Clown Killifish Care Guide

The Clown Killifish or Rocket Killifish can be a little bit tricky to get a hold of, and they don't look like a whole lot local fish store (LFS) because typically they don't come in large quantities. So, it's pretty obvious you can miss them unless you're asking the employees, do you have these? Can you get them in? And then when you see them, you go, I thought they were cooler, I saw cooler pictures online. They will be that cool, especially the male. 5-gallon aquarium and up, I would say, and you got to a top because they will jump right out. That's why they call them the rockets.

Ideal water quality for Clown Killifish

They prefer a pH range anywhere from about 6.6 to 7.6. Being a Killifish, they can adapt to cool water temperatures. They prefer temperatures in the range of 67, and as high as 80, Killifish will have a shorter lifespan with higher temperatures on average they live two or three years depending on temperature.

What do Clown Killifish Eat?

When it comes to feeding Clown Killifish, you have to feed them lots of micro foods. They love frozen Cyclops, fried food, or any micro pellet, whether it's extreme nano pellet, Hikari micro pellet, fancy guppy food, flake food. All of that works, just to give them a variety. They like to feed towards that top 1/3 of the aquarium. So floating food that stays at the top for a while is good.

Tank Makes for a Clown Killifish

Tankmates, Celestial Pearl Danios, shrimp, Norman's Lampeye Killifish. All these types of nano fish work out well with them, and they're plant-friendly. The more plants you have, the more they will come out. They feel comfortable around floating plants like some water lettuce or something like that. They'll even lay eggs on the floating plants.

Breeding Clown Killifish

Breeding Clown Killifish can be easy if you keep a species only aquarium for them. So no shrimp, no snails, nothing else. What I found in the past is that they will actually lay their eggs, and they'll hatch out, and the adults seem to be smart enough not to eat the fry, which is excellent.

But once those fries grow up a little, and now they're juveniles or teenagers, they will eat the next group of fries. So you get this generational gap going off like I've got adults, they laid eggs, I made some fry, the fries started growing up, and no more eggs happened, or no more fry happened because they just eat them as they find them. But once those become adults also and they've got all adults again then you go, hey, I got fry again. A lot of times we're trying to diagnose what we're doing wrong, and we're not doing anything wrong. It's just that's the way that's going to work in that aquarium. Yes, you could get to the spawn on moss or these floating plants or remove them and hatch them in a different aquarium. But I like the passive approach to this because it's just fun to look, we got babies, which make a greater fish for a desktop aquarium. You can definitely do it in larger aquariums or an aquarium as small as 20-gallons.

Where can I get Clown Killifish?

When it comes to price, expect to pay between $4 and $8 per Clown Killifish, the males are going to have the big fins with the rocket tail to them. Whereas the females are going to have smaller fins and not so pronounced colors, there's still going to be that striped color. You're going to be tempted to just get males how their colors are brighter. I suggest that you buy two males and four females to get a colony started. So it will cost you around 50 bucks, to begin with. But as you make more, there is pretty much always an outlet to sell Clown Killis back to the store or other hobbyists. Everyone that sees the fish goes, wow, I like that. And because they're nano fish, they can go in small aquariums. They are shrimp safe. They're snail safe. Everyone goes, well, I've got that 10-gallon tank, I've meant to do something with, that'd be an excellent tank for these Clown Killifish.

I think the biggest takeaway to know about them is they're not going to look that cool in the store. They're going to be very small, they're going to eat very small foods, they will jump right out of there, but otherwise pretty unfussy and easy to take care of. So work on those things and have a beautiful little planted tank, and you'll enjoy them. Good luck.

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