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Congopanchax Brichardi (Poropanchax brichardi) Hatching

Congopanchax brichardi
Congopanchax brichardi

The Congopanchax brichardi, as its name indicates from Congo River in Africa. The popular name is “Brichard’s Hummingbird Lampeye”. The known habitats of Congopanchax brichardi are small tributaries, streams, swamps, and bank regions with an abundant growth of aquatic plants.

The water is extremely soft, around 10 to 80 microsiemens which is about 1 dGH.

Lampeyes in gerneral are shoaling fish and should be kept accordingly. They prefer water surface and like the upper temperature range of about 26 -29 degrees centigrades.

These fish are very susceptible to bacterial diseases and the dreaded “Velvet Disease”, Piscinoodinium, which might get the difficulty in hatching the eggs in aquarium environment. For more deeper insights visit Wikipedia.

The eggs are very difficult to obtain, also imports from the Democratic Republic of Congo are very rare, because circumstance there unfortunately are complicated and terrain not so easy to reach. I was lucky and found a French guy who could offer some eggs, so I ordered and started immediately hatching after I received the peat moos. I regularly hatch fish, so it is not m first time but nevertheless I wish myself good luck as problems can always occur.

21.Novembre 2019:

I got a patch of 40 eggs in peat moss. They were 5 days on shipping with an outside temperature of average 10 degrees, so that might become a problem in hatching. So I prepared a plastic container filled with one litre of osmoses water and poured the content, eggs and peat moss into the 25 degree warm water with a conductivity of 80 microsiemens. I did not cover the container what I usually do, do not ask why, so lets hope for the best.

28.Novembre 2019:

Surprise: 2 Congopanchax Brichardi fry. As I do not know how they were collected, either all the same day or stretched across a week I still hope that more fry will be seen over the days. I did not feed them yet.