Nothobranchius palmqvisti
by Tom Wojtech
From "Splash" Milwaukee Aquarium Society
Aquarticles
While attending one of WAKO’s (Wisconsin Area Killifish Organization) meetings, we
had our usual ten minute business portion and the start of the auction where members bring
fish to sell. There are always a few fish offered and for excellent prices. I was not
really paying attention since I don’t keep a range of killies anymore - just the
occasional transient species that catches my eye. They were down to the last bag of an
unusually large auction, about 20 items, and no one was interested. The begging started so
I, wanting the meeting over, offered a buck. Sold!
I ended up with a pair of Nothobranchius palmqvisti TZ 94-17. I know this will
send you into shivers of excitement. No? Well maybe if you saw the fish. Nothos are one of
the most strikingly colored groups of Killies from Africa noted for intense reds and
blues. Palmqvisti are no exception. The male has a blue body with each scale
edged in red with a blue, red and yellow speckled dorsal and anal fin. The caudal peduncle
and tail is the most intense red you will see on any fish. The TZ 94-17 designation tells
you the fish was originally collected in Tanzania in 1994 at the 17th collection location
registered that year.
All Nothos are an annual type Killie coming from areas with distinct wet-dry seasons.
These fish hatch out when pools are formed during the rainy season, grow up, spawn in the
muddy bottom and die when the pool dries up, leaving their eggs resting in the mud waiting
for the next rains. Their pools can be formed for as little as three months or as long as
ten months and it can vary from year to year. This means the young have to live fast or
die. Many annual Killies can be sexually mature in as little as four weeks from hatching
and I have had them spawning at three weeks old!
I don’t know why, but in our area, Nothos don’t have many fans. It may be
because of their annual nature or for their earned reputation for getting Velvet. Although
it is easy to avoid Velvet by keeping them in water with one teaspoon of plain salt for
each gallon of water, it still becomes a bother. If you forget to add back the salt when
you do a water change, you will get Velvet from tap water.
I took my charges home and had no empty tanks so I put them in with a soft water
species where there was no tap water contamination, only RO water. They were a lovely
young pair so I decided to try to spawn them as soon as I could. I set up a one gallon
drum bowl with RO water and soaked a Jiffy 7 peat pellet in a cup of RO water. Peat
pellets make boiling peat unnecessary since they are presterilized. Nothos are plower type
spawners which means they spawn sideways on the surface, versus divers who enter the peat
head first and need to be able to completely bury themselves in the substrate. One peat
pellet is adequate for a one gallon drum bowl.
I set them up the next weekend for a four day spawning session. While the pair is in
the bowl over peat, I only feed live adult brine shrimp so I can monitor their intake and
be assured there are no leftovers to contaminate the moss. After spawning, I netted out
the fish and siphoned the peat through a fine net. I squeezed the excess water out of the
moss and did a quick look-through to see if I could find eggs. Their eggs are not adhesive
and clear and are fairly easy to spot. I did find some eggs, so I placed the peat in a
plastic bag with the date and the name of the fish on the bag for incubation.
Annual Killies have set times for incubation and there are charts available to look up
this information. One of the interesting things that has been discovered over the years is
the role of temperature in incubation time. Generally eggs of Killies can be incubated
over a range of temperatures, with warmer temperatures shortening the incubation time.
Some Killies, though, cannot be incubated at our "normal" fishroom temperatures
of 80 degrees F, which I have found out the hard way. Palmqvisti can be incubated
for 4-5 months at 70-75 or 10 weeks at 80.
Ten weeks later, I dumped the moss and eggs into a gallon bowl with coolish water, 75
degrees. It took an hour for the first fry to hatch, and by the next day there were at
least twenty five. They were tiny fry which I fed APR and green water for the first few
days. It was then on to baby brine shrimp and all down hill from there. By four weeks, I
could see the largest babies were males but there were still many small fry. I should have
moved them from the bowl at about a week of age but had no room. At six weeks, I could
only find two females out of the fifteen fry left. I think the females suffered from the
crowding more and got eaten by their larger siblings, but Killies are also noted for
having skewed sex ratios so this may not be the case.
Although palmqvisti are not the easiest Notho to raise they are among the
prettiest, and if you give them the conditions I’ve outlined they can be most
rewarding.
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