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Malpulutta kretseri
by Mike Hellweg
Zoogoneticus tequila
by Andrew Hebert
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Zoogoneticus tequila
Andrew Hebert
There is a saying in the hobby, “Aquarists don’t breed fish, fish breed fish, we just watch.” This could not be more true in the case of Zoogoneticus tequila. I picked these up from a recent BAP submission by Eric LeCalvez. Eric indicated that he had trouble breeding them as they are known to snack on their young and the adults can give the subadults a hard time. Nevertheless, I was intrigued. Our ever faithful auctioneer indicated that this particular species is extinct in the wild and only exists in the hobby. Further investigation showed that these fish are probably extinct in the wild, but there are reports that there may be one habitat left. (ref. Dr. Arcadio Valdés González.)
I found Z. tequila, called the crescent goodeid in the common vernacular, to be a beautiful goodeid. The dominant male in the tank has a bright orange bar through his tail and the rest of the fish is silver and green in coloration. (Pictured below on the left) Subdominant males have the same orange bar on the caudal fin but their bodies are much darker. (Pictured below on the right.)
I personally keep my breeding group in a ten gallon tank with “Malawi” type water, with a pH of 8.0 and the hardness at roughly 10 dH. The temperature stays around 78º F and the tank itself is decorated with stacked field stone and Java moss. I use a sponge filter for filtration. As reported in the literature, I found that this fish does take awhile to get acclimated to its new surroundings and will not breed right away. I suspect my group was also fairly young and that was another reason for the early lack of proliferation.
The appearance of the male coloration happens roughly six months from birth and it is important to have lots of hiding places in the tank for any fry that are born. I found that the female would drop her babies very close to the Java moss where it sits on top of the stone in the tank. The babies, which are born live, are just under a centimeter in size and tended to stay under the Java moss for their first two weeks. After that they started to find new hiding places in and among the rock work. Once the fifth week passed, I noticed that the fry swim with the adults, but tend to stay lower in the water column.
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Z. tequila was discovered in 1990 by Derek Lambert; however, there are also reports that there was a collection of the same fish in the 1950s. In 1998, Z. tequila was finally described by Shane Webb and Robert Rush Miller. Interestingly, the designation ‘tequila’ has nothing to do with a haze inducing beverage of the same name. The fish was named tequila after a nearby Mexican volcano of the lava spouting variety. Again, no similarities to the kind of spouting that can happen when you consume too much of the haze inducing beverage…
Bottom line, this is a great fish. These guys quickly learn to come to the front of the tank when they are being fed and they are fearless. With a little tank setup work you can raise a batch of them for yourself. Note that there are several clubs in the U.S. and in Europe that participate in species maintenance for Z. tequila. In Mexico there are also talks of starting some pond habitats so that this species can be maintained until the natural environment has been restored. I hope you, too, will have an opportunity to keep these beauties.
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