Penny Fish

General information: it's alittle perch like fish belonging to the Glassfish family. it's the littlest of the glassfish family in Australia growing to approximately 4 centimetres. they're usually found in association with thick aquatic vegetation in backwaters and billabongs. they're a schooling fish generally ash gray to gold in colour with about 5 vertical darker bars on the edges . Males have more colourful fins during breeding times which will be mauve, red or maroon. they're reported to be carnivores eating small micro-crustaceans and aquatic insect larvae in their natural habitat, they need small mouths and a peaceful disposition that are comfortable with other small community fishes. The specimens cultured at Aquagreen originate from Darwin River, Anniversary Creek and Burtons Creek within the NT. The water quality within the places these fish came from has been measured and recorded on the ANGFA database, maximum and minimum and averages are listed as a guide. Temperatures from 19 to 35 average 27 deg C , pH from 6 to 7.4 average 6.5 , Hardness approx 51 ppm , Alkalinity approx 48 ppm[8].

Cultivation notes : Aquagreen has not been able breed these small fishes in an aquarium, attempts were made with spawning mops in various sized aquariums to urge them to breed but albeit males were observed more brightly coloured displaying no eggs or fry were observed. The initial observations of fry were noticed during a 9 ton pond, an old above ground swimming bath filled with green water that was getting used to boost plankton. The adults were then put during a pond with Vallisneria growing in approximately 25% of the pond area where newly hatched fry are noticed from about September through to April, the hotter months where the water temperature varies from 27 to 32 deg C[09]. The diet within the ponds is local NT plankton cultured from Billabongs round the Howard River. Adult diets are supplemented with commercial aquaculture feeds. within the aquarium it's recommended that tiny frozen foods be used supplemented with two or more many live foods per week. These fish have a reputation for being difficult to feed with prepared foods like flakes. Initially wild caught specimens were put with small flyspeck hardyheads that were used as trainer fish to urge the Penny Fish to prey on prepared foods.