Table of contents for August 2022 in Practical Fishkeeping

Neale is a longstanding aquatics author with a particular passion for brackish water species. MOLLIES ARE underappreciated. Whatever the colours of the farmed varieties, they pale into dullness compared with the wild mollies that live in caves, hypersaline lagoons, even in poisonous pools. There are even mollies that seem to break the laws of nature, but we'll get to that later… What is a molly? It's a simple enough question, but rather difficult to answer! Traditionally, guppies and mollies have been lumped into a single genus, Poecilia, but the DNA evidence reveals a more complicated picture. The four most familiar molly species (Poecilia sphenops, Poecilia mexicana, Poecilia latipinna, and Poecilia velifera) clump together with less familiar ones like Poecilia gilli and Poecilia sulphuraria. Collectively, their closest relatives are Pamphorichthys, South…

WHAT A FISH KNOWS: THE INNER LIVES OF OUR UNDERWATER COUSINS Price: Around £9.99 for paperback More info: Jonathan-balcombe.com/what-a-fish-knows ISBN:9780374537098 Reviewed by: Joost de Leeuw I am one of those fish-eating vegetarians Jonathan Balcombe mocks in his books What a Fish Knows. I am also, like most readers of this magazine, a fish jailer. I treat fish in ways I would never treat humans. I own fish and keep them in glass boxes, for my personal entertainment. I net them unannounced and separate them from their friends. I sell their offspring. Now and then I cause, or fail to prevent, their premature deaths. And such accusations can be raised against any fish keeper. A well-known and otherwise admirable online ‘master breeder’ breeds discus as happily as he has them fried.…

EVER SEEN fish so metallic that it looks like they've been dipped in something? You'd be forgiven for thinking they had, as while illegal to perform in the UK, dipping fish into dyes, or even directly injecting them into the tissues, still takes place around the world. But that's not what gives these golden species their distinctive twinkle. Historically speaking, there's one species of golden fish that occasionally graces the trade, and always wild caught: Hemigrammus armstrongi, or the gold tetra. The name comes with a lot of baggage, and is now considered a synonym of H. rodwayi. Golden H. rodwayi were unknown when that fish was described, so when shinier variants started to roll up, they were assumed to be a new species. However, both of those names are…

Freelance journalist Jeremy is PFK's former editor and author of several highly acclaimed aquarium books. NITRATE HAS long been maligned in the eyes of fishkeepers the world over. It's been historically blamed for everything from green water to fish diseases and mortality, but in recent years our increased understanding of it has made us aware of what a vital nutrient it really is. Outside of planted aquascapes, one area where nitrates are vital is in the modern coral reef set-up. Here, Jeremy Gay addresses all the questions that a beginner needs to know about this misunderstood chemical. Where does it come from? Nitrate is part of the nitrogen cycle and is produced when nitrifying bacteria convert nitrite to nitrate. Ammonia is the primary ingredient, released into the aquarium from fish…

Freelance journalist Jeremy is PFK's former editor and author of several highly acclaimed aquarium books. IN THE last five million years everything about East Africa has changed. It's gone from flat, moist rainforests and rivers to mountains, deserts and deep lakes. Mountains blocked rainfall, forests turned to scrub and food became sparse, and the pulling apart of continental plates is thought to have driven our African ape ancestors to take to two feet, walk, and become smarter in order to find food. It had a funny effect on cichlids too. Rivers poured into the 4,000 miles cracks that formed north to south in East Africa, and the plates are still pulling the continent in two to this day. The Red Sea is even a rift lake of sorts, albeit a…

When Gabor isn't testing products for PFK, he's usually working on several breeding projects in his fish house. WHEN I learnt about the arrival of green darters, it was too good an opportunity to miss. Here's a quick summary what I learned, and my own experiences. Green darters, Ammocryptocharax elegans, (sometimes called chameleon darters) hail from various igarapetype habitats of the Orinoco River basin. These forest streams vary from fast, clear waters with dense vegetation to slower flowing blackwaters with plenty of fallen leaves and tangled roots. The water is usually soft and acidic, at 4.5-5.5pH. The temperature is 23-26°C, depending on the season and the coverage (cooler under the tree canopy). Green darters can be found mainly in zones with moderate to strong waterflow, which explains their body shapes…

PFK: Josh, start me off with the hardware on this system. What size is the tank, and what equipment do you have running? Josh: It's 6ft long, 45cm front to back and 65 cm tall, holding approximately 600 litres of water. A friend and I built the cabinet from structural timber cut offs and pallets. I found info online on how to build it because the downwards force of 800kg (including glass) isn't as problematic as the potential for the cabinet to twist and buckle. The lighting is from three 30w Energizer 6500k led floodlights — enough to grow plants under. I use two Eheim heaters in case one fails, but also because water flow is dulled, it helps with heat distribution a little. The filter is an FX6 canister…

LOOK AROUND on Instagram nowadays using something like the #aquarium hashtag, and you'll be inundated with the good, the bad, and the quirky. Then there's Tigahboy, or @tigahboy.h20 if you want his full handle. While some aquarists imitate, copying each other's aquascapes to manicured perfection, Tigahboy has been culturing (literally) his own style — tiny undersea worlds of macroalgae. Macroalgae have become a lucrative business in recent years. On the one hand, researchers are looking at them as the next big thing in biodiesel, the fuel of tomorrow, or as feed for humans and livestock (feeding cattle on seaweed substantially reduces their methane emissions). On the other hand, Tigahboy looks to them as the next aesthetic treat to grace aquaria. Using seaweed in place of corals, he assembles tanks that…