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.
