Table of contents for September 2022 in Practical Fishkeeping

I GET IT. Not everybody loves snails. In most cases they arrive unannounced, breed like rabbits, and leave the tank looking like a molluscked mess. Solutions to this particular problem are rarely quick and easy. But nature has graciously provided us with an answer. Ironically, it is another snail, but is blessed with none of the usual baggage. The assassin snail, Anentome helena, is the triple threat: handsome, useful, and quite importantly, not a pest. This slow-motion hunter is often touted as the single greatest snail infestation solution, and I'm inclined to agree. Everything about this animal has a dramatic flair to it, from the low-budget action thriller name to the gaudy colours. I'd go so far as to say that it's quite simply the best snail available. Assassin snails…

I sourced my plants from Aquarium Gardens, one of the principal sponsors of my book project, and owner Dave provided me a great selection of lush Echinodorus major from Tropica as well as branchy manzanita wood. The aquarium I used is a Wio Vistas 120F shallow design and the lights are Wio Bamboo 38w LEDs. A light background from The Lightground is used with a green to yellow foil to suggest more vegetation in the rear. Substrate is Prodibio aquarium soil provided by Aquarium Gardens and Wio El Dorado Sand which I mixed with fine pale gravel to create texture. You could alter the numbers of fishes and exclude the larger M. costae and recreate this display in a much smaller tank, but I think that to be effective, bigger…

Hoplolatilus starcki One of the deeper-living species, the bluehead tile can be found down to around 100m, making it one of the more light-shy members of the genus. Adults tend to have a yellow green body (pending the lights you keep them under, it can appear more obviously yellow in whiter lighting) with the most pronounced blue throat and pectoral fins with blue bases. The natural range expands from Australia up to Bali, where it tends to dwell on steeper slopes outside of reefs (if ever there was a biotope perfectly suited to a drop-off tank, it's this), At just 15cm fully grown, it's manageable in set-ups that aren't huge (something 120cm or so will suffice) and its confidence is emboldened when similarly sized dither fish are kept alongside. In…

Hoplolatilus oreni Now here's a rarity that you need to shop for. This fish hadn't even been photographed live until 2018 (before that, all we had to go on was a line drawing), and after that a token few specimens dripped their way into the supply chain. As you'd expect, the scarcity alludes to a high price, and the fish seen here was on sale for £599 (at The Abyss Aquatic Warehouse, if you're looking for one). Scarce or not, reports are that this is the most quick to settle of the genus once it's in a tank, making for a great display of dazzling colours. There are even suggestions that it's unlikely to jump, but you really don't want to roll those dice with an open topped tank. Hailing…

I'M PRETTY sure that almost all of you have heard about the lemon tetra, Hyphessobrycon pulchripinnis. If you've ever visited an aquatic store you've probably seen them in flesh, maybe without recognising the species. I guess most of you continued browsing without giving a second glance to this inconspicuously bland tetra. The lemon tetra is Marmite to the fish-keeping world, either loved or hated. That's why when Max Pedley of Ornamental Aquatics Wholesale asked me if I wanted to keep some Hyphessobrycon cf. pulchripinnis my initial reaction was nah, thank you, I have plenty of exotic and interestingly coloured fish, why should I have a tetra which hardly moves the pointer on my ‘fishexcitometer’? But when he mentioned that it was the mysterious orange-coloured variety I thought ok, let's have…

Hoplolatilus purpureus Slightly smaller than the bluehead at just 13cm fully grown, this is one of the most common species you'll see in the trade — though that doesn't make it cheap, and you can expect to pay £80 upwards for a good specimen. From an area spanning Indonesia, Papua, and the Philippines, it's another deep-dweller found at around 30-80m. Possibly because of its nervous disposition (or the fact that it's often kept incorrectly) this fish has gained some notoriety as a harbinger of marine whitespot, but this seems to allay when it's housed in something dimly lit and with abundant caves.…

SPECIAL MENTION Hoplolatilus chlupatyi There are some things a magazine cannot to do justice to, and this is one of them. Check out the flashing tilefish on YouTube, where you'll see examples of swift colour changes that make octopus look like amateurs. Part communication, part camouflage, the colours can switch in a heartbeat, making it an exciting fish to own. From the Philippines through to Indonesia, it makes its way to UK retailers where it commands a price of around £100 — a steal, given its abilities. With an adult size of around 13cm, it's another that's easy to house. This one is an absolute diamond for the species-tank fan.…

THE FOLLOWING homage to tilefish can come either as a warning or a call to action, depending where you are in your marine keeping hobby. From the perspective of the modern reef layout, the ubiquitous coral and rock assemblies drenched under brighter light than a nuclear explosion, my advice is to avoid them. But if you're in that growing camp of outsiders, looking for something (literally) beyond the reef, then a night on the tiles could be what you need. Tilefish are an infrequent face in a marine stockist’ rogue's gallery. For one, they are difficult for collectors to find. Nervous as dormice, they flee into cover at the first hint of intruders, which historically meant that fishers would resort to that less-than-savoury practice — cyanide — to stun them…

Hoplolatilus marcosi Had enough of blue? The skunk tilefish only has a little of it, but its most obvious marking is its long red streak. That alone seems enough to warrant its price of around £80. This species creates large rubble mounds around its caves, and isn't averse to stealing a little building material from neighbouring mounds (something you can replicate with a couple of pairs housed in a large enough set-up). Inhabiting a similar region to H. purpureus, the skunk may be the smallest of the aquarium offerings, reaching just 12cm (supposedly only 10cm in aquaria), this is a shallower species found anywhere from around 15m to some 70m deep. It's also the species best suitied to a smaller tank (when kept as a pair) with anything from 100…

Reviewed by: Gabor Horvath Prices: 150g pouches - £6-£8; 350g pouches - £10-£15; Nano shrimp (75g) - £6.65; Egg layer starter (50g) - £4.49 More info: cloverleaf.uk.net Buying food for my fish used to be an easy task. Forty years ago, I had a choice of live Tubifex, air-dried Daphnia or a mixed flake food from the then only Hungarian manufacturer. If I popped over the border to Czechoslovakia I could buy some ‘top quality’ foods from a well-known German manufacturer, but even those were general one-size-fits-all mixtures. An aquarist today is spoilt by choices: there are rows upon rows of tubs, bags, pots, packets and buckets of hundreds of different fares even in the smallest of shops. It might even be easy to think that every niche of the…