Tropical Fish Forums

[Heather2128]

Check out this Killifish, guys:


http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21792369/
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75 gallon community

[Trill the man]

Woooow. That is truely amazing! . I've heard of species living out of water, but not with a maintained metabloic rate. It's almost an amphibian!

Phil
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"Donald duck never wore pants, but when he gets out of a bath, he covers his waist with a towel...."

[Taratron]

Too late for the article, it seems, but was this a rivulus species? R. cylindraceous (I know I misspelled that ), to be precise? I've heard they are the real oddball killi, next to the brackish hermaphrodite one.
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But if you tame me, then we shall need each other....You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed.
~Antoine de Saint-Exupery

[nonamethefish]

Looks like our good friend Kryptolebias(previously Rivulus ) marmoratus. Yep, these are the hermaphrodites. I've toyed around the idea of setting up a mangrove setup for these little weirdos for ages...though the main problem is that you can only put one in as in captivity they seem quite territorial(I guess in the wild when starving and crammed head to tail in termite galleries or muddy crab holes they aren't much in the mood to fight?) They are probably the best fish for laboratories or classrooms wishing to study egg development...they can be kept alive and "happy" in little more than a wet petri dish.
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46 gallon bowfront tank
10 gallon planted single species tank
10 gallon tank
plus all kinds of smaller containers

[Trill the man]

Hm, appears the page is now no longer available. So this species is, just to confirm, Kryptolebias marmoratus?
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"Donald duck never wore pants, but when he gets out of a bath, he covers his waist with a towel...."

[nonamethefish]

Yep. They are commonly found inside of mangrove logs, and according to this article, even stumps/snags with termite galleries can be used. I talked in email to a guy who studies these(I believe he's Dr. Bruce Turner?) and he says that splitting these logs reveals the little fish packed end to end inside the galleries.
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46 gallon bowfront tank
10 gallon planted single species tank
10 gallon tank
plus all kinds of smaller containers