Newest Aquarium Residents

I just wanted to share with you all my newest aquarium residents, purchased a week ago:

These are Pseudomugil gertrudae, or Gertrude's Rainbow. As you can probably tell, they're tiny fish, only about 2.5 cm (1 inch) long. I have three males and three females, and hopefully if I'm lucky I'll have some babies eventually! They tend to school loosely, like other rainbows, and if there's food available, the males always put on a show to scare away the other males, flaring their polka-dot fins. For the most part, they're very docile, but they are cunning little hunters and within hours after introducing them to my tank they had already eaten all the copepods (barely visible jumping specs) in the tank.

Overall, they seem to be fitting the bill as a shrimp-safe planaria eater so far. Planarias are carnivorous worms that can eat baby shrimp and are just plain gross to look at. My tank was crawling with them, but now they're all gone.


I also got some Tiger shrimp. Hopefully these will breed as well! Also, since these are a different family than the Cherry shrimp (Caridina vs. Neocaridina) they won't interbreed.

I'll be posting a fish profile with more info on these guys a little later!