A short while back I got interested in fish-keeping. That mug peering at you is a Pseudotropheus socolofi that was one of the first cichlids I got. He has nothing to do with this particular story, except to welcome you. 
That and his tank is just below the fish I’m going to talk about.
About 3 months ago I bought some Xenoophorus captivus at an auction. They are native to Mexico and listed as endangered on FishBase.org. You can see their geographic location at Jesus Maria google satellite maps if you are at all interested. But what about these Green Goodeid’s already.
OK, lets just say when I got them there were eight. Now there are about twenty-eight. If you have never had live-bearers you don’t know what you are missing.
To get a good idea about what these strange little fish look like. There are some nice pictures at this Goodeid site. They pretty much seem to spend all their time darting around, chasing each other for supremecy and mating. What I was most suprised by was how quickly they started having young.
I keep their tank at about 76 degrees F and the PH around 7.6. The tank is pretty well planted as I was hoping there would be some young needing places to hang out. Just some basic small natural substrate and an assortment of river stone and slate gives them places to hide or just hang out. The females seem to hoard the best spots and the males spend their time “dancing” for them. Whatever they are doing they seem to be doing it right. After about 3 weeks the first set of babies were born. There were five or six that time but most didn’t make it. The ones that did were translucent and the ones that didn’t were white it places. But two did survive and April 1 marked the day when my population started climbing.
There were sporadic new fish over the next month. Most of them ended up living for a few days to a week and then just giving up the ghost. I have no idea how many were actually born over that time frame but I ended up with 2 pairs that did make it. The oldest are a little over an inch and the second pair are just a little smaller. But that was nothing compared to what I found when I got back from my latest work tour. I mentioned that they were translucent when young and that makes them very hard to see in the plants. But at best count the mother that has been looking like she would explode had about 18 young that I can count. I honestly don’t know how it was possible. The mother is only about 2 1/2 inches long.
There they are. The bulk of the fry. Based on what I have seen so far, they will stay pretty much out of sight for a few weeks. They pick at the algae that grows on the surface of the plants and grab anything that floats near them. For the time being, they are pretty much just eyes floating among the plants. While the larger fish don’t seem to bother them, it appears to me that they are much more comfortable staying out of the way.
Out of sight, out of mind I guess. Or perhaps it’s that discretion is the better part of valor. For now, I’ll just enjoy the relaxing sound of the water circulating. Hopefully my little biotope will continue to flourish.
Since I can’t upload a file this big here I’ll just leave a link to a short movie file showing everyone in all their glory. Goodeid Species Tank
At what point do you move some of them out of the tank? You know, to prevent in-breeding.
You can tell that I have absolutely no experience keeping fish, or any animal for that matter.
Biology and Zoology…
I couldn’t understand some parts of this article, but it sounds interesting…