Practical Fishkeeping July 2023

WHAT A frustrating month this has been. The sun has been blazing, and I've been torn between editing content and looking wistfully out over my garden to where I'd like to add a nature pond. I'd love nothing more than a wildlife pool teeming with sticklebacks, but it dawned on me that they're superb aquarium fish too, and so I changed some plans at the last minute and made them fish of the month for this issue. I have no regrets. If, like me, you're unable to get outside and get your hands wet right now, you might enjoy diving vicariously through the eyes of Ivan Mikolji—after a brief hiatus he's back, and takes us swimming through Colombia. What a journey. If you are blessed with a pond, do you…

FASCINATING FISH Maassi loach IF THERE'S ONE thing that really unites catfish and loach keepers, it's the desire for bland, whiskery fish that hide away. The blander and more secretive, the better. The fish you see here is something of a grail species for the loach hobbyist. At first glance, and to the inexpert eye, it probably looks like some Pangio castaway, minus the attractive orange embellishments. Get closer and you'll see plenty of anomalies on a distinctly unique fish. There's the vast dorsal fin running down the back like some inverted knifefish. There's the long and deeply forked caudal fin, something you'd expect to see more on high-speed pelagic species rather than a bottom dweller. And if you get really close, you might note the absence of the mobile…

The REGION OF the US-Mexican border is mostly desert, but those places that have water actually have a high fish diversity. Sadly, all of these places—even in the National Parks—are under threat. Big agriculture is drawing ground water for irrigation, and that harms the swimming habitats and their inhabitants living on the surface. The small habitat shown here is a bit south of Cuatro Ciénegas National Park in Mexico's Coahuila State, and it is one of two places where the United States of America's only native cichlid species US occurs. A former second habitat, just across the valley from here, has already been destroyed, and I think it's important both for and within our hobby to raise awareness that even some of the fish we consider common may be under…

SPECIES SHOWCASE Three-spined sticklebacks WHAT A FABULOUS bundle of genetic confusion the sticklebacks are. As a family, they are somewhat diverse, with at least 16 species across five genera. Of those, one in particular will be familiar to UK aquarists: the threespined stickleback, Gasterosteus aculeatus, dler’ to the British angler. Genetic variation within three-spined sticklebacks is profuse. There are the anadromous versions that live in the sea and return to freshwater to spawn, large (up to 11cm) and silvery fish with protective scutes along their flanks—a testament to the different predation pressures they face from their freshwater kin. But we needn't concern ourselves with those, as they are rarely (if ever) offered to hobbyists. The freshwater three-spines are all descendants of ancient marine sticklebacks. Denied access back to the sea…

Three-spined stickleback, Gasterosteus aculeatus. The generic 'stickleback' most of us will know, it's instantly recognisable for possessing three prominent dorsal spines. Nine-spined stickleback, Pungitius pungitius. Looking like a slender three-spine, the nine-spine can possess anywhere between 8-12 dorsal spines. Like the three-spine it has freshwater and marine populations, and the freshwater form reaches around the same size (5cm) and has similar care requirements. Rarely, but occasionally, appears in stores. Fifteen-spined stickleback, Spinachia spinachia. A marine-only species, this long and thin fish can reach 25cm fully grown and possesses 14-17 dorsal spines. It's only found in coastal waters less than 20m deep, and is rare along the south east of the UK. Interestingly, immediately after spawning, the female dies.…

MARINE Breeding FIRSTLY, I SHOULD introduce myself. My name's Robin Mannion and I am the founder of Pholium Mariculture UK. After managing the aquarium at a clownfish research project in Tahiti I returned to the UK. I was dismayed to discover how few captive-bred marine fish were available here, and that there wasn't any commercial breeding happening in the UK at all. A shocking 90% of all reef fish for domestic aquaria are wild caught, and I suspect that number is even greater for the UK. Breeding benefits Captive bred fish have many ethical and practical advantages over wild caught—the most obvious one being that taking millions of fish off the reef is simply not sustainable. These issues range from the damage that can be caused to the reef and…