Eyespot severum

Care at a glance

Overview

This is a blackwater severum, a tall, disc-shaped cichlid kept as a single fish or a bonded pair rather than a group. It holds the middle water among tall wood, drifting rather than dashing. It is mostly peaceful but grows large and gets protective when breeding, so choose its companions with care: calm, soft-water fish of a size it cannot swallow, kept clear of the pair at spawning time. It leans herbivore, so feed a diet with plenty of vegetable matter, spirulina and blanched greens alongside pellets and frozen foods. A pair needs a tank of at least 400 liters with driftwood, dim light and genuinely soft, acidic water.

In the wild

Heros liberifer comes from the still blackwaters of the upper and middle Orinoco in Venezuela, especially flooded forest, where the water is warm, very soft and strongly acidic. Recreate that with driftwood, leaf litter, a tannin stain and calm, gently filtered water. Keep it soft and acidic, around 24 to 28 C at a pH from 4.1 to 6.1, with subdued lighting; this is a fish that genuinely needs soft water, not one that merely tolerates it.

Good to know

In the family Cichlidae, this severum reaches around 20 centimeters and was described only in 2015. Unlike the familiar open-spawning severums, it is a larvophile mouthbrooder: the pair spawns on a surface, then takes the hatched young into the mouth to brood them. Its name, liberifer, means bearer of free young, for exactly that habit, and breeding sits at a moderate level of difficulty.

Did you know

For years aquarists kept this mouthbrooding severum as an unnamed oddity, passing it around as a curiosity, before it was finally described and given a scientific name in 2015.

Common questions

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