Fundulopanchax spoorenbergi

Nice fish, but not always easy to find. These are a larger fish, roughly half again larger than the gardneri. Very brightly colored and easy to care for. Breeding them for me has been another matter. They seem to be really picky about something. Perhaps they will be easier to breed when I figure out what it is they are picky about.

I got a pair of them last year. In six months I managed to get about a dozen eggs and raise 7. I forget which way the sexes went but could only make 1 pair out of them. I tried mops, peat, 2 gallon to 10 gallon tanks and just could not get any eggs. I finally moved them into a plastic container that is a little bigger than a shoe box and twice as tall (about 6" tall). Thin layer of gravel, 2 floating mops that are 12" long so they lay along the bottom, some long strand peat, and java moss. One pair to the container. They are on a shelf without a light so they only get the light from the ceiling light. The java moss slowly grew until the fish don't swim, they just wiggle around except for a small area in the front I keep pushing back so I can feed them. Frozen Brine shrimp, pieces of earthworm, blackworms when I can get them. I finally get lots of eggs and have about 40 fry almost to sexing size. I have to pull out the tank and take it apart to find the eggs, but I move the adult pair to another tank set up the same way. The tank stays dark and packed and the fish are mostly shadows moving around. Not really great for watching them, but finally eggs. I get all the eggs and put on peat. Took almost 6 weeks for them to eye up.

If I can get the fry raised up I will keep some of them in a normal tank so their beauty can be enjoyed.

8/25/2001

The above batch resulted in my arch enemy. ! male, 20-30 females.

The tank I moved the adult fish to is a 2 1/2 gallon tank with only room lighting. I filled the tank roughly 2/3 full of sphagnum peat moss loosely packed and some java moss. I have been feeding them a steady diet of live baby brine shrimp and frozen adult brine shrimp. After about 6 seeks I noticed fry swimming in the tank. I pulled the parents out and put them into a 5 gallon tank also 1/2 to 2/3 full of sphagnum peat moss and java moss.

I began feeding the fry tank with baby brine shrimp. After a few weeks it was obvious that there were a lot of fry happily growing up.

9/6/2001 The fry tank is overflowing. Time to move the fry to a 10 gallon tank to continue growing up. There are at least 50 fry growing. Working my way through the mops and gravel, I cam up with another 25-30 totally eyed up eggs. I put them in a container with some of the tank water. In a couple of hours I have another 20 or so fry swimming around. Even with my bad sex ratios, this many fry should give me a bunch of males.

9/7/2001 I thought I would try the same trick again with the tank I moved the parents to. They are now floating in a new 5 gallon tank. Their old tank has wonderful fry swimming around. I am going to repeat the last process again and just start feeding the new fry tank with brine shrimp and see if a big hatch comes out of it. This is a kind of unorthodox way to do these fish, but I am having better luck this way that the other ways I have tried.

Breeding fish is luck, perseverance, and keep trying different methods until you find one the fish like.