Labyrinth mania!

[Toirtis]

After scooping the two Polycentropsis on Wednesday, I went cruising a couple of local shops today, determined to buy nothing....

...and what do you think happened?

One of my fave shops had five 3" Ctenopoma acutirostre in...I was forced to buy two (at $12 each, how could I not?)...I would have bought more, but the eyes on the other three looked a bit iffy, so if they are better and still available in a week...

 

[medge00]

and where is the pic?

 

[Fluff]

After searching to find out what that is...

Awesome! Congrats on the new fish!

 

[Menagerie]

Don't buy fish for a week and get a camera, Toirtis!

 

[Toirtis]

Don't buy fish for a week and get a camera, Toirtis!

That might actually work!

Anyways, they look like this:

 

[Meredith]

OH I saw some of those at my lfs. Bushfish, or brushfish, something like that right? They are really neat looking. Congratulations!

 

[lmw80]

they are labryinth fish? neat! I never knew!

 

[Toirtis]

OH I saw some of those at my lfs. Bushfish, or brushfish, something like that right? They are really neat looking. Congratulations!

'Leopard bushfish', yes....they are really cool, and go well with anything except smaller fish.

 

[Billsgate]

Great fish! although impossible to breed. Except for 2 exceptions: 1 time at the Basel (Germany) zoo, and 1 time by a German breeder
But still very cool fish

 

[Toirtis]

Great fish! although impossible to breed. Except for 2 exceptions: 1 time at the Basel (Germany) zoo, and 1 time by a German breeder
But still very cool fish

Which means, I, being German, am set!

 

[spence0416]

I believe they are also called a climbing perch or something like that. I got one from a misc. tank at a local petsmart about a year ago. Fosters and Smith has them for about $40. Great fish your going to love em. Smartest fish I've ever had. Smoothest swimming fish also, they move like a stealth bomber...great pick. If you throw in a couple ghost shrimp you'll have a great time watching him hunt em down. They have a mouth like a vacuum.

 

[Fruitbat]

Actually.....they're not all that difficult to breed and I'm sure it has been done many more times than just two. The difficult part is telling whether you have males or females. Ctenopoma acutirostre, like others of the genus, have no obvious external gender differences. Males have a patch of very spiny scales right behind the eye and another (in most species) at the base of the caudal fin but you have to take the fish out of the water and examine it with a magnifying glass to see these patches.

I have three of these fish in with some other species of Ctenopoma and Microctenopoma and they get along quite well for the most part. One of my Ctenopoma ocellatum has taken a definite dislike to one of my Ctenopoma acutirostre and will chase it whenever the two happen to bump into each other.

For those of you more interested in these fish, I wrote a profile on the Leopard Bush Fish here on Aquarium Advice. Here's a link: http://www.aquariumadvice.com/viewtopic.php?t=28445

-Joe

 

[spence0416]

Fruitbat great post. Only thing was that mine eats almost anything. I'm probably just lucky in that regard, but he readily accepts flakes and pellets. When live food is introduced he does go crazy for it.

By the way I believe it was you that gave my first info as to what it was that I bought back when I got him.

 

[Billsgate]

Fruitbat! I have a book, published in 1998 for the first time, stating that Ctenopoma Acutirostre has only been bred one time by the zoo of Basel. Okey, it's a German writer, maybe he didn't know about the rest of the world's attempts at breeding them. And then he claims that he himself is the only one that has succesfully bred Ctenopoma Ocellatum. (so not 2 times succesfull breeding of the leopard bushfish, only once.)
Am I yet again misinformed by this book? It told me that the correct name for honey gourami was Colissa Chuna, and yesterday Toirtis tells me that it is now Trichogaster Chuna.

 

[Toirtis]

I now have 6 of them together in a tank...I am hoping that chances are I have at least one pair.

 

[Fruitbat]

Billsgate....

I personally know of a couple of people who have bred Ctenopoma acutirostre so it isn't as rare an occurrence as your book states. However, in defense of the book's author, captive breeding of tropical fish isn't usually reported in scientific literature by your average tropical fish keeper so a search of the literature could hardly be expected to turn up much information about it.

-Joe

 

[NewFishGuy]

Very interesting...and pretty....are they all that tortois shell coloration, or are there other colorings also?

 

[Toirtis]

There is some variation within the species, and other Ctenopoma and Microctenopoma are quite different.