My personal revision and guide of Polypterus delhezi keeping.

[giseok jung]

Second is the wild-cross stran, a cross breed between Indonesina selective breed delhezi with my very finest WC delhezi and I produce this strains also for beginners.

I do select my breed fish for 4 different quality levels and make certifications for high qualitied one.

Wild strain is for testing "How good the delhezi can be" by myself so i only use very best parents fish i could get only one or two speciemens each 2~3 years.

 

[giseok jung]

Because of that, I can't breed many specimens and only one platinum and one shortbody had been reported from this strain.



Congo wild catched delhezi.

Polypterus delhezi live in Congo river in the wild and mainly collected from somewhere around Kinshasa, Democratic republic of Congo and been exported world wide but we can't find many specimens these days.

Because the wild catched delhezi getting rare, Korean breed strains are replacing it's positions in Korean bichir markets.

Because of the transportation fee from Congo, WC delhezi is relatively expensive, most of them have very nice head and body shape but specimen with good patterns are very rare.

 

[giseok jung]

(Wild catched Polypterus delhezi with various patterns)

 

[giseok jung]

(Broodstock-quality wild cathced delhezi on sale in Japan by Japanese polypterus researcher and breeder mr. Igarashi)

As you can see, wild catched Polypterus delhezi has various style of patterns and there is some reports saying that some differences are based on local variations but we can't sure till now because non of local exporters sale their fish with localitys for delhezi.

And many breeders also want to get wild catched specimens with high quality so some wild catched specimens with the best quality sold on crazy price like the photo 54.

Not many specimens were sold over 1000usd in Korea but after the markets get bigger, I think we will can see some nice delhezi with crazy price tags more often.
(One of my wild catched specimen is the only case ever sold over 1000usd in Korea)

 

[giseok jung]

(Polypterus delhezi breed by Japanese breeder "Doly-K")

Japanese captive breed delhezi.

Japanese captive breed strain of delhezi are very hard to find in these days and never been sold in Korea but because of their huge impact to Korean breeders with their amazing photographs, I can't pass with them.
The most popular Japanese breeders are "Doly-K" and "Igarashi" the "Doly-K" is more well-known in Korea.

Doly-K have breed delhezi with his very high quality wild catched specimens, his own breed Wild F1

 

[giseok jung]

and best CB strain from Indoeneisa and he've done it before the Korean breeders came out.

Sadly, When i visited "Redcen", which is the shop that sale Doly-K breed fish in 2020, I heard that Doly-K don't breed polypterus any more from the owner of the shop.



Doly-K breed delhezi was showing almost wild like head, body shape and dorsal finlets with unbelivable patterns with very hight price around 80usd ~ 6000usd for each fish.

This kind of profassional polypterus breeding was bloomed in Japan between early 2000s based on their gigantic market of polypterus endlicheri and many breeders tried and succeed to breed many nice polypterus from wild catched parents at that time.
But most of Japaenese breeders stop breeding polpyterus now and their strains are mostly dissapear.
The last sale of Doly-K was in 2019 and the last breeder ever worked these days was mr.Igarashi who breed and sale his Wild F1 endlicheri from guinean wild catched parents in 2022.

There was some roumers that saying some of Japanese breed delhezi sent to Indonesian breeders and became the base of the Indonesian CB delhezi strain these days, but this was never confirmed.



Now you get the nice delhezi. And it's time to raise it to a even better fish.

Keeper's skill is as important as the quality of individual fish, specially Polypterus grow very differently by how keepers raise their fish so you need to keep them with proper care to raise them beautifully.

Delhezi are usually sold in juvenile stage and kept and raised in keeper's hand for long time so the keeper's skill effect a lot to how the fish look after grown up like their head, body shape, color, dorsal fins and even their patterns.

In this thread, we will talk about water maintein include water change, feeding, tankmate & layout and disease.

 

[giseok jung]

Water maintains.

