Killifish Breeding : Progress with Aphyosemion celiae July 2017

Aphyosemion celiae is an endangered species of killifish, known from two localities close to each other in Cameroon. See my video on food and localities here: Our local water is similar to the water in their natural habitat, since both flow through volcanic rocks (basalts) and laterite (red clay) soils. We use a common water source for all eggs and fish, a cycled 55 gallon tank with plants, fish, and snails. 

A 55 gallon cycled tank for common water

Twenty gallons are used for water changes every week.  Dried Indian Almond Leaves tint the water and reduce bacteria and fungi.

A. celiae will lay eggs on synthetic mops. We have two mops for each pair. Symbols specific to each pair are written on the cork with magic marker.

A rack for mops, two per pair, with a species ID on the cork

The male watches for Drosophila

A mop dipped in boiling water. It will be cooled in stock water before use.

Before picking eggs from a mop in the 2.5 gallon breeding tank, we wash a replacement mop with tap water. Next we dip the replacement mop in a Pyrex pot of boiling water, then cool it with common water.
We put the cooled second mop in before removing the old mop with eggs. This reduces stress in the fish, as it provides shelter during the disturbance.


With heavy feeding and a water change from the common water, the female watches the male's courtship dance and follows him into the mop.

Our female colors up as she watches her mate's courtship dance. There is a video on my YouTube site here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLD62PIoat4

Start, then click the box lower left to enlarge

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Later we will have a video on water changes. Notice from the picture we don't use filters in the 2.5 gallon intensive breeding tanks, instead we rely on weekly 80% common water changes. If the breeding tanks need cleaning they are partially emptied, placed on the bench, the fish are netted with a soft net and placed into an already cleaned and scalded replacement tank with common water and mops. The old tank is scrubbed with a plain plastic pad, rinsed with very hot tap water  (110 F), Scalded with boiling water,  dried with paper towels, partially refilled with common water, and a  clean mop added when needed. This procedure resulted in the courtship depicted above.

The eggs are placed in glass petri dishes with stock cycled water, i.e. “common water”. In the case of A celiae, we add a few drops of a stock methylene blue dilution, made with 10 drops of Methylene Blue per gallon of water. ON SOME BROWSERS CLICK 2X

A glass Petri dish holding half the eggs from one mop.
Note the letter C marked from the underside, code for A celiae

We gently pull the eggs away from the yarn, then drop then into the water. The photo shows seven A. celiae eggs collected from a small mop on 25 July 2017. Notice that three of the eggs are darker. When the eggs are near hatching, you can see the eyes.

The cover glass gets a paper tape label, including the species code CEL for A. celiae, the number of eggs circled, and for A. celiae, the letters MB for methylene blue.

The eggs are checked once a day, and infertile eggs are removed. About half the water is removed and replaced with common water using a disposable plastic transfer pipette.
Below two A. celiae fry have hatched. The remaining eggs are “eyed up”.

Click to enlarge.Some "eyed up" eggs and two hatched fry.

When they hatch, fry and eggs are moved to a Pyrex bowl in stock water, and labeled. Then the eggs are returned to their petri dish. In a few species the fry are slow enough to  catch with a blunt eye dropper, for example here:  

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The second day the fry are fed newly hatched brine shrimp.

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When they get big enough to jump out of the Pyrex bowl, they are transferred to labeled mini Critter Keepers.
Note the salmon colored bellies, full of brine shrimp nauplii.

Perhaps you would like to count the fry? Try the video:

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Killifish Breeding : Progress with Aphyosemion primigenium

Originally published in 2012 as oldafricahand  on my blog westafricanforests.blogspot.com, lost when hotmail died. This blog does repeat some material below.

A very frightened A. primigenium male.

We have a young pair of Aphyosemion primigenium. They live in a 10 gallon tank of aged, softened peat water. The tank has tight lid, a gravel box filter and two mops.

The male is above. He is very shy and rarely swims in the front of the tank. Here he has seen me and his red dots have faded, but he is very bright when courting the female. The female is very tame, and hangs out in the front of the tank much of the time.

