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Saving cichlids
Matt Clarke visits a top fishkeeping couple who are doing their bit for the conservation of some extremely rare Madagascan cichlids.
Copyright © Practical Fishkeeping
Fishkeeping double-act Sonia Guinane and Dave Tourle of East Sussex have built up what must be one of the most impressive collections of Madagascan cichlids in the country and are playing an active role in their conservation.
These aren't the type of fish you see regularly in the shops. Even the most common species, Paratilapia polleni, is relatively rarely seen, and quite sought after.
Virtually all Madagascan cichlids are endangered species, but occasionally captive-bred specimens do enter the hobby.
Says Sonia: "We go out at weekends and say 'Oh, let's buy a breeding pair of Paretroplus polyactis' but we've never found them yet. You just never see these fish in the stores.
"We found a Paratilapia 'small spot' in a tank of Kribensis, and we bought that. Then we were offered a group of six Paratilapia polleni 'large spot' (formerly known as P. bleekeri).
"And that was it; we were hooked. We just started reading up and making enquiries, and finally got hold of one
odd Paretroplus kieneri at Holland Cichlids in the Netherlands."
Adds Dave: "If you look hard enough, you'll find the fish eventually, even if you have to drive all the way to the south of France or fly to the States to get them, as we've done..."
Under threat
Like the cichlids of Lake Victoria, and Lake Barombi Mbo, the resident cichlids of Madagascar are under threat of extinction.
Dave tells us: "The main problem is deforestation and soil erosion. Much of the rain forest there has disappeared, and there's only about an eighth of it left now.
"The largest numbers of known Paretroplus species are in the north west of the island, which is where most of the deforestation has occurred.
Says Sonia: "The other problem is the introduction of Tilapia and snakeheads as food fish to feed the local population."
Dave explains: "The thing with Madagascan cichlids is that they grow very, very slowly. So when confronted with competition from introduced species they just can't compete at all."
Dave and Sonia tell us that the only Paretroplus that are relatively safe are those on the east coast, like Paretroplus polyactis. That's because they can survive in brackish water, which the Tilapia and snakeheads can't.
Now that the Mangarahara River has been dammed and has completely dried up, Paretroplus maculatus is heading towards the critical list.
Conservation
Sonia and Dave are sharing their vast knowledge of these fishes with public aquaria and a few other hobbyists involved in their conservation through the Fish and Aquatic Invertebrate Taxon Advisory Group (FAITAG).
Says Sonia: "The idea of our involvement in the FAITAG is that the fish we spawn and the fry we produce are made available to the zoos and the aquariums in the project, so they can build a population of fishes as well.
"What they eventually hope to do is get a large breeding programme going, and get lots of people involved and swap the fish produced. But the problem is there's not that many fish available yet.
"Because Madagascan cichlids are incredibly slow-growing, a lot of the fish we've got are only just approaching sizes where they're big enough to spawn properly. So progress has been a little slow."
The fishes
Sonia and Dave have more than a dozen species in three different genera: Paratilapia, Paretroplus and Ptychochromis. It's a larger collection than anyone else's in the UK, including many of the public aquaria involved in the FAITAG.
Several species are, as yet, undescribed, and virtually all of the cichlids are threatened with extinction or critically endangered. Unfortunately, one fish - Paretroplus menarambo - is already extinct in the wild.
The Paretroplus are large, deep-bodied majestic fish that can reach up to 30cm/12" or so. They have characteristic emarginate caudal fins, rather like those of a marine Surgeon fish.
They're known as damba in Madagascar, and in the days when they were plentiful they were once an important food fish.
Dave says: "Paretroplus are mollusc-crushers in the wild. They've got two very elongated front teeth. They're conical, but their pharyngeal jaws are almost like molars. And they actually crush snails - I keep a tank of snails so I can feed them naturally.
"They look very similar to
the etroplines from Sri Lanka.
We kept a group of six alongside them, and the similarities were amazing.
"Cichlid expert Dr Paul Loiselle tells us that he knows of one Paretroplus polyactis that did actually spawn with a Sri Lankan Etroplus suratensis," he adds.
"It was thought that Paretroplus were more closely related to the Indian Etroplus, and that Paratilapia and Ptychochromis were relatives of the African cichlids. But that's not the case. All the Madagascan cichlids are more closely related to each other than they are to Asian or African cichlids."
