Freshwater Fish and Resources

Fp. sjoestedi

"Change the name as often as you you want but the fish stays the same!" Blue Gularis are one of the classic Killifish. Under the right conditions they can be a spetacular and showy fish in your collection. The fish was chosen to represented on the logo of the American Killifish Association. The right conditions would be a neutral pH, a hardness in the middle of your scale, temperatures in the low 70 degrees (F) and a cover for the tank. Like most Killies, a covered tank is appropriate. You will find a bit of a mess regarding the name of this fish...Aphyosemion...Fundulopanchax...gularis...sjoedesti...By any other name, it's still a very bueatiful fish. This fish will eat just about anything that can fit into it's mouth. It was printed somewhere that SJO are not prone to bothering their tankmates, but if it can fit them into it's mouth, the Gularis will eat them. In our tanks they are fed flakes (various kinds) every other feeding. We do that to condition them to their future homes...in fishrooms that may not have the capacity to handle or to generate live foods such as at the Farm. The fry will take baby brine shrmip from the very first day. You will find that they can eat a lot of baby brine shrimp and not fill up their stomachs. Young fish enjoy Grindal worms. These fish will eat until they need to rest their swollen bodies. They grow very very fast. At about 3 months the bulk of the batch of fry should be about 2 inche and more. Adults enjoy a variety of food at the Farm including brine shrimp, blackworms, earthworms and flakes. We occassionally use frozen bloodworms and frozen brine shrimp. I don't think I would venture into a batch of these fish without a good source of worms...one worm per adult per day...1/2 in the morning and 1/2 in the evening...unless they're breeding of course...then you will need more. You will need a lot of earthworms. To help raise the egg production, we feed worms to most of our breeders, including SJO. Worms of just about any type seems to help. We use Grindal, black and earth worms. We chop the earthworms for the medium sized fish such as the one month and two month old groups. Blue Gularis are generally a bottom mop spawning fish or a peat spawning fish. We like to use bottom mops and then store the eggs in peat for two months. You will find various opinions on the best method of incubating, harvesting, sotring, feeding...we're only sharing with you what we find works. Fry hatch in 1-2 days after wetting the bag of peat, depending on the tempetures. Fry should be able to be sex out in about a month and will be breeding at about 4 months. You will find that the egg production as well as the fertility of the pair will not be generous until the fish is something on the order of 6 months old. Some of my more mature pairs will lay 120 eggs per week with drops of production into the 20 range. The more worms that are fed, the higher the eggs counts. This fish has been around a long time. We do find a small number of deformaties occuring with the fish, mostly crooked spines in the fry. The number seems to hover in the sub 10 percent area. When you find the deformed fish...cull them out. If you do the math, a mature pair of these fish will yeald more fry than you will know what to do with...that is unless you have infinite tank space and an absolutely endless number of buyers. One of our first batches of fry (about 150) was housed in 3, 20s...1, 28 and 1, 70 gallon tank before they were 3 months old and ready to be shipped out. That was a single batch of peat from a single pair. Plan ahead for both room and distribution.