Freshwater Fish and Resources

Fundulopanchax gardneri, N'sukka

"Change the name as often as you you want but the fish stays the same!" CARE The gardneri groups are generally considered to be one of the more common and easily cared for Killifish. In fact, some gardneri are not all that common nor all of them easy to care for and breed.  Some could even be considered difficult and rather rare. N'sukka however, are not considered rare or hard to breed. When Fundulopanchax gardneri N'sukka are offered the correct conditions they can be prolific breeders. The right conditions would be a neutral pH, a hardness in the middle of your scale, 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...By any other name, it's still a very beautiful fish. This fish will eat just about anything including flaked foods. In our tanks they are fed flakes or pellets every other feeding. We do that to condition them to their future homes...we want our fish to be comfortable in fishrooms with or without the capacity to generate live foods such as The Farm. The N'sukka fry will take baby brine shrimp from the very first day. Young fish enjoy Grindal worms. These fish grow fairly quickly. At about 3 months most of the fry will be "sexing out" and will be showing adult coloration. That means that the young males will show fin markings and dots on their flanks while the females will stay "guppyesque." Although they do well on flakes, adults enjoy a variety of food at The Farm including brines shrimp, mosquitoes, daphnia, blackworms, fruit flies and flakes. We occasionally use frozen bloodworms and frozen brine shrimp. To help raise the egg production, we feed worms to our breeders once a day. Worms of just about any type seem to help increase the production of eggs. Remember not to over use or over feed with worms (or any other food for that matter).  We use Grindal, black and earth worms. We chop the earthworms for the medium sized fish such as adult N'sukka. Most Killifish are predacious. They will eat eggs that they find. We have found that harvesting everyday results in far more eggs than harvesting once a week. Our experiences have indicated that with some pairs the number of eggs during a week will be increased by 5 or 6 times by harvesting everyday. The gardneri groups are generally considered and treated as top mop spawning fishes but may also be spawned over peat moss. We like to use the mop method. You will find various opinions on the best method of spawning, incubating, harvesting, sorting, feeding...we're only sharing with you what we find works. When the eggs are cared for properly, the fry hatch in 14-21 days after harvesting, depending on the temperatures. You should be able to sex out the fry in about three months. They will begin breeding at about 5 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 our more mature pairs will drop 100 eggs per week with drops of production into the 60 range. These mature fish will be 2 3/4 inches long and the females extremely robust.