Blue Moorii cichlid, also known as Blue Dolphin cichlid and Malawi Blue Dolphin cichlid, Cyrtocara moorii

Lake Tebera Rainbowfish Melanotaenia herbertaxelrodi in the Dallas World Aquarium

This rainbowfish is native of the Lake Tebera basin in Papua New Guinea.  I have never seen rainbowfish of this species anywhere that approach the size and beauty of this group which I photographed at the Dallas World Aquarium in 2010.

Melanotaenia lacustris, Turquoise rainbowfish in the Dallas World Aquarium

When given good nutrition, a spacious aquarium and excellent care, the Turquoise rainbowfish can grow into a size and shape that is rarely seen in fish kept in the average aquarium.  I saw this stunning specimen during a visit to the Dallas World Aquarium in 2010.  This fish was just a tiny part of the many interesting things I saw there, nevertheless is small size, it is very impressive in its own right.

The "peruvian altum" angelfish briefly came out of hiding, and then ran back to hide again

The baby angelfish spent their first day in hiding, barely peeking out from their refuge among the decorations in the tank.  They spurned almost all food, they ignored tiny bits of shrimps and flakes, only mosquito larvae, which are in very short supply nowadays given people's concern about the Chikungunya virus, tempted them to eat.  On their second day they were only marginally less timid.  Since all the mosquito larvae available was consumed on their first day, I resorted to offering them rat tail maggots and bloodworms.  They hardly fed during the day but in the evening they at last started hunting and ate the bloodworms and maggots until their stomachs were bulging.  When I sit in front of the aquarium they stop all activity and hide.  They are very timid and cautious compared with the commercial strain angelfish I have had.  They take from twenty minutes to half and out to become slightly less wary when I sit in front of the aquarium.  Hopefully with time they will become accustomed to my presence.  Unfortunately getting them live food is a challenge.  I am considering raiding the local bromeliad water tanks to see if I can find enough mosquitoes for them.  It appears I will have to add more vegetation to the tank to make them feel secure.  Optimal feeding for juvenile angelfish is twice a day.  Too much food can foul the water if it goes uneaten.

Five baby angelfish, they are descendants from a wild strain from Peru

 A bunch of babies!

Today I got these five juveniles angelfish, Pterophyllum.  They are the descendants of a wild strain.  All the angelfish in today's pet market are descendants of fish that have been mass bred in captivity for many decades.  The need to produce huge numbers of fish to supply the demand, made the fish breeders to remove the eggs from the parents as a mater of standard practice.  This eventually resulted in angelfishes that lacked parental skills and would eat their spawn and fry.   My hope is that these fish will eventually breed and I will be able to document their parental behavior.  Domesticated angelfish are intelligent, somewhat aggressive (they are cichlids, even if they don't look the part) and can become very tame and responsive toward their owners.  Oh, you read these fish are peaceful?  Well, only in relation to their cichlid brethren from South America, which can be extremely aggressive toward other fishes.  Angelfish can be downright nasty to each other when they are breeding.  They are also skilled predators that will eat any fish that will fit into their mouths.  

The female red jewel fish Hemichromis lifalili and her fry

The eggs of the female Hemichromis lifalili about which I wrote in an earlier post hatched during the weekend. The fry are now at the bottom of the cavity where spawning occurred. The fry are full of vibrant activity as they all move their tiny tails incessantly. At this stage of their development they are called fry because they hardly resemble a proper fish. In the image you can see the mass fry but only the yolk sacs can be seen clearly. The yolk sacks are attached to the belly of the fry. The fry are little more than a line of muscle tissue a few millimeters long. Because the fry are vigorously shaking their tiny bodies and are transparent they cannot be seen well in the picture which shows the massed fry. But we can distinguish some black dots above the yolk sacs. These dots give rise to the eyes and nervous system of fishes.
The female defends her fry with impressive ferocity, in the images we can see that it has a bite on the area over the mouth. I do not know which of the fish in the tank bit her but I suspect it was the male with whom she spawned . To my surprise the female was aggressive when the male approached the spawning cave and stopped him from to entering it. She blocked him from entering where the the fry were by arching her body and lifting the scales covering the gills. The male spent most of his time on the other side of the tank with the other fish, his level of aggressiveness was mild compared with that of the female.
The previous spawning that occurred in the tank was the product of the male of this spawning but with a different female. Apparently the male lost interest in that spawning the moment the fry were born and left the female alone to defending their offspring. The female of the previous spawning took the fry from the trunk and hid it in a depression in the material at the bottom of the tank, but she could not defend the fry from the other fish and lost them all.
In a few days the female of this photo also have to move their young to the bottom of the tank to allow them to forage for food. It remains to be seen whether the male will help her defend them. From what I could see the males showed a somewhat ambiguous behavior, he seemed to behave aggressively but at the same time he was obviously eyeing the other females, the latter development does not augur well for the survival of the fry.

A red Jewel fish (Hemichromis lifalili) female tending her eggs

In this image we can see a female lifalili tending her recently spawned eggs. The female is using her pectoral fins to create currents of water over the eggs so that they receive the oxygen they need to live. The female also mouths the eggs. I have read that the female removes from the spawn those eggs that become infected by fungus. This spawn is in an immaculate condition so it seems that the female is successfully managing to control the attack of the fungus on her eggs . This is the second spawning of my lifalili. These fish have been surprisingly precocious, they began to spawn when just a little bit over about two inches in lenght, about four weeks after they are acquired. It is said that adults can reach six inches long but the most of those I've seen locally are no more than four. When these fish are in the process of spawning they become especially aggressive toward other fish. To achieve this image I had to plan carefully how to provide them with a suitable spawning site that would also allow for ease of photographing. The lifalili seem to prefer spawning in enclosed areas. For this reason it is common for aquarists to provide them with terracotta pots usually placed on their side. The problem is that this type of arrangement, in a tank like mine, makes it difficult to photograph the fish caring for the eggs and fry. I put in the tank two pieces of ceramic that resemble a mass of roots and which have at their top tubular cavities that open toward the surface.. To reduce the potential of a spawning in a hidden or inaccessible elsewhere in the tank I do not use any other object that has a cavity suitable for spawning. Since the opening of the cavity is facing the surface it is relatively easy to photograph the female taking care of the eggs.