Gunther's nothobranch

Care at a glance

Overview

Keep them in a tank of 40 liters or larger, and run one male with several females so his attention is spread out rather than fixed on a single fish. They sit in the middle of the water column and are mostly peaceful, though the male can push hard during spawning, which is why the extra females help. Hold the water at 22 to 25 C with a pH from 6.5 to 7.5, and keep it clean, since dirty acidic water leads to velvet. Feed them frozen and live foods like bloodworm, brine shrimp, and daphnia, which suit them better than dry flakes. A dim planted setup with a tight lid and soft filtration keeps them settled.

In the wild

Gunther's nothobranch comes from seasonal pools and swampy ground along coastal Tanzania and Zanzibar, the kind of shallow water that fills with the rains and dries out later in the year. Match that with a planted tank kept dim, with a soft substrate the fish can spawn into and gentle filtration that does not push the water around. Keep them at 22 to 25 C with a pH from 6.5 to 7.5, and stay on top of water changes, since acidic dirty water brings on velvet. A tight lid matters because these fish jump.

Good to know

This is an annual killifish in the family Nothobranchiidae, reaching about 6 cm as an adult. It spawns by diving into a soft substrate, where the eggs are stored damp for a period before wetting triggers them to hatch. Lifespan is naturally short, roughly nine to eighteen months, so a population is carried by breeding rather than by long-lived individuals.

Did you know

The eggs survive the dry season packed in damp peat, paused mid development until water returns. Hobbyists use that trick on purpose, storing the spawned substrate damp for weeks or months, then wetting it to set off a hatch. It is how a fish with a life of barely a year keeps its line going from one rainy season to the next.

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