silver hatchetfish

[cootwarm]

ancientaquarist wrote:

Can you tell us about marthae? What is special about the species?

I liked them because they were smallish, like a marbled hatchetfish but a very different color pattern. The back is a kind of silvery-brass and the rest is pretty much transparent with the belly outlined with a fine black line and little black specks on it's body like pepper.

I only know what I read in the first volume of Baensch Aquarium Atlas.
soft acidy water (pH 5.5 - 6.5 and 4dGH)

It's a 1996 edition that states that breeding has been unsuccessful to date.

Is anyone aware if that statement is still true?

Also that picture that MOoN posted is down right spooky! 8O

Michael

 

[2la]

Michael, I listed all the other valid hatchetfish that you and others hadn't mentioned in an earlier post of mine. You'll see there that myersi and marthae are different species. G. levis, G. maculatus, and G. sternicla are current valid names under the genus Gasteropelecus.

I'm not aware of any dedicated characin sites, but among the highest quality websites out there is Randy Carey's.

 

[skh]

Hi Michael,

I have yet another question-Is
C. myersi synonymous with C. marthae??

No, they are not. I have been keeping C. myersi for some years but never managed to breed them. C. myersi does not have that black stripe covering the outline of the belly like C. mathae has. It is also more transparent than the C. marthae which is more silvery. Here in Germany, both species are introduced and sold occasionally and I found C. myersi to fit well into a tank together with Apistogramma and other small characin species. It is a hard species despite its size. At the moment both species are available here in Berlin. A nice place to see some pictures of characins as well as to read some information and to find some literature data about characins is Rainer Massmann´s
page on characins: www.salmlernetz.de
Unfortunately (for you) it is written in german language. You may check the currently available scientific names in www.fishbase.org. As far as I know there was an article on the question whether hatchetfishes do really fly in the TFH-magazine by Stanley Weitzman.

Stefan

 

[crimsonrain]

does anyone know if hatchetfish would make a good ditherfish for shy dwarf cichlids since they stay at the top?

 

[cootwarm]

Yes. I think they've had a very positive effect in my tanks. They are very active all day long. This allows the cichlids to become comfortable with lots of movement. Because of this, they are also less apt to run and hide when you approach the tank to observe them. This also appears to relieve some tension between the cichlids themselves and make them a little more tolerant of each other.

Because they are so active, they seem like the type that would eat fry but because they stay near the surface this hasn't been a problem for me. I don't think mine have ever eaten any fry. IME by the time the fry begin to occasionally rise up to the upper part of the tank, they are large enough that the marbled hatchetfish don't bother them.

However, I've never bought silver hatchetfish before, they seem to be larger so perhaps they would be more of a threat to fry.

Michael