Pseudomugil furcatus. Nichols 1955.
Pseudomugil connieae. Allen 1981.
These beautiful little ‘blue eyed’ rainbow fishes have had many name changes in their brief 50 year history. I will not go into many of the previous ones since that will only tend to confuse. However it is still quite widely named in shops as Popendetta furcata. Hopefully they each will continue with their present generic names for years to come.
I had previously kept and bred this species (furcatus) some years ago. On a recent trip to some of the Belgian fish shops, I spotted them and could not resist. The yellow colour stands out and they make a very pleasant shoal in a community tank: providing they are with small peaceful fish.
They are easily spawned but a little less easily raised. I use a conventional spawning mop to collect the eggs. The eggs are quite large, approaching 1mm in diameter so they are easy to collect from the spawning mop. Having collected the eggs, I store them in a small container in their own tank water. They take about 12 days to hatch. The fry, as with all Rainbow fishes, are small. As I had such good results with ZM-000, raising Glossolepis dorityi, I decided to use this product again as a first food. This food spreads evenly across the water surface so the surface feeding blue eyes have no problem in finding food. I have never looked at the Pseudomugil furcatus fry before in great detail but this time, I observed them through a large magnifying glass. Even newly hatched fry have the characteristic brilliant blue eyes. The fry are not fast growing and it takes a lot of time and effort to get them to maturity. Frequent water changes are necessary – particularly if, like me, you raise them in a small tank. However, the final result is a shoal of extremely attractive community tank fish.
Pseudomugil connieae is not widely available to the aquarist.
These fish were brought back from our good friends at Fisch Haus Zepkow. They are a little less coloured than the P. furcatus but are still a very pretty fish. Breeding is identical.
© Pete Cottle, 2004. This fact sheet may not be reproduced in any form without the permission of the author.