Fish spend their whole life in the water so the maintains of water is one of the most important thing in fish keeping.

Polypterurs usually breath from serface air so they don't require high disolved oxygen but many filter bacteria require oxygen to live so you would be better keep disolved oxygen level high.

And the Congo river have various microhabitats with wide rage of pH from very acidic water to alkaline water so delhezi can tolerate to around pH6~8 but I would recommend to keep pH neutral or alkaline.

Especially when you keep water acidic but don't have pH buffer like coral sand, pH might can drop very quickly and damage your fish or also can be a reason of disease like Aeromonas infections so I put large grane of coral sand or oyster shell to the filter to keep pH not dropping.

But too alkaline pH can hinder the green colors of delhezi too.

About temperature, they can live in the temperature that most african aquarium fish lives, around 26~30'c and I keep my fish in 26'c in winter, 30'c in summer to keep them out of daily temperature diffeneces.



And adult fish and juvenile fish have different metabolistic rythems, specially the speed of digesting.
Usually younger fish have faster metabolistic rythems so you don't need to stop feeding them for long time before water change, only few hours or 1 day is enough.

But adult fish, specially the old fish can't digest fast as younger fish and you can damage or stress your fish if you do water change while they digesting foods so you need to stop feeding them at least 1 ~ 2 days before doing water change.

More water change will make your fish grow faster in younger stage but it can be a reason of stress when they are grown up so i recommend to do WC around once in every week or when it's get dirty.
Also you need to take care about the substrate when you do water change because detraitus or sludge can stucked in there which you need to move out.

 

[giseok jung]

Feeding

As i wrote on this thread, you can easily feed and raise your delhezi with carnivores pellets or frozen weather loach.

Basically, I recommened to make environment to let delhezi eat 24/7 in juvenile stage and take care about the food not get rotten and feed regularly for adult fish.
(They why many keepers use live food to keep juvenile delhezi)

i feed my adult delhezi once in a day, much they can eat in 1hours and if i overfeed a day before or there is any factors can decrease their tast like rainy season (they will think it's breeding season when it's rainy outside and stop eating), I skip a meal for them.

And if you feed them various foods at once, they might can pick what they want to eat and eat that one only so I feed only one type of food at once and rotate their meal by schedule.



Tankmate and Layout.

Polypterus delhezi is very peaceful species so you can keep them with most of every species of fish unless they need different environemnt or harm delhezi or eaten by them.

So I prefer to keem delhezi with other small sized upper jaw polypterus like senegalus, palmas, polli or gars (Mostly belong to genus Lepisosteus) except agressive species like Aligator or Cuban if the delhezi is big enough.

I don't recommend any african lungfish to keep with because they grow much bigger than delhezi and any other species can nip the scale or fins of delhezi like Clown tetra or Leporinus, or can suck the body of delhezi like pleco are not recommended to keep with.
(Australian lungfish- Neoceratodus forsteri and South american lungfish- Lepidosiren paradoxa can be a good tankmate if you have a big enough tank because they are peaceful species)

About layout, you can try many styles because delhezi will not break them much so you many people keep them from bare tank to african biotope with Anubias and Bolbitis.

But other big fish can throw the stone to tank wall and break it with their powerful tail so I don't recommend to put any stone or rock in to your aquarium with big polypterus.

 

[giseok jung]

(Polypterus delhezi showing symptom of Aeromonas infactions)

Disease.

Most of all Polypterus have very strong tolarance with many disease so you need to take care about only few that show often.


Poly-worm

This disease is cased by infaction of external parasite called Macrogyrodactylus polypteri.
You can see the actual worms outside of their body, specially on their scale, blushed mucus and scale and they might trying to scach their body to anything.

Because this parasite is too small and transparent, you need to watch very carefully to find it.

Treatment can be done by Praziquantel, i use 100ml of liquid type of praziquantel for 1000L of tank water for 24 hours with 0.3% salt treatment.

