An obligate predator by nature, but captive specimens readily accept strips of white fish, whole shrimp, earthworms, and similar once they are recognised as food.

Adult individuals are unlikely to require feeding on a daily basis with 1-2 meals per week sufficient.

All members of the family Auchenipteridae are thought to practise internal insemination and females can carry mature, unfertilised eggs and sperm packets inside the body for unspecified periods of time.

When conditions are satisfactory fertilisation is triggered and the eggs deposited, and there is n…

Has been collected from habitats containing clear, soft, acidic, tea-coloured blackwater, most typically among leaf litter or submerged vegetation in very shallow (10-50 cm depth) water along the margins of streams and other minor tributaries.

At a village called El Niñal close to the mouth of the rio Pasimoni in the Casiquiare drainage pH was…

Décor is relatively unimportant and maintenance simple provided sufficient space is available.

A natural-style arr…

C. amandajanea is rare in the aquarium trade and appears to be variable in colour pattern to an extent, with some individuals posssessing relatively larger dark spots on the body, for example.

Unfortunately diagnostic characters cannot be provided since we’ve been unable to obtain the type description, and little has been written about this species since it was published.

This species is also known as ‘Marilyn’s pencilfish’. It’s rarely traded in numbers and more often seen as bycatch among shipments of other species, particularly Paracheirodon axelrodi.

It can be identified by the following combination of characters: three dark lateral stripes (sometimes referred to as primary, secondary, and tertiary); nocturnal oblique bars relatively narrow, with the anterior bar reaching, but not extending past, the anterior base of the dorsal-fi…

This is the smallest member of the genus and rarely traded in numbers, though it’s a relatively common contaminant among shipments of wild fishes from Manaus. Unlike other Nannostomus spp. it does not exhibit a specific colour pattern of spots or bars at night-time, rather displaying an overall paleness.

The family Lebiasinidae is included in the order Characiformes and sometimes split into the nominal subfamilies Lebiasininae a…

This species is assigned the codes A220, A221 and A222 under the DATZ ‘A’ number system with these referring to similar-looking, possibly conspecific, populations.

These differ in some aspects of colour pattern, particularly the orientation of the caudal-fin markings which may be horizontal, vertical, or somewhere inbetween.

One population displays an orange colouration on the belly and is som…

The German term 'breitbinden' translates literally as "broad-banded" and refers to the uniformly broad suborbital stripe seen in males of this 'species' which remains undescribed despite being known in the aquarium hobby for several decades. It's often imported as bycatch among shipments of wild-collected A. iniridae.

Some of the populations have also been assigned th…

At time of writing there exists no scientific evidence that the different populations of this species seen in the aquarium trade (see 'Distribution') represent anything other than a single, widely-distributed species although some exibit minor morphological differences including relative body depth, longer fin rays in the unpaired fins and yellow or orange colouration in the paired fins. There is apparently a form from the upper rio Negro which may turn out to be distinct but it's…