Golden Pencilfish
We have some new inhabitants in the form of Golden Pencilfish in our Aquascape.
I’ve been wanting a school of fish in there for a while and had toyed with the idea of Rummy nosed-tetras, but in the end decided that Golden Pencilfish (Nannostomus beckfordi), also known as Beckfords Pencilfish would be nice and a little different. Everyone has Rummy-nosed Tetras after all so the pencilfish looked a little more interesting, and it also keeps things true to my original plan of making this into an Orinoco River biotope tank. That’s not going to happen but these fish are found in the Orinoco River so at least some of the inhabitants come from that environment.
We bought them from Aquajardin in Gloucester on our way back from our weekend in Bristol and they seem to be settling in well. I’m never very good at getting photos of fish in my tank, but here are a few of our new Golden Pencilfish anyway.
Golden Pencilfish
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- Golden Pencilfish
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- Golden Pencilfish
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- Golden Pencilfish
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- Golden Pencilfish
They don’t seem to shoal that well now that they are settled in, but I think that’s because they aren’t feeling threatened. Shoaling is of course a defensive behaviour so I guess if they feel safe then there’s no need to shoal. In fact they seem to have other things on their mind and at this rate we may have quite a few of them soon, not just the twelve that we bought. That’s if any fry manage to find somewhere in the tank to hide, but there are plants aplenty for them and the dense moss should be ideal for them. It would be nice to breed them if we can, so I’ll be keeping an eye out for baby golden pencilfish soon.
New Plants
I bought a few new plants whilst there as well. Two small Anubius and a nice Nymphoides too, so that tank is looking good and the aquascape continues to develop. It’s not quite how I envisaged it in the first place, but it’s not far off.
