My name is Lorenzo and I'm from Italy,so sorry for my english...
I wanna ask you how do you keep Epiplatys species...I'm interested about this fish and the water conditions.I can keep them in basic (ph 7,5) and moderatly hard water..Wich species of this list can i keep?:
- Epiplatys fasciolatus fasciolatus;
- Epiplatys fasciolatus aimensis;
- Epiplatys guineensis;
- Epiplatys olbrechtsi;
- Epiplatys roloffi;
- Epiplatys togolensis;
- Epiplatys chaperi chaperi;
- Epiplatys dageti monreviae;
-Epiplatys infrafasciatus;
-Epiplatys bifasciatus.
Thank for your attention.If it's possible can I ask you to use a basic english?

Hello Lorenzo!

Don't apologize for your English. We should be honored that you took the time to ask about Epiplatys.

Most of your Epiplatys are from West African rain forests, edging into less densely vegetated areas. The exception is Ep. bifasciatus, which is more likely to be from savanna and areas close to savanna. Your pH of 7.5 is fine. Usually that will get lower as food is digested and biological processes take place in the aquarium. More important in getting those Epiplatys to spawn would be keeping them at a moderate hardness. Would a hardness of 100 to 160 PPM DH describe your water?

I'm surprised by how few books and on-line accounts mention the water chemistry of particular Epiplatys species. Since a number of those are found near Scriptaphyosemion and people mentioned that the hardness for their water is very low, we could assume that in many cases Epiplatys live in that water too. However water with little mineral content is not buffered well and it can fatally drop way down in aquariums.

Since the western Epiplatys on your list are quite flexible in terms of their needs, it makes sense to use one's own water supply if they will breed it it.

Most of them will be comfortable and prolific at 24 - 27 C. However the Savanna Epiplatys may prefer more warmth, although they will maintain at cooler temperatures. If you can, try bifasciatus at 26 to even 29 C.

You didn't mention Ep. spilargyreius but I've seen adults and fry very happy at 31 C. That is considered a problem species but I think that temperature is really the main limiting factor.

Here in Northern Illinois we get fry of bifasciatus and spilargyreius in the summer. They are just glaring at me now. ;)

If a particular species still doesn't leave eggs, you feed them well, are faithful with frequent partial water changes and they are not too young, then try diluting the water with clean rain water or another de-mineralized water such as RO or reverse osmosis water. Adjust only 10 or 20% of the water at a time or day.

By the way, Epiplatys found along the western tropical African coasts (dageti, grahami, singa) are also among the"easier" to breed killies. Epiplatys found inland, especially above the escarpments, from Cameroon south,
tend to be more challenging.

Many Epiplatys eggs are pretty small. Yet very recently hatched baby brine shrimp (1 to 4 hours old) often can be taken.

Since most of those Epiplatys you mentioned are very prolific, one can harvest large batches of eggs and then wonders what to do with the breeders (and all the fry!) It is not a bad idea to leave the adults in a well planted 40-liter aquarium. If there is a good "top cover" of plants, especially water sprite, fry will often appear.

A lot of us prefer to just try those "natural set up." The better we feed those breeders, the more when do water changes, the more fry we will find. (We are back to our first guppy tank!)

I recently saw Mark Amen squirting baby brine shrimp into a number of his set-ups. One would expect the youngsters to rush out for the baby brine shrimp. I continue to be amazed at how enthusiastically the adult killies (many Epiplatys, Rivulus and so on) also devoured baby brine shrimp.

Remember to either cover your Epiplatys' tanks or give them a lot of "top cover".

Good luck with your Epiplatys. Please give us an update.

A helpful link is: http://homepage.uibk.ac.at/~c102mr/epiplaty/

Google Translater is essential for me. :)

When Tim Addis gets his Killifishes of Western Africa back up, that is invaluable.
http://www.killifish.f9.co.uk/Killifi ... ifish%20Website/Index.htm Killies of West Africa

But what one can do is go to
http://www.archive.org/index.php
and type the in URL for the site desired.

Strangely that did not work, but I used part of the URL and worked my way to

http://web.archive.org/web/2007082123 ... bsite/How_to_use_site.htm
and
http://web.archive.org/web/2007082815 ... latys/Epiplatys_Index.htm

As you probably already noticed, not all of those addresses were highlighted in the submitted copy here. I'm sure that you will just copy the whole address and paste it in.

Dr. Werner Neumann published a fascinating and very useful book on the Pikelings: 'Die Hechtlinge", or Pike-like killies. They are in are both German and English printings.

All the best!
Scott

Thank for your disponibility Scott.
If I found i will try whit Epiplatys Roloffi (hope they will not be too difficult,I have experience only with nothobranchius huentheri zanzibar).
Probably i will use some Ro water to keep the water parameter at:
ph 7.0
kh 5
gh 9
I don't know the PPM DH
Thanks for the link,I read a lot of intresting thing...ù
Of sure the tank will be covered...
Have you ever keep Roloffi????

