Also known as the Florida Flagfish This is a really differently shape fish. Very blocky. Not the friendliest tank mate either. Actually has a bit of an attitude for me. I do not know if I would try it in a community tank with out watching very closely. But easy to care for, eats most anything, and so far the male has not beat up the female. Of course she has lots of places to hide. The male is roughly twice the size of the female. I only have a pair, so I do not have any direct knowledge of how they would do in groups.

This fish is usually said to need harder water, even brackish water. Mine are doing well in my incredible soft water here outside of Atlanta. My TDS rarely exceeds 20-25 out of the tap. Takes a lot of additives for me to get water up to 100 or a little more. The only additive this tank gets is the same as all my others, a little yard lime to provide some buffering for the pH, and some Seachem Flourish for the plants.

I set these fish up in pretty much my standard mop spawning setup. I use a 5 gallon tank with a sponge filter, gravel and plants. The very front of the tank will have no gravel or just a very thin layer. I try to get the food to land in this area, making cleanup easy. I will leave the fish in for about 3 weeks. Then it is time to collect the eggs, or at least the swap the mops in and out. I worked with these fish for a long time, never seeing any eggs. That is the kind of thing that will drive me nuts. Finally, I put in a heater and just started turning it up. Soemwhere between 80F and 84F the mops started showing eggs. Lots of eggs. Temperature was the magic elixir I was missing. Since I have just recently figured this out, I do not have any fry or pics of fry at this point. I do hope to soon, and be able to report my experiences on the incubation time of the eggs and how the fry do growing up.