Currently we are raising several cohorts of young, totaling 33 juveniles, and have several dishes of viable eggs. I'm getting overwhelmed with A. primigenium and have slowed egg collection. The parents don't bother their young.

When the fry hatch out we keep them in labeled pyrex bowls, about 4" diameter  x 1.6" deep, with a few sprigs of Java Moss. Each plant has been visually checked with a magnifier to make sure there are no mature Hydra on them. Snails are also not included in the fry bowls.The bowls are checked each day, and half the water is changed with a turkey baster. Removed water is put into a plastic dish to be sure no fry are removed with the water.


[Note: We raised this species in 2012 and 2015.  In 2012 we had a few Hydra.]

If young  Hydra are seen the water and fish, less the moss, are dumped into a clean labeled bowl. The hydra stay behind, attached to the glass of the old bowl and the moss.  The old bowl is cleaned with scalding hot water,  then wiped with a new paper towel. That's the end of the Hydra.



 The A. primigenium fry can eat freshly hatched brine shrimp immediately, and they grow fast.

Aphyosemion primigenium is considered "Vulnerable" on the IUCN redlist, here:
http://www.iucnredlist.org/apps/redlist/details/181645/0. Vulnerable is the next level below endangered.

The IUCN reviewers write:
"Aphyosemion (Mesoaphyosemion) primigenium is known from maximum five localities from between Mouila and Bdede-Lebamba [Lebamba] in the Ngounie and Nyanga Rivers in southwestern Gabon."

Above is the Ngounie River, a tributary of the Ogooué River, as it flows past Mouila.

Above you see the Ngounie mapped from Mouila toward Labamba, and A. primigenium also extends into the Nyanga watershed, shown here at balloon "A". The river runs about 90km between the two towns, which are about 50 miles apart as the crow flies. The trip from Mouila down N1, then northeast to Labamba, is 114 km long.

Here the two towns are shown in Google Earth. Note the scale.

Killifish Breeding : Why Aphyosemion celiae is endangered

   Originally published in 2012 as oldafricahand  on my blog westafricanforests.blogspot.com, lost when hotmail died. This blog does repeat some material below.

 Aphyosemion celiae is on the IUCN list of endangered species.
http://www.iucnredlist.org/apps/redlist/details/183090/0

According to IUCN, its range is restricted to the Mungo River watershed in western Cameroon.

A better map is here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mungo_River,_Cameroon

Scheel (1990) noted that Aphyosemion celiae occurs just east of Kumba (top map) but that Amiet told Scheel that A. celiae also occured in the Bakaka Forest Reserve east of Loum volcano (Mt. Kupe). That drainage is generally considered to be part of the Mungo River watershed, because of a connection in the delta. See the map here:
http://cameroon-tour.com/geography/drainage.html

The worry is that erosion and pollution from  plantations upstream could kill the species in the lower part of the watershed. see this link for a description of the many plantations from Nkongsamba to Loum along N5, then on to Kumba along N16.


Agricultural runoff in the river would cause the death of fish species, despite Forest Preserves such as Bakaka.

People maintaining an endangered species distribute offspring to other fish breeders the know. Usually pairs are formed with individuals from different parents, to avoid inbreeding, but from the same locality, to avoid hybrids.

Killifish Breeding : Progress with Aphyosemion celiae

Originally published in 2012 as oldafricahand  on my blog westafricanforests.blogspot.com, lost when hotmail died. This blog does repeat some material below.



We have a breeding pair of A. celiae in a 10 gallon aquarium filled about 2/3rds with aged peat water. The fish eat flightless Drosophila melanogaster and brine shrimp. The tank has a hinged glass Versa Top lid, with scotch tape covering the airline entrance. The water has had the Calcium and Magnesium ions replaced with Sodium ion via an ion-exchange resin, and so is moderately soft. In the tanks are two light green mops made of synthetic yarn; they are long enough to extend over the floor of the Aquaeon All-glass aquarium. Also in the tank is a Pyrex dish with 1" of peat; the peat was  boiled prior to introduction. Both of those media are in the back of the tank. In the foreground is a shallow tray of large pebbles, say 1/2 centimeters in their long dimension. The tank also has a small Penn-Plax box filter from Walmart; it has gravel in it.