Thanks
Lorenzo

If you can keep N. guentheri happy and usually velvet-free, you should do fine with Ep. roloffi. :)

By the way, I need to apologize for not offering the formula for PPM (per liter) in degrees hardness. DH or degrees hardness US or German or UK are slightly different, but 17 PPM hardness equals roughly 1 DH. That is not perfectly precise, but will do for our purposes.

For my part, I'm not really sure what a good KH reading is, although I bet that varies with the circumstances and what is being raised. Heck, I'll bet that varies a little in the course of a day too.

In the early 1980s that was an AKA convention in Detroit. One of the hot killies at the time was Ep. roloffi. It didn't take long for them to get spread around in the hobby. In time, a pair also showed up here.

Back then I also belonged to a general aquarium club and consequently was keeping a few cichlids. Few aquarium fish procreate like convict cichlids, unless it is the even more prolific Mexican rainbow cichlid (Herotilapia multispinosa). We had both among others, perhaps a mistake. It wasn't long before we had more cichlid fry than we wanted. Discussing reproduction with our children was easy though; wait for a summer thunderstorm and the accompanying changes in barometric pressure and amble into the fish-room to watch the Herotilapia spawning.

The day after one of those spawns became free swimming, the pair of cichlids was removed from their 20-gallon tank and the pair of Ep. roloffi was acclimated to the water and put in there. Each day that school of cichlid fry got smaller and smaller.

However one must be careful to feed the cichlid fry very soon after they are free swimming. Otherwise their fins will grow and harden and can choke even large killies. Likewise it is wise not to introduce really hungry killies who might "pig out" on cichlid fry, again endangering themselves.

So one probably shouldn't feed cichlid fry to large Epiplatys or Aplocheilus. The Epiplatys willingly take all sorts of "traditional" live killie foods like blackworms, mosquito larvae, brine shrimp (maybe gut-loaded first), Daphnia, new-born livebearer fry and floating items like appropriately sized flakes, crumbles, freeze dried plankton and even defrosted, rinsed, formerly frozen glassworms. About 1/2 of the defrosted glassworms will float. The floating half, after rinsing through a fine meshed net or sieve and placed in clean water become treats for surface feeders like the Ep roloffi. The gardneri, Rivulus, livebearers and others get the sinking glassworms.

At least two members of the Chicago killie group are keeping Ep. roloffi. I'm pleased that the roloffi are back again. They suffered the fate of a lot of popular, fairly easy to raise killies by being so prolific that they saturated their market. People stopped saving eggs or fry and after a time killinuts looked around and wondered where the roloffi were.

My wife and I returned from a few days away yesterday and while sorting through a pile of mail picked up at the post office; we spotted the latest issue of the AKA Journal (JAKA). Very relevant to this discussion is Liz Hutchings' article on Epiplatys sexfasciatus Bidou. They have also been called Ep. sexfasciatus baroi from Bidou or Ep. infrafasciatus Bidou. Since it is usually in both in the killie keeper's interest and in the killies' best interest to keep species and strains separate we could probably get away with "Epiplatys in the sexfasciatus group from Bidou." It is about this stage in trying to sort out species that I begin making little b-b-b-b-b-b noises.

At any rate Liz inherited a couple of pairs of very shy and bruised Epiplatys. She took them to a rack of 20-gallon and 15-gallon tanks and selected a well planted 15 for them. There was a lot of top cover in the form of duckweed (a mixed blessing). In time the wounds healed, with lots of tender loving care, and in even more time the very shy Epiplatys came out. After the first month fry could be found. (Healthy killies are spawning killies.) Eventually the tank was over run with fry and juveniles.

She noted though that later generations were cannibalistic. A good lesson from that is not every generation behaves exactly the same and we need to be careful not to assume that. One may have to transfer the adults from their planted Garden of Eden and wait a couple of weeks looking for fry.

I applaud Liz's call for larger quarters for killies. Usually the larger the quarters, the better the killies will do. I also wish I had more space, though of course the number of killies, other fish and tanks could be cut down and fewer larger aquariums installed. But we get greedy for perhaps too many species.

In my next life, when independently wealthy, I will have a large fish room with easy access to water storage, automated water changes and a gravity flow system to floor drains. The banks of over head lights will be on timers, precisely matched to the needs of the plants under them. And the majority of the tanks will be lushly planted "20-gallon longs." ;)

Not sure why but the email note I got on the post says:
"DH or degrees hardness US or German or UK are slightly different, but 17 degrees DH equals roughly 1 DH." O(n the site reply is correct but the email for the sitte note is incorrect.

I think what you are saying is that the notification email (full text) that you received had a typo but the post when you look at the forums with a browser is now correct. The only way that could happen, to the best of my knowledge, is if the post was edited to correct the typo. I'd guess that Scott corrected his typo.

Barry

Yep!

Just about the time one thinks all of the awful typos and incoherencies are caught and naturally just after submitting the comments, something else horrifyingly out of line jumps out! I'm sure thankful for the edit function.

Wish I could train Dragon Naturally Speaking not only to understand my dictation but also to do serious proof-reading and editing.