Neolamprologus brichardi
by Robert Brown
First published in the newsletter of The Kitchener-Waterloo
Aquarium Society
Aquarticles
This beautiful fish with its lyre-tail was once known as 'The Princess of Burundi.'
It comes from the Burundi area of Lake Tanganyika. The fish was first
introduced to North America in 1971 by Pierre Brichard. The males can grow to five inches
and the females to three inches. They thrive in water between 76º-82º F. They do very
well in hard water. These fish are monagomous and pair for life. They will tend their eggs
and spawn for several months, and will watch over several spawns at a time.
I keep mine in a 25 gallon tall tank. The bottom is gravel three inches deep. My summer
home is on Lake Erie. I brought home some pieces of pre-Cambrian shield rock and stacked
them in one corner of the tank. The pair that I had immediately made this area their home.
After about a month they excavated their corner by digging all the gravel out from under
the rocks. They hollowed out an area five by eight inches. They took every piece of gravel
out and left themselves a bare glass bottom. The female laid her eggs on the rock on the
side of the cave. The eggs hatched and I had at least fifty young. I left them in the tank
and they raised them, with twenty surviving. This was my first success with brichardi.
I was told that the couple will only breed again when the nest is vacated. I purposely
filled the nest back in with gravel and left ten of their young in the tank. About six
months later the nest was dug out again and the adult couple let four of the ten
youngsters stay in the new nest with them. I should mention that the young fish are about
one and half inches long. The other six were banished to the opposite side of the tank.
The couple are now guarding two hatches of fry that appear to be about three weeks apart
in age. I would guess that there are about seventy fry.
I feed my fish an assortment of flake and pellet foods, as well as frozen blood worms
and brine shrimp. I found my fish all started breeding when I started using earth worm
flake food, which I obtained at the Brampton Aquarium Club auction.
I highly recommend this fish to everyone, especially beginners, as it is easily bred
and a beautiful fish.
See also:
A Few Bits and Pieces on the Fairy Cichlid, by David
Marshall
Breeding Neolamprologus brichardi, by Beta
Mahatvaraj
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