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Nothobranchius palmquisti (Tropicarium stock)
The present stock of a Notho that is usually called by the species name of "palmquisti" was imported in 1957 by Tropicarium in Munich. A blackwhite photo (not very instructive) was shown in one of the last 1957 issues of DATZ. 3 friends and I imported 6 pairs from Tropicarium in early 1958. They came in on 13 Jan. 58 and possibly were aquarium bred youngsters very uniform and no doubt a pure stock. I had one pair which was put into a 15 liter tank with very fine mud bottom and the common "rainforest water" to which in this particular case I added 1000 ppm of common salt (1 gramm/liter of NaCl) because fishes came in a water which contained an equal amount of salt. The breeding pair was not fully grown 2025 mm in total length.
The real palmquisti was described by Loennberg in "Yngve Sjoestedts Zoologische KilimandjaroMeru Expedition 19051906. about 5 Vol I" as Fundulus palmquisti. Loennberg had 28 mostly small specimens at hand. These were caught in an inundated cocoa plantation at Tanga on 5 June 1905. He described the colors of the male like this: "Every scale of the male has near its posterior margin a carmine red band and these bands are connected with each other so as to form continuous transversal somewhat wavy red bands across the body in similar numbers as the transverse series of scales... Caudal fin bright red, anal and dorsal fins with carmine red spots in the shape of short streaks on the rays a little weaker on the web but connected into irregular bands across the fins. Female uniformly colored, probably greenish in life without markings. Largest male measured from tip of snout to end of caudal fin 42 mm. Nearly related to F. guentheri Pfeffer...2" Our present stock might be identical with Loennberg's species.
From an aquarists point of view this species or race is closely related to our present stock of "guentheri" compared to the other species that we presently keep in our tanks. "palmquisti" is smaller than "guentheri". Males rarely grow bigger than 50 mm total length and females in particular are much smaller than females in "guentheri". Most of the about 2530 females I raised did not exceed 40 mm at an age of about 6 months. This summer I had one female "palmquisti" and one female "guentheri", same age, growing in the same small tank together with some male "palmquisti". The female guentheri grew faster and now, after about 4 months, she is at least 50% bigger than female palmquisti. She is also bigger than the male palmquisti of same age that have been together with her since hatching.
The male "palmquisti" no doubt is the most handsome of the Nothos presently kept in tanks, and possibly one of the most handsome aquarium fish ever kept in tanks. The ground color of the male is brilliant blue in the head and the sides of the body, against the back this color diffuses into a greenish olive, whereas against the belly and throat the blue color diffuses into a clear yellow color (lemon). The eye is big and has a glaring blue cast. Every scale on the body sides is finely edged by a clear red line. These lines form a very regular net pattern on the body sides, just as in the "melanospilus" of Hansen's stock. Dorsal and anal fins are very big (compared with "melanospilus" of Hansen) and have a beautiful clean lemon ground color, dotted with red. The caudal fin might be brilliant uniformly red and no dark edge is seen on the hindmost part of that fin (my friend Claus Petersen lost his pair in 1958 and cross bred some of my males with some of his females "guentheri" and had some fry which were just like my males "palmquisti" but the caudal fins in these possible hybrids had a sharp blackish edge, just as in the "pure guentheri". Dr. Ladiges informed me that males in the German stocks of "palmquisti" might have a dark edge of the caudal fin. Dr. Ladiges also found that these stocks showed an abnormal dispersal in the zoological measurements. This points in the direction of a conscious or unconscious crossing between the pure stocks of "palmquisti" and "guentheri". Also as "palmquisti" produces up to 90% of males in the broods and "guentheri" tends to produce a great surplus of females there might be a temptation to cross breed these two forms. As mentioned in a previous note, crossing of "palmquisti" males to "guentheri" females is very easy. Therefore it might be of importance that some of us try to keep the pure stocks of both forms.
