Practical Fishkeeping March 2024

LISTENING TO feedback from aspirational new aquarists in stores, one thing presents itself above all others—the unrelenting hunger for basic info. I'll confess, I've been blind to it for a while, mistakenly assuming that every fishkeeper out there had all the essentials in the bag. It turns out that an awful lot of us don't, and that's okay. With that in mind, and paying attention to the many requests that come my way, I've decided to run a few features covering some of the fundamentals of the hobby for this issue. As you've no doubt seen from the cover, there's a starters’ guide to the care of shrimps, but I've also been asked a lot about dealing with unexpected offspring in a tank, so I tasked a breeder with a…

TROPICAL Community tanks FISHKEEPING AS WE know it goes back to the mid-Victorian era, with mass-produced ‘parlour aquaria’ being shown at the Great Exhibition of 1851. Books extolled the virtues of the balanced aquarium, using sunshine to keep plants alive. Since heating was difficult to provide most aquarists chose coldwater species like sticklebacks and goldfish. It wasn't until 1869 that the first tropical fish species was successfully imported into Europe: the paradisefish, Macropodus opercularis. But that species is incredibly hardy, not just able to tolerate cold conditions for long periods, but also able to breathe air when its aquatic habitat turns stagnant. It wasn't until the 1920s, when air transport became available to fish collectors, that other tropical fish species were traded commercially. Over the next few years, planes and…

ADVICE Fishkeeping Know-how THE COMMUNITY TANK is the staple of the aquarium hobby. But almost every community aquarium out there is an experiment in progress, with the livestock the victims when our ‘try it and see’ attitude doesn't quite pan out. I see many easily avoided mistakes being made with mixed-fish layouts. What is a community tank? At its most basic, a community tank contains any mixture of fish that wouldn't exist together in the wild. When the term was first coined many decades ago, such communities were planned with a limited selection of fish, chosen for their ability to tolerate each other. As such, there was a loose ‘safe list’ of compatible fishes that could cohabit agreeably together. Alas, as fish availability has increased over the years, so have…

FASCINATING FISH Pikeheads W hen we think ‘gourami’, a few species might pop into the fi shkeeper's mind. And from beginner to seasoned aquarist, the chances are that many of these species will be the same. There are, however, some gouramis that are less familiar. Not everyone is familiar with a giant gourami, Osphronemus goramy, for example. And even fewer will know of the pikeheads. To look at pikeheads, and at their curious body shapes, some might assume that they are just loose members of the Anabantoidei suborder; distant relatives of gouramis in the same way that Ctenopoma or Betta are. But on closer inspection, the two pikehead species—Luciocephalus plucher and Luciocephalus aura— are indeed gouramis; members of the subfamily that houses the likes of Trichopodus, Ctenops. The closest relatives…

AQUARIUM: Aim for something of at least 100cm long for a pair of adults. Width is preferable to depth, so 30cm deep will suffice for these shallow water dwellers. FILTRATION: Avoid anything with a powerful outflow. A large, air driven sponge filter in the corner of the tank would be ideal. Large external canisters will create too much water movement for pikeheads. BOTANICALS: For the tannin-rich blackwater pikeheads love, you will want a good supply of botanicals. Indian almond leaf (Catappa) is a good choice, though any of the heavy-staining leaves like oak will also work. In absence of a supply of botanicals (or if you don't like the look), ensure you can source some blackwater extracts. RO: Pikehead water supply needs to be incredibly low in minerals, and the…

SPECIES SHOWCASE Jaguar cichlids MANY CENTRAL AMERICAN cichlids live up to their common names and the large, predatory jaguar cichlid does exactly that. First described by the naturalist Gunther in 1867, Parachromis managuensis will have been previously known by native Hondurans, Nicaraguans, and Costa Ricans as a food fish. The type specimen was collected from Lake Managua in Nicaragua, (hence the specific epithet managuensis,) with Parachromis literally meaning ‘perhaps a perch’, with its spiky dorsal fin, large mouth, and sharp teeth. So many fish around the world are called perch. But like so many other Central American cichlids, the jaguar cichlid's scientific name has certainly done the taxonomic rounds too, being synonymised as Heros, Cichlasoma, Herichthys, and Nandopsis over the last 157 years, before being placed back into Parachromis by…