them is easy - they eat BSS without problems and soon you can go to larger food, even to dry food. Favorits are flys of any size and sticks for cichlids. Pay attention on the temperature: espacially the young fish like it warm - 24°C is a minimum, they grow better on a warmer place.


...and when they mature, they will spawn their own eggs...

Nothobranchius eggersi "TAN 05-43 Kigongo"

I was very lucky to get eggs of this species, it was not a big problem to hatch and to raise them.
They eat a lot and the water was sometimes not in the best conditions - no problem anyway - they grew up quick. I have to use salt and I also raise the GH of my water with "sera mineral salt" to avoid Oodinum problems.
They like water-changes - it no mistake to do their tank twice a week - and they need much oxigen in the water - the airation is strong at my place. Be careful with cold water - especially the young fish are sensitive.

The variation in color and in bodyshape of this fish is amazing - some fish are more stretched out and some others are more compressed in their shape. And the colors! Every single fish has it's own pattern - beautiful sight - and at the end I've to say they are active as hell - dashing up and down the tank, always moving - and they move fast - it was a real challenge to get a few good pictures of them.


Two of my males are different from all others: there is no red in their coloration, only blue, a green shine on the head and white - this is beautiful - it would be interesting to seperate them and try to breed a completly blue strain, but in my case it's a matter of space, here is the picture of the bigger male:

It was difficult to grow up for him, because in his early days he looked much like a female for the other males - he had always to struggle and there where days when he lost a little bit of his fins.
Is this the fish which was called "Geysenbergi" in former times? Anyway. I'm looking forward to the next generation, wondering if there will appear some more completly blue fish.
The next generation should be no problem - they are laying a lot of eggs. I counted out some eggs for aquabid - I was really surprised about the amount of eggs. If you harvest only once in a month, you belive there are more eggs than peat in the box. The eggs hatch after 8-10 weeks of storage. Raising is easy, you need small artemia-nauplias and adding some winegar-eels in the first two days. Don't use fresh tap-water for the water-changes in the first week, I have best experience with water out of a running tank.

S.punctulatus - The End

News from the punctulatus-tank: The male has grown just beautiful. That's the only good news for today. He was very rough with his three females - I lost one female soon after I put the male into the tank. After this foto-shooting, this wonderful male killed the other two females - so all I got now is the poor harvest of about 70 eggs, divided in two bags of eggs.

Anyway: maybe you can learn from my experience. In the next generation I will keep the male and the females in two seperated tanks and bring them only together for spawning.