InA Ornamental Fish

🐟 Fish Fun Fact Friday!

Ever seen a fish jump out of water to sn**ch a bug mid-air? Meet the African Butterflyfish (Pantodon buchholzi) — one of nature’s oldest surviving fish designs, built for surface ambush hunting.

🌍 Native to Central Africa’s slow-moving rivers and swamps
🪰 Leaps clear of the water to grab insects off the surface
🫁 Can gulp air directly — a trait it’s kept for millions of years
🔒 Keeper tip: a tight-fitting lid is essential, or it will escape

A true living fossil hiding in plain sight. 🧬

Who’s next for Fish of the Week? Drop your picks 👇

Your community tank survived tetras, plecos, even a bad-tempered angelfish. It will not survive this. Meet Hemichromis elongatus, the Six-Point General of West African cichlids. ⚠️🐟

The Banded Jewel Cichlid doesn’t blend in and it doesn’t share. Explosive color, predatory strikes, and territory defense that borders on obsession. This is not a beginner fish. This is a commitment.

Give it room to be dangerous: 75+ gallons for a single fish, 125+ gallons if you’re keeping a breeding pair, and filtration heavy enough to handle a bio-load that punches well above its size. Aquascape with flat spawning stones, dense driftwood, and rock caves that break line-of-sight, because even this fish needs somewhere to hide from itself. Community tanks are off the table entirely. Keep it solo or as a proven monogamous pair, anything else ends in a bloodbath. Feed it like the obligate piscivore it is: high-protein carnivore pellets, krill, and earthworms, daily or every other day.

Run a Six-Point General, or does “team peaceful community” describe you better? Name your toughest cichlid below. 👇💬

Most people scroll past this fish thinking it’s just another spotted catfish. It’s not.

Synodontis ocellifer has moved along the Niger, Nile, Senegal, and Chad basins for longer than the aquarium trade has existed. Those dark spots with pale centers, ocelli, aren’t decoration. Their identity.

It settles around 8 to 10 inches in most tanks, sometimes more, so this isn’t an impulse buy. Give it a 55 gallon minimum, soft sand for those barbels, caves to retreat into. Peaceful until its hiding spots run out.

Feed it sinking pellets, bloodworms, brine shrimp, and it thrives.
A river system’s history, wearing its coordinates on its own skin.

Thinking about adding one? Message us on WhatsApp and we’ll help you plan the setup right.
+234 816 885 0307

Aphyosemion australe (Cape Lopez Lyretail) 🌊✨**

Meet the Cape Lopez Lyretail — a nano tank gem hiding in the rainforest streams of Central & West Africa.

This non-annual killifish brings striking color to any peaceful setup: reddish-brown spots on a golden body, capped with signature white- or yellow-tipped filaments trailing off its lyre-shaped tail (5–6cm).

It thrives in soft, slightly acidic water (pH 6.0–7.0) and cool temps between 21°C–24°C. Give it dim lighting, heavy planting, floating vegetation, and a soft substrate to feel at home. One crucial note: always use a tight-fitting lid, because this species is an exceptional jumper.

As a peaceful micro-predator, it does best on live or frozen brine shrimp, daphnia, and bloodworms, and prefers company, ideally kept in pairs or small harems.

Ever kept killifish before? Drop a comment or save this post for your next aquascape build 💬📌

FISH OF THE WEEK

Meet the fish that breathes air and remembers a world before most modern fish existed. *Phractolaemus ansorgii*, the Hingemouth, is one of West Africa’s true living relics — a lungfish-adjacent oddball from the Niger Delta and Congo basins that most of the hobby has never heard of. That’s the geography problem in one fish: a genuinely unique species, sitting in plain sight, chronically overlooked.

🏆 Fish of the Week
📍 Niger Delta & Congo River Basins
🌡️ 24–28°C | pH 6.0–7.2
🐟 Calm, peaceful tankmates only

Interested in sourcing? WhatsApp +234 816 885 0307

Did you know there’s a fish that can drown if your tank lid fits too tight? Meet the Hingemouth (Phractolaemus ansorgii), a living fossil from West Africa with a hinged “vacuum snout” and a lung-like swim bladder.

Swipe to see why this oddball needs a totally different setup:

• Hinged mouth acts as a natural vacuum, sifting food without swallowing substrate
• Breathes air directly, a tight lid blocking the surface can kill it
• Coarse gravel damages its snout, fine soft sand only
• Needs dim lighting and a surface air gap to thrive

Keeping oddballs? Save this for your next build. Link in bio to chat with us on WhatsApp.