Spawning Aphyosemion amieti
by Charles Drew
From the Monthly Bulletin of the Hamilton and District Aquarium Society
Aquarticles
Aphyosemion amieti is not a new fish to me. I had it many years ago, but never
really had much success with spawning it. Most of the problem was no doubt neglect or lack
of information.
It is a very pretty, brightly coloured fish that is only 7 centimeters long (nearly 3
inches). They come from the western Cameroon area of Africa in the rain forest. The males
are brown in the dorsal area and bright orange in the lower ventral area. There are rows
of dots along the sides and the anal fin and caudal fin are blue with a dark red stripe.
The female is brown with light red dots that may extend into the fins.
I bought my present pair in an auction nearly a year ago. They were only a small pair
at that time but have since grown into a beautiful pair of adults. They are housed in a
three gallon plastic tank with a small box filter bubbling in one corner. The water they
are in is one third tap water and two thirds water from reverse osmosis (RO). A half a
teaspoon of sea salt is added to ward off infections. They spawn in a yarn mop that lies
on the bottom. Every couple of days I check the mop and find up to a dozen or more eggs.
These I place in a container on a bed of damp peat moss. The eggs take about two weeks to
hatch. I do not pay attention to the time, but wait until the eyes develop in all the
eggs. When I look at them and they all look back at me I know they are ready to hatch. To
hatch them I take a shallow plastic bowl, add an inch of water from a clean, healthy
aquarium and dump in the peat moss with the eggs. I next place an air stone in the jar and
let it bubble gently. The fry start to hatch within the hour. I then feed them micro worms
and live, newly hatched brine shrimp.
In a week or two I move the fry to a tank to raise them. By this time I have already
raised the level of the water in the bowl, making it easy to catch the fry that have by
now doubled their size. A small fine net or a large medicine dropper seems to work best
for me.
I find these fish very hardy as long as I keep them at temperatures in the low to mid
70's. They even manage to take forty percent water changes straight from the tap and are
peaceful enough for a community tank. I don't know what took me so long to get around to
spawning them.
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