The females of both "palmquisti" and "guentheri" have no dark spots on the body sides, nor on the fins. Therefore they are easily distinguished from the females in "melanospilus" (Hansen's), the "kuhntae" (Griem's or Roloff's), the "mayeri" and "orthonotus" (Roloff's) because in these forms the females have the dark spots on the body (and fins?). As also "rachovi" (Roloff's stock) now is going to be spread among the egg receivers, we have to face another problem because the female "rachovi" is very very close to female "palmqusiti". I think I will always be able to take any female "palmquisti" out from a mixed brood of "palmquisti" and "guentheri". It is not easily explained how to do this because it mostly is a question of knowing these two forms very well. The first step might be looking at the colors: "guentheri" is more brownish, "palmquisti" is more olive and more transparent. Her anal fin might be longer than in "guentheri". But most differences you will note with a general look. Possibly I will not be able to distinguish between females "rachovi" and females "palmqusiti" just now. Female "rachovi" seems to have some green color in her anal fin when she is seen in a certain light. My stock of "palmquisti" bred true in 1958 and I hope to keep the pure form as in 1959, but as females are so rarely developed in this form I might lose the pure stock. Therefore if you still have the pure stock, please try to keep it.
Tanga is situated at the coast of Tanganyika near the frontier to Kenya. This place falls within the proposed distribution of "guentheri". The keeping of this species in no way differs from the other forms presently kept in tanks. The "weak point" is the period of maturity where at least the males are very sensitive against diseases and lots of them might die within a few days. After maturity the form is much more robust and my big breeding stock in 1958 did not give any severe problems for many months. It seems as if the cleanness of the water plays a certain role, also that problems appear together with the blue green algae, but this does not hold true in all cases. My copper net possibly saved my last remainders of the pure stock this year. Whenever any trace of Oodinium (whitish or yellowish edges on scales in particular on head and neck) appear, the copper net is placed in the tank . In 195859, I kept lots of males together in small tanks (25 or more in 15 liter glass tanks) and rarely they did hurt each other. Breeding took place in the same tanks with 34 males and about 10 females in each tank. Even in these tanks the males normally did not hurt each other. Recently I was looking into my big 320 liter tank where lots of Cynolebias melanotaenia live (mostly males). A few big male "palmquisti" ("weeds") came out from the broods of "melanotaenia". One of these males was severely fighting a smaller male of "melanotaenia". I was surprised to see how close these two nonrelated species were in their fighting procedure and how red the caudal fin of the "melanotaenia" appeared compared with the deep red of the "palmquisti". Even as the "melanotaenia" was smaller than the "palmquisti" I did not doubt that he would win that battle. Also if you place some females "ladigesi" in a tank together with some female "palmquisti" (small), most aquarists would be in great trouble to distinguish between these two sorts of females.
With the breeding procedure, there seems to be no particular difference between the stocks of Nothos now kept in tanks. Spawning takes place chiefly on the upper layer of the mud, as males press the females sidewards and downwards she may disappear into the mud and by this sideward downward pressing of the male small "holes" in the mud are formed. The male uses his big dorsal and anal fins to keep the female firmly at the right position during spawning. Eggs are plentiful, but they are small. Most measure about 1.0 mm and they are not circular. The membrane is provided with short and rather stiff "hairs" standing right out from the surface at least when eggs are kept in water. They are exactly the same as eggs from "guentheri" and "rachovi", although there may be some little differences in the concentration of hairs on membrane, but possibly not enough to make it possible to distinguish between eggs from these 3 forms. Eggs do not adhere to peat, normally. My females produced about 100 eggs each week (30 mm females) but no doubt they are able to spawn any more eggs in a week.
Egg Data:
Old pair: 13 Jan.04 Feb. 58 washed out 172 eggs. All were placed in a cup on shallow water in order to find out the way of development.
Old pair: 25 Feb.14 Mar. 58: very many eggs. After washing out of fine particles the sample was dried at once.
In the breeding of annual fish it may be of great importance to know how long a certain sample of eggs in dry peat can be stored at room temperature without killing all fry in eggs. Certainly this question is not easily answered because much depends on how many eggs in the peat will stay in the state of resting egg/resting embryo and how many eggs will develop to a resting fry, and, last but not least, how long will a resting fry be able to survive in this state without being hatched.
Here is some data from peat samples that were kept during the winter 1958/59 hoping to provide a fresh stock of "palmquisti" in the early spring of 1959. All these samples were strongly concentrated and had hundreds of hundreds if not thousands of eggs.
These results are not very encouraging when compared with Cynolebias and Cynopoecilus, excluding Pterolebias peruensis. No doubt we have to find out a method to enable the development of the eggs, and we should try a closed and waterfilled ampoulle or keeping the eggs under fine mud in water.
| Copyright 2022 Richard J. Sexton |