Breeding Chromaphyosemion
& Raising Fry

    Because Chromaphyosemions generally prefer water that is soft and slightly acidic, this can easily be achieve by using about half rainwater and either by adding some water that has been boiled with peat moss and then strained.  This should get you to about a pH of 6.6 -6.8  You will have to do some mixing and testing to get the ratios of water mixtures you need and you also need to find out the specific requirements of your species of killifish..  You can also obtain some blackwater tonics, that are pretty much peat moss extract.

    Even if you are harvesting eggs using the mop method, Chromaphyosemion species generally like a well planted aquarium.  I've found using a green colored yarn to make a mop, seen few strand and thick strand mops work, to work pretty well.  I also provide plenty of floating plants, clustered in a bank corner of the tank will yield some fry to come up the hard way.

    The eggs of many species are very fragile, so if you are harvesting using a mop, you may wish to simply remove the mop, let it drip dry for a few minutes, wrap in a paper towel and use a toothpick to remove eggs.  If the species eggs are noted to being a little extra fragile and prone to fungus, another way to do this is put the whole mop in plastic butter tub of water, with water from the spawning aquarium, removing the mop daily, over the next few days along with eggs that have fungus, to preserve the remaining.  Change out about half the water in the container ever 3-4 days, adding a few minutes of aeration with a an airstone, if you don't have one constantly slowly running.  Depending upon the species, it may be then a safer time to remove eggs and place them in a hatching tray.

    This also works if you have removed the eggs from the mop and have them laid out individually on top of a 1/8 - 1/4 inch bed of boiled peat moss.  This will help to keep the pH low and to retard some of the fungus on eggs and works well if you have something like a clear shoe box size container.  Leaving the eggs in the mop and putting this in a hatching tray like this after a week, here again using water from the spawning aquarium, seems to give some of the more fragile species a better chance and a better start.

    After the first fry have hatched, everybody in the mop should be out in about a week, here is a good time to start checking the mop for eggs yet to hatch.  Depending upon the species, some requiring even smaller first foods, microworms and vinegar eels work form most Chormaphyosemion fry.  A generous little patch of algae here and there, that came from an infusoria/green water culture, usually provides fry with many sources of foods (snacks).  Once all fry have hatched, also put in a small snail, to help consume any uneaten microworms, vinegar eels, and newly hatched brine shrimp nauplii.  You can use a toothpick or a small paint set paint brush to feed microworms and brine shrimp nauplii to control overfeeding.  I do a weekly 25% water change of the hatching tray and I keep a slow to moderate airstone running at all times.

    After fry are about 3 weeks old, or have been eating newly hatched nauplii for about 3 weeks, they're moved to a small 2.5 - 3 gallon aquarium (I've used a one gallon jar), that is half the water from their hatching tray and half the water  Some floating live plants are also added.  Depending upon the species and the rate of development and growth, I continue the fry on nauplii and if big enough, small grindal worms.  When they're all readily taking small grindal worms, this is usually a pretty good sign that they're ready to continue onto their grow-out tank.

    When it is time to go into the grow-out aquarium, simply put the one gallon of water with the fry into the grow out tank, that should already have a gallon of water in it, slowly adding a gallon per hour for the first couple, then it is usually pretty safe to fill up the rest of the grow-out tank with aged and water that has been set to about 6.8 and with some peat water with it.

    If you've got them going at this point, then there's a great chance you're going to have some killifish coming up.  After about a month to six weeks, the fry will be also doing well on crumbled up flake food.

    Of course, this is very general, so you need to also look at the specific breeding requirements and fry needs of individual Chromaphyosemion species.