I check the eggs in one mop every other day. Checking only one at a time provides cover and minimal disturbance. The eggs are amber, probably from the peat. Usually I'll get 5-8 medium sized eggs; not a lot, but enough for me to process before work. By contrast the A. primigenium and Epiplatys dageti produce about 15 eggs per batch.

I remove the mop eggs and place them in water, in a shallow Pyrex bowl. Then I cover the dish with an opaque top with holes burned in it, and slide the covered bowl onto a shaded shelf near the floor of the fishroom. I can see the eggs with my reading glasses. Meanwhile babies from eggs I did not remove swim around happily with their parents.

Killifish Breeding : Daily Fishroom Routine 2012

Originally published in 2012 as oldafricahand  on my blog westafricanforests.blogspot.com, lost when hotmail died. This blog does repeat some material below.

Our fishroom gets early morning light, and the fish do some of their breeding then. We collect eggs after breakfast, then feed the fish live foods such as brine shrimp nauplii, washed black worms or tubifex worms, occasional Daphnia, flightless Drosophila, etc. Large fish can take small bits of earthworms. Fry get infusoria or newly hatched brine shrimp, depending on their size. On occasion we feed Vinegar Eels to the fry.

Blackworms and Tubifex are washed until clean and in good shape prior to feeding. These have to be chopped for small species, and are not fed to young fish.

After feeding we make new batches of Brine Shrimp, then check every container of eggs. Fungused eggs are removed, fresh water added, and Methylene Blue adjusted.

When the eggs develop mature embryos, we transfer them to larger containers, and when they hatch, to 1 gallon critter keepers with an airstone, some floating plants, and some infusoria. When the fry are large enough we add baby brine shrimp

Water changes are usually done at night, or weekends. We use a venturi attachment on a garden hose bib to remove the water, then add fresh water pumped from the 55 gallon aged water tank. A 30 gallon tank with new tapwater is generally aged by water change days, and after all water changes are complete the 30 gallon's water refills the 55 gallon aged water reserve, and the 30 gallon is refilled with tapwater and sealed for three days.

Killifish Breeding : Aphyosemion celiae

Originally published in 2012 as oldafricahand  on my blog westafricanforests.blogspot.com, lost when hotmail died. This blog does repeat some material in other 2017 posts.

Male Aphyosemion celiae in a breeding tank

We keep a breeding pair of Aphyosemion celiae (Scheel, 1971) in our fishroom. We feed them brine shrimp, Drosophila, Bloodworms, Vinegar Eels, Black Worms, Tubifex, small earthworms, and Daphnia.

A video from our fishroom is here:


"CEL" is from Cameroon. Scheel (1990) gave two localities. The type locality is east of Kumba at North 4 deg 38 min, East  9 deg 29 min. Scheel (1990, p 188) adds that Amiet told him of an additional locality about 45 km away, from Bakaka Forest Resrve, east of the road from Loum toward Nkongsamba, East Cameroon. Take road N16 from Kumba to Loum, then N5 to the river floodplain east of the Loum volcano.

Keep in mind these roads can be difficult going. You need a 4 wheel vehicle with a winch, one with a great deal of clearence under the drive train. Here is a video of a portion of N16:

Kumba to Loum Road

However the Loum to Nkongsamba highway is better. Amiet's locality is east of the Loum volcano, under the clouds just north of Loum in the center of the Google Earth picture above.

You see the Loum Volcano in 3-D. Amiet's locality seems to be the floodplain of the river to the east of the road, N5.