Sonia and Dave have what they thought were two different populations of Paretroplus kieneri, but Dr Paul Loiselle believes they might actually be two distinct species.
Dave explains: "The kieneri was always thought to be one of the smallest Paretroplus. But a giant one, measuring about 25cm/10", has been found. That's 10cm/4" bigger than the accepted norm."
Sonia and Dave also have a number of Ptychochromis. These are smaller fishes, which grow to about 15cm/6" or so. They're quite different in appearance to the Paretroplus and belong to a different group of cichlids. Dave tells us: "Most of the Ptychochromis are as yet undescribed. Many could just be geographic variants but some are distinct species."
Care
The Paretroplus can be very aggressive, particularly if they're only kept in ones or twos. They're not pair forming and to do well they benefit from being kept in groups containing several specimens.
Sonia and Dave's tanks contain mixtures of different species - all of which seem to be getting along with each other quite amicably during our visit.
Says Dave: "They appreciate a lot of cover - in the wild, they're found in rocky areas. The reason we pile all this rockwork in there is to give the smaller females places to hide.
"We always have sand in our tanks. Paretroplus are sand-sifters. They move their noses from side to side and go through the sand. I think they're looking for molluscs."
Sonia tells us: "They're adaptable to most water conditions, as long as they're not too extreme. Our pH is 7.7, and the temperature is about 24-26 C (76-79 F). The water conditions in their natural habitat are very varied. They've found Paratilapia polleni 'small spot' in water with a pH of 4.4. And on the East Coast, some species are found in brackish water."
Breeding
Sonia and Dave have been very successful in breeding their fishes. They've even bred fish that had not been previously spawned in aquaria. So what's the secret of their success?
Dave says: "We do a cold water change and use natural daylight from a large window, rather than artificial lighting. We find that the natural lighting makes spawning very seasonal. When the days are longer in the summer, that tends to trigger spawning.
"Just before spawning, they start changing colour. They'll do some head shaking with their heads down, and start clearing an area in the rocks. They don't actually jaw-lock, or anything, although they do perform a sort of display dance.
"They're usually very good parents, but if something startles them, they're off, and everything else in the tank dives in and eats the fry. To raise them, you have to remove everything else from the tank, or remove the fry.
"They usually lay their eggs on a piece of bogwood or slate, which we carefully remove and place in a tank. Then we position the airstone so we've got water flowing over the eggs.
"We add a little methylene blue to stop the eggs fungussing - just enough to stain the water very slightly blue."
Paratilapia require a different approach to raising the fry, because the eggs they lay are non-adhesive and are attached to a central filament, rather than stuck to bits of bogwood or rocks.
Says Dave: "The problem with Paratilapia is that because the eggs are in a mass, and not attached to anything, hatching them artificially is tricky - you can't get the air from an airstone to flow over them.
"So we use an artificial hatcher like the one described in Ad Konings' Enjoying Cichlids book."
This egg tumbler uses the flow from a pump to gently circulate water around the cluster of eggs to keep them in an area of oxygen-rich water, as well as free of debris.
Sonia and Dave's artificial propagation techniques are obviously very effective, because there are fish of all sizes in their tanks at the moment, including some young menarambo. These are going to be released to other breeders involved in the FAITAG.
New discoveries
Several of the Madagascan cichlids in the hobby have been discovered by just two people, cichlid experts Jean Claude Nourissat and Patrick de Rham.
Explains Sonia: "Every time they go to Madagascar, they see something different. They visit the local fish markets and see what's on sale. If they see something interesting, they ask the people where they came from and then start looking at that location. That's how they found Paretroplus menarambo.
"The Ptychochromis mandritsara were originally described by Kiener. It was that fish that Jean Claude and Patrick were trying to find when they came across what's now Paretroplus nourissati (formerly Lamena). They found the nourissati by accident, but they couldn't find the ptycho they were looking for.
"They went back five or six years later to collect more nourissati and came across this very small population of mandritsara, which they thought had
become extinct.
"There are still areas where they haven't been. So there are probably still species there that remain undiscovered.
"Sadly, even some relatively recently discovered species are already extinct, and the future looks bleak for those that remain."
Adds Dave: "It's finally dawned on
the scientific community that
time is running out a lot faster than they thought it was."
And, a pic of some of my Blue Damba:
