"Lamprologous" similis photo gallery

Date: April 19, 2004

I have a small colony of wild caught similis primarily in a 29 gallon tank that have had fry. There are also a few of the similis that got kicked out of the colony in a 10gal and 40gal tank. This is a photo gallery of the fish and their fry. There are two main pairs in the 29, one on the left of the tank and one on the right of the tank. The fry of the left pair are situated where they are hard to photograph, so the fry photos are solely of the right pair's offspring.


A picture of the 29 gallon tank taken with my Fujifilm A210 in wide angle mode. The breeder net hanging at the top contains fry that were being attacked by another fish.

Photograph of similis in the 10gal tank

This fellow was beat up and kicked out of the colony. It's very photogenic perhaps because it only shares the 10gal tank with 5 cardinal tetras and one 4 month old similis fry that had been in the breeders net in the 29 gallon until it got so large it was picking on its siblings in the net.


This picture was taken with a Pentax K1000 using a flash and 400ISO film. The scan is a bit grainy.


This picture was taken in macro mode on the A210.

Left pair from the 29 gallon

This is a photo of the left pair. This is actually the second male this female has paired with. The original male was beaten up by this male and removed to the 40gal. The female is the smaller and darker of the two.


This photo was taken with the Pentax.

Right pair and fry from the 29 gallon

The right pair has been the more prolific pair in the tank. The pair and their offspring now occupy half of the tank. The oldest fry are about 4 months old and began getting their stripes in at about 3 months old. The youngest fry are only a couple weeks old.


This is a photo of the female with some of her fry taken with the Pentax. Not the greatest focus, but the female moves around so much that it's hard to get a picture of her.


This is the male hanging out over his conch shell. It was taken with the Pentax and suffers graininess that I've had with scanning in pictures.


Here's a much nicer photo of the male taken in macro mode on the A210. The male is hanging out over his shell along with several of the fry.


Another grainy photo of the right fry over their shellbed taken with the Pentax.


A nice closest of one of the 4 month old fry taken in macro mode on the A210. This is one of the largest fry of the group, about half an inch long. You can see how the stripes first appear on the tail and forward parts of the body. This fry actually shares the male's shell.


Another macro mode photo of the 4 month old fry. The one in front is the fry from the above photo. The one in back is the fry that first started showing stripes and that has the most defined stripes of the group.


Here's a nice macro mode photo showing fry from three different batches. The largest fry is one of the 4 month old group. The middle sized fry is the only survivor of a 2 month old batch. The small fry in the upper left of the photo is from the 3 week old batch.


This is another macro mode photo that shows many of the 3 week old fry. There is also one of the 4 month old fry cruising overhead. This older sibling often cruises over the young fry to guard them from one of the other similis that keeps trying to encroach on the space of the right pair.