A video from another user along the Loum to Nkongsamba road is here:
Loum to Nkongsamba highway

Our own water drains two basaltic ridges and runs through laterite soils. This is the reason we decided to take CEL as a conservation project. We have uniform water throughout the fishroom, and select species who evolved for similar water.

The type locality is a rural area of pastures and fields east of Kumba, and will be gone soon as Kumba grows. Note the rural appearance of the type locality N4.63 E9.48,  and the approaching town. CEL is in need of help.

Killifish Breeding : Our killie fishroom in 2012 and in 1970

Originally published in 2012 as oldafricahand  on my blog westafricanforests.blogspot.com, lost when hotmail died. This blog does repeat some material below.

When Sue and I were first married, there was a great pet store in New Brunswick, NJ, called Jersey Pet Supply. They had everything, including killies. On top of that, there was a local killie club, MAKA, with very knowledgeable aquarists, including a famous author of fish breeding books, Rosario La Corte. We kept killies in 5 gallon tanks, on shelves in our tiny apartment closet. We helped when our chapter of AKA hosted the national convention. Visiting dignitaries from Europe slept on our couch.

Here is our male Nothobranchius rachovii male in one of our tanks in 1970. Sorry about the poor focus.

In the house we have now,  we have several rooms in our basement. One is dedicated to fish. Basements are a great place for breeding fish, because they are warm in the winter and cool in the summer.

Killifish Breeding : Fish Sitter Ponds with cool water, and videos

Susan and I still travel a little. If we can plan away time in advance, adult breeders can be given away to friends and eggs can be left on peat for a few weeks. In the past our sons could  maintain Tetras, Danios, etc. These days, automated feeders do the feeding of fish that take prepared dry foods. Killies are a different matter. They need live food.

Brine shrimp must be hatched and the empty shells separated from the shrimp,  

Drosophila must be captured, chilled and fed manually.

There was a time when family could care for killifish. As a teenager, Christopher worked in the Petco fish department and was also a professional zebrafish breeder, so he has lots of experience with infusoria, brine shrimp, water changes, etc. Now our sons have families of their own, and are an hour away.


So what is the solution? Ponds outside. Now you know why our breeding season is summer. We have done this many times.


1. Fish Sitter Ponds. There is a simple solution in the summer, small ponds. For each species we put a large Concrete Mixing Tub   inside white commercial grade trash bags. Another possibility, if your soil runs deep, is a deep garden tub like this 17 gallon one. We dig holes for them under  shade trees, set the bags in the hole opening side up, then the pan in the bag. We add a thin layer of clean gravel, then our water.  Next put four stakes at the corners, and hold up the corners of the bag with clamps. We use strong spring clamps with rubber covered tips. Fill with pond water and a thin layer of washed gravel on the bottom; throw in a generous portion of duck weed and java moss. Then put in fancy guppy males to eat any mosquito larvae. Also feed the guppies with flake and small pellet food. The little pond will gain a microfauna. A few days before vacation, remove the guppies to inside tanks with automatic feeders. Mosquitos will breed in the pond, and small larvae will appear. Introduce the Killie breeders (drip acclimate!), the mosquito larvae will be eaten. Be sure the bag sides are held up securely to dissuade jumpers (especially GAR!) We put over-ripe apples in suet cages at the pond periphery to attract drosophila. The Drosophila fall in. They and other local insects will feed  the killies.




Note A: Be sure there are no dragonfly/damselfly larvae in the mini ponds before you put in your killifish. A cover of plastic hardware cloth will keep the adult female dragonflies and daselflies from laying aggs.
Note B: You can double up the species if the females are different, For example, Epiplatys roloffi females look different from Aphyosemion australe GOLD females. Keep the ponds far enough apart so jumping females won't show up in another species pond. The black plastic bag wall also helps prevent this.


