Care
Recorded from the Congo River in the DRC, the Cross River in Nigeria and the Wouri River in Cameroon, this rarely seen tetra lives alongside many aquarium favourites in the wild.
Their aquarium should be spacious, with good water movement and areas of cover to provide them with hiding places which will be used less frequently the more they settle in. These are shoaling fish that are most comfortable and look their best when kept in large numbers and their open water shoaling makes them ideal companions for more nervous bottom dwellers such as West African cichlids and non-lake Synodontis catfish, as well as dwarf cichlids such as Pelvicachromis. These are placid fish similar to Congo tetras and suitable for the same type of large community set ups, or biotope aquaria as authentic companions to more readily available species.
Although not the most colourful members of their family, these fish will show an attractive golden body stripe when kept well, which appears as a bright copper orange in blackwater. Their subtle beauty is best appreciated in a tank tinted with tannins and dimly lit. Their presence in the trade is mostly due to being misidentified as juvenile Congo tetras by exporters and they’re often labelled as such until they fail to develop the colour and characteristics of their more glamorous distant relatives.
In many cases, these are the mysterious African tetras that subsequently appear under a variety of names and a variety of common names have been applied - Short-finned Congo Tetra, African Robber Tetra and Nigerian Yellowline Tetra.
Feeding
Offer a good quality flake food and micropellets, supplemented with small frozen foods such as daphnia and mosquito larvae.
Breeding
Due to its rarity, this is not a commonly bred fish. Any attempts should succeed if handled in the same way as Congo tetras.
