Favourite fish palette. Thankfully, today’s specialist lighting has improved our fishkeeping experience no end with a vast choice of options. If your hood or canopy can accept several fluorescent tubes I would still look to deliver a slightly pink hue as this will help to enhance those orange colours. The full spectrum offered by LEDs is an impressive alternative but you may need to tweak the output a touch as Ember tetras can appear translucent under brighter conditions.
Setting up home
Adult sizes barely reach 2cm.
you can now find them in countless shops. They tick just about every box when it comes to an ideal community tropical. It could be argued that a fish growing to little more than 2cm is slightly small for a tank of this nature but I’ve kept them with all manner of similar sized species without problems. Like many fish of diminutive size, they will become overwhelmed and lose impact if you mix them with larger tank mates, so stick to other small tetras, pencils and rasboras as companions. Smaller Corydoras types work well and pairs of apistos add contrast in the lower reaches. As with all shoaling species, company is essential to their wellbeing. How many you keep all depends on tank size and personal preference. Although half a dozen would sit in a nano tank, they won’t be able to express themselves as nature intended. Ember tetras may be small but this doesn’t stop them wanting to stretch their fins and they school beautifully with space and numbers allowing. 50 together in tight formation is a survival strategy for them and a thing of beauty for us and a traditional 120cm tank would comfortably accommodate a shoal of this size. It won’t cost a fortune either - one of my local shops sells ten fish for £20.
Flowing in a north easterly direction through Brazil’s Mato Grosso state, the Rio d M t d ws water from sources along its . The network of ams supplying its iddle reaches plays These tetras have a ost to a diverse range pleasing effect when set of fish and one of them can claim against a traditional black Ember tetras as a Temperature background. Couple this with resident. How these requirements are some planting towards the characins avoided equally simple and rear to give them confidence the twentieth century around 26°C will suit until its latter years is them admirably. and to encourage them own to a question of To get the very best to gather near the moteness. Looking from that uniform viewing pane. stream, they appear to orange, some thought i ed in a small area lighting requirements along the left bank where terrain, needed. Readers of a certain vintage habitat and distance between waterways will remember Grolux light tubes being all has played a key role in restricting their the rage when these fish first made an movements. This environment has also appearance. Despite limitations in aquarium conditions, they had a remarkable created tributaries with a slower flow rate and higher temperatures than those on the effect on fish tilted towards the red/orange
TOP TIP
Embers work well in small planted tanks.
Illuminating facts The undemanding nature of these little characins has played a crucial role in their popularity. Although soft acidic conditions occur in nature, they will adapt to whatever comes out of your tap and with the vast majority now captive bred, tinkering with water chemistry is unnecessary.
What’s in a name? The Ember tetra was described by Drs Jacques Gery and Andre Uj in 1987. In a fitting tribute, this new species was named Hyphessobrycon amandae in honour of the collector’s mother, Mrs Amanda Bleher, who had lived in Brazil for many years and had a great interest in the aquatic fauna and flora there.
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