You need to be careful for powder-type of praziquantel because it wil not melt to water in normal ways and uneffective if you use it directly not if what you are useing is specially made for water.

I also use Praziquantel to quarantaine for poly-worm by 4mins bath with 4ml of liquid praziquantel for 1L water.


Columnaris disease

Columnaris disease is cased by a Gramn-negative Bacteria named Flavobacterium columnare.
The tail of you fish start getting white and melt when they infected this disease and showing unnatural swimming.

This bacteria staying in the internal organs of fish in normal days and getting very active when fish get stressed and low immune and make infections.
(High daily temperature differences, bad water quality, bad foods also can be a reasons)
This disease is also quite contagious so if one fish show symptoms, it can infect others only with share of water or equipments.

You can cure this with antibiotics can treat Gramn-negative bacteria like Nitrofuran or Oxytetracyclins.

Also this disease can kill your fish in very short days so you need to have right medications before and treat right away when they show symptoms.


Aeromonas disease

Aeromonas disease is cased by a Gramn negative bacteria belongs to genus Aeromonas.
Major symptom is showing reddish and blody belly and do unnatural swimming.

This disease looks similar in early stage but it will not melt the finlets of fish.

This bacteria also staying in internal organs of fish naturally like colmunaris and become active when fish get low immune.

You can use same medications with columnaris for this disease and if they symtoms get bad quickly, you can also consider to use antibiotics injection to cure it.

This disease us less contagious than Columnaris but can be very deadly so you need to be careful when there is high daily temperature differences.


Concautions.

Unlike any other disease i mentioned above, this is not cased by any pathogen.
Major reasons of concaution is smashing their head to wall or tank cover when delhezi get freaked out by something and this is one of the most common reason of death for adult size delhezi.

When the fish get concaution, they will show weird swimming or even fliped over and die in very short time.

Because this is very deadly for your fish you neeed to do right treatment in very shor periode of time.

I recommend to put fish out of tank and contain in shallow water and most importantly, inject Butaphotphan quickly as you can.
Butaphosphan can melt mussel if you inject itself so you need to dilut with other injections like Vitamin doses with 1:9 rate.
(= Butaphosphan : Vitamin)

I usually inject 0.1 ml of mixture for adult size delhezi and 0.05ml for juvenile and keep them in shallow water till they become to able to swim normally.

 

[giseok jung]

(Wild F1 delhezi I bred)

Breeding of Polypterus delhezi.

Breeding is one of the major challenge for many keepers who keep one species for long time.

Polypterus delhezi is one of the easy species of Polypterus to breed and the Indonesian CB specimens can be breed even easier so you can actually try to make it.

But breed any animal is not just fun and it also mean you need to take care about them properly so i will talk about what is the future of delhezi breeding.
(I think every breeder have to solve the puzzle from spawn to hatch themselves. I can only help when they need to get any thremmatological advice)



(Parents fish of Japanese breeder "Doly-K" showing spawning behavior)

I think the one who reached the highest level of delhezi breeding ever is the Japanese breeder "Doly-K".

Doly-K have been breed with hadpicked very high quality wild parents, and try to backcross their F1 with Wilds and that make him to be enough to be mentioned even after many years he stop breed this species.

He also well known to sale only best specimens from the batch with certifications on high price.

That makes his fish sold in a days after on sale and keepers even compatited for few hundreads ~ Thousands dollars delhezi before he stop breeding.



(Spawning pair of Wild-Cross delhezi (WC*Indo CB) by Doly-K)

Delhezi clearly have quality to compare with each specimens with pattern, color and shapes so there is many ways to make them better with selective breeding.

I think Indonesian strains which is the major strain in nowdays are showing limits with the headshape and bodyshapes and decrease of wild population collecting makes high quality fish harder to find and this can make breeders who do selective breed with wilds have market competitiveness better than ever.

Sadly, I'm the only breeder who breed with wilds with select systems and certification systems in Korea but I believe there will be many more breeders try to do it and make their own strains.