2. Cooling a small outside pond. Some Killies need cooler water than guppies. If that's a worry for your species, either raise Nothobranchius OR
a.  bury the tubs deeper in the dirt..
b. If your fishroom is in your basement (mine is), nearby is the best temperature regime in the house. Basements are cool in the summer and warm in the winter. Place an air pump on the basement floor near a window.  If the fishroom is warm use a window and floor in another part of the basement. Run an air line out the window to air stones in your concrete mixing tubs. You are pumping cool air into the outside water. Is that spot too sunny? While your new tree grows (Cleveland Pear, or any red leaf plum are very fast growing) buy fast growing non-toxic  annuals (Nasturtium comes to mind, but not tomato  not potato not marigold) and block the sun's rays.

3. Instructional Videos. A couple of years ago I made some videos for our sons to follow and posted them on YouTube. I lost the password so I've reposted some on my google account.  I also lost some of the videos and am redoing them. Be patient. For example, you need four hands to shoot a video on hatching shrimp. Anyway, they are here:
Captive Breeding of African Killifish

Killifish Breeding : There were always fish around.

Funny thing about a lifelong hobby,  for example Tropical Fish. Hobbies intertwine with everything else in your life. A couple of days ago I went online to rejoin AKA, the American Killifish Association. It's a tropical fish club, sure, but AKA is very technical, very scientific. Aquarists all over the world raise the fish you buy in pet shops, but AKA aquarists travel the world, collect fish, send them to ichthyologists, and raise them. Many are rare and sometimes threatened species.


Anyway, its been a while. So far, neither I nor  AKA can find my old password. I was a member too long ago. AKA officers are still trying. Trying to rejoin  stirred a lot of memories.




A little background. In my teens I mowed lawns, did mason work and gardening. I had a dog,  hamsters, a Caiman, and tropical fish. Tetras, to be specific. I fished in Millington, NJ, in the gorge where the Great Swamp flows out to form the Passaic River. On January 1st, 1966, I met Susan on a blind date. I was 19.
This is my wife Susan.

Susan setting up a camera tripod, Kenya National Museum, in Nairobi , 1972.

When Susan and I began dating, she had dogs too, and she had raised tropical fish as a kid. We met just before I left for my Advanced Infantry Training School at Camp Pendleton, and then on to my first tour in Vietnam.

Dong Ha, Second Tour, RVN.  I took this picture by looking downhill behind my guard post. The streams in this area were loaded with tropical fish, notably green Bettas

Sue and I  married in 1969. We had a small apartment in Highland Park, NJ. From about 1969 to 1972, while at Rutgers and  Princeton, Sue and I "got back into fish". In those days there was a great pet store, Jersey Pet Supply, in New Brunswick, NJ. There were weekly arrivals of fish from all over the world, Killies, Tetras, Gouramis, Danios, catfish, you name it, they had it. Not just the common species. Anything could show up. We bought many fish. And books! Know how to breed Egg-Layers, Enjoy the Tetras, Enjoy your Killifish, all kinds of How-to books. Using one book we bred our pair of Bettas, more colorful than the green one I saw in a Vietnam stream. We had overwhelming success. Then the reality hit: "what will we do with all these babies?" We fed them, they grew. We collected and washed a lot of jars. We gave the Bettas away. We bought a pair of Lyretail killifish.

Golden Lyretails Aphyosemion australe

I bought several Killifish books. A colleague at Rutgers who also frequented the store suggested the local killie club, Metropolitan AKA. I drove us to Rosario La Corte's house in Elizabeth, NJ, where I met the famous aquarist and author. He showed us around the garage he had fitted out as a fish hatchery. I asked a lot of questions. Then I drove the three of us to the MAKA meeting. Susan and I put aside our Betta breeding and set up a killie room in our closet.


We were also into saltwater fish. When we went to Bonaire for our belated honeymoon, and we saw a lot of coral reef fish while snorkeling. I repaired a broken Nikonos camera belonging to our host, Captain Don Stewart. A friend had warned me about the hotel's "prone to flooding" Nikonos. We came forearmed with a copy of "how to disassemble a flooded Nikonos" and a set of replacement O-rings. Captain Don  called me "resourceful", a great compliment. As a reward, he and his son took us snorkeling off the north end of the island. We remember brain corals the size of our living room, and acres of staghorn corals 15 feet high. The next year we got certified as NAUI scuba divers. We bought a used Nikonos (still have it). We went to Grand Cayman. Our first ocean dive was 130 feet down off the drop-off. We collected salt water fish and brought them home. Below are underwater pictures of the trip. In the net in my hands is a Royal Gramma.

   

A Royal Gramma

Back in the States, before MAKA club meetings, Rosario La Corte patiently explained to us how he bred fish in his huge garage fishroom. Square tanks with low walls contained Tetras under skylights. . Also tall tanks with very large Discus and Angelfish. He made brine shrimp with eggs from a container larger than a coffee can.  A small room adjacent contained Nothobranchius killies. An above ground swimming pool outside collected rainwater. I joined AKA in February of 1969.


In the 60's and 70's,  AKA's "Killie Notes"  had a "Fish and Egg Listing" where members could advertise live killifish and eggs for sale (they still do). Since most Killifish eggs can lie dormant for a while, the eggs travel well. I bought A. christyi eggs through the mail from Jose M. de Arredondo in Spain. I still remember when the eggs arrived. Inside an envelope was a small plastic pill box with thin flexible foam packing. It was slightly moist, and contained a dozen eggs with live embryos inside, ready to hatch. "Just add water...". It rained, we waited for 30 minutes, then collected the rainwater and poured it on the eggs. They hatched , we fed them, they grew, they colored up. Amazing colors in a freshwater fish. We gave them away with great pride.

I helped with the AKA convention in Saddle River, I think, about 1972. Jose M. de Arredondo flew in from Spain and slept on our couch the night before the convention opened. Rosario gave the talk at dinner.


As I was saying, beginning in 1972, Sue and I worked in East Africa.

During time off, we collected Nothobranchius Killifish  for the Kenya National Museum on behalf of Humphry Greenwood of the British Museum of Natural History.

Nothobranchius near N. guentheri

We bought a house in 1980. Soon afterward our sons were born. We did a lot of fishing and crabbing. The boys had goldfish. I took up surf fishing. Both boys are now expert fishermen. Phil in the surf, Chris offshore on party boats

Chris and Phil crabbing at my Dad's boat dock

We took vacations to the Caribbean, and they learned to snorkel. They took underwater photos of coral reef fish. Back home we built a goldfish pond, and raised koi, goldfish, guppies and platys outside. The latter two came in in the winter. As a teenager, my son Chris worked at Petco in the fish department. We took down the saltwater tanks and built a zebrafish hatchery in the basement. Chris fed infusoria to the fry, then brine shrimp. They grew big, and Chris sold the adults to a local pet chain.  Chris had bred zebrafish commercially.

We got a house in Florida. We watch schools of Snook patrol the shallows as we swam.

 Susan behind the Florida House

Both sons have growing families.

Fast forward to 2015. The zebrafish hatchery has become a killifish hatchery. The AKA still has "fish and eggs" for sale listings , and thanks to Aquabid you can buy tropical fish internationally. As a consequence, hundreds of aquarists are conserving species that are in danger of extinction.


So I bought some killies. Last year I intended to raise a lot of A. celiae (Red List update Endangered) , but instead cranked out a hundred young A. primigenium (Red List Vulnerable!). We gave them away to other breeders.

This year I'll try A. celiae again.

Killifish Breeding : Using Google Earth to choose a killifish for breeding

Today a telephone conversation with a colleague reminded me of the importance of local geology/ water chemistry in choosing a species of fish for a conservation project.  I chose Aphyosemion celiae for a breeding project because it lives on a river drainage that flows through laterite soils, and a lot of the water starts as rain on a nearby basaltic volcano. The water here in east central New Jersey starts as rain on the Watchung Mountains (volcanic flood basalts), and it flows down the Raritan river through ancient laterite soils.


Here is a video from that project. It starts talking about live food but then discusses the similarity of A. celiae water to ours.

You will want to maximize this video to see it better.