Pencilfish   This little fish, shaped like a submarine, has intrigued me. They are easy to keep, to breed, and beautiful to watch. It is not what you would call a primary fish (dominant), but that is rarely a quality that is necessary to be lovable.   To spawn them, I use 2 males and 2 females, 10 gallon tank, a few 2" rocks for their fun, a handful of prepared peat, some floating plants like riccia or watersprite (for their comfort). You can put them together in the afternoon, they should spawn in the next morning. The female will be a little slimmer. It is a very slight difference. Remove the parents, some will let the fry live, some don't, there's probably a great percentage of them getting eaten. The babies will eat newly hatched brine shrimp immediately after hatching.

Nannostomas Eques   I bought a trio of these, and promptly lost one. After babying them ,unsuccessfully trying to find info on how to breed them. An experiment was in order.   Used a 5 gal tank, rainwater, couple handfuls of boiled peat, a few 2 inch round stones.
Added a couple of cryptocorne plants. Filtered it for a day, then added the fish.
There is very little difference between the sexes. She will develop eggs,
thus get slightly plumper, every once in awhile.
I noticed round eggs on the plants, they were hovering around,
watching the eggs, so I decided not to remove them.
They took 5-6 days to develop. (Should have taken better notes)
After a while they looked like they were suspended off strings.
Fed them infusoria at first, then microworms, and brineshrimp.
If any of you have spawned these fish , please write me and tell me if you had the same experience. I would really like to know.        Ella's Home Page            Tropical Fish Page             Links   This page was created by Ella Amstutz on January 28, 1999. Updated Sept